Grand Adventure: family, house building and travel, Pacific Northwest style
Jack’s been playing baseball for 29 of the past 30 years, in preparation for his new role as a….. T-BALL COACH.
It’s been fun for all of us. There’s one pratice and one game a week. The kids each swing away until they hit the ball and then they run one base per batter until the last kid hits and gets to run all the way around the bases. We attempt to get them to field and then throw to first. They run a lot and look cute in their uniforms.
After two months, we’ve finally finished installing the 200+ pavers on our roof. Jack did almost all the work, but my dad and I also moved and laid down quite a few (and my mom did extra babysitting). We never did weigh them, but they are 18” square and we think each is about 40 lbs. The roof was engineered for the weight of them but it was kind of alarming to realize that making a tall stack of them in one spot on the roof could actually exceed the allowed load. We got them delivered and then we moved them from the parking spot to the yard, to the basement and up the elevator in small batches. The we installed them on plastic pedestals with adjustable heights and angles to counter act the slight slope of the roof. Good work, Jack.
The next step is to build planters around the outside and for the four square cut outs. Also we need to fix the starter to find out if our buy-nothing barbecue works or not.
A few years ago I read [some of] The Opposite of Spoiled (http://ronlieber.com/books/the-opposite-of-spoiled/), which is about teaching kids to be smart about money. Basically the idea is to give them an allowance so that they learn about personal finance before they go out on their own. He argues that allowances should not be tied to chores, because chores are just part of being a family member and older kids can decide that they make enough through some other job and therefore don’t have to help around the house. He recommends a larger and larger allowance as kids get older, where they are responsible for more and more of their expenses (like sports, clothes, gas etc).
We’re starting with $4 a week. I was struggling to think of where we could take D to spend such small amounts of money on something other than just candy. My solution is Goodwill!
On spring break D got to go to Disneyland with his grandparents! He had a blast. They rode a roller coaster, met characters, stayed up to watch the fireworks from their hotel room window and walked and swam a lot. He’s a lucky kid.
Jack and I had a nice dinner at Cafe Flora and some uninterupted conversations while he was gone :)
Sometimes life is improved by mundane day-to-day changes that are of absolutely no interest to those not affected by them. Let me tell you about one such change!
Our male kitten, Toru, has had a rough few months. Sometime around Christmas he stopped jumping like a normal cat and we assumed he had seriously hurt one of his legs. He struggled to get up on the couch, dragging himself up with just his front paws in a really pathetic way and he was eager to play but wanted to lie down while doing it. It looked like a problem with one of his back legs. We took him to the vet, tried some pain meds and enforced rest. It didn’t seem to help so we even had an x-ray of his back legs and hips, but everything was normal. We decided to just accept the mystery.
Around this time we bought a second self cleaning litter box on craigslist and hooked it up in the basement. Three cats have a lot of outputs. We had to set up a third litter box in the room Toru was confined to and all the cats much prefer to use the labor intensive and smelly traditional box.
We gave up on confinement but then had a trouble with Emo pooping in the basement. Finally we found a good schedule for the two automatic boxes to clean themselves at different times and Emo got back on board, but Toru rebelled. We actually would see him go in to the litter box in the basement and then step back out to go to the bathroom on the floor. We we not happy but figured that part of it was that he was in pain.
Now a few months later, he has gotten a bit better and does jump and play standing up. The bad bathroom habit continued for a long time, but now I’m so excited that we’ve gone over a week with no one pooping outside of the litter box.
This site was very helpful http://www.catexpert.co.uk/cats/how-to-clean-up-cat-pee-or-poo/. It has lots of possible causes and potential solutions. We started small by cleaning up with Dumb Cat cleaner, because if they smell anything they’ll just stick with their old habit. Then I think the magic trick was putting some food in the problem corner of the basement. It has worked like a charm!
Not having a basement [corner] full of poop is such a treat.
We’ve almost finished reading James and the Giant Peach to D. I bought a Roald Dahl set on a whim a while ago, thinking chapter books were a long ways off. Then we started reading one as an experiment and it’s been really fun, after getting past the beginning where James becomes an orphan and has to live with his terrible, physically and emotionally abusive aunts. He understands way more than we expected, recalls details from the previous day’s reading and asks questions that show that he’s following the plot!
Two families we are good friends with have moved away from Seattle in the last couple of years, so this month we made the rounds to visit them. As much as we enjoyed it when they lived close by, overnight visits lead to a lot more quality time than meeting up for dinner locally does. Plus, the kids sleep part of the time :)
First we went south to Portland. Jack and Read went snowboarding at Mt Hood and D and I walked in Macleay park (from the Lower Macleay Park entrance) while our friends’ son slept off a slight fever. Portland has amazing in-city hiking options. We had some nice meals and caught up and saw their new house. It was the first time I went out to brunch with just D for company. On the whole the two of us had a good time, but it sure is nice to have adventure with my co-parent, for the times when my patience frays.
The following weekend we went north to Anacortes to meet our friends’ second son, at five weeks old. Saturday afternoon we took a quick ferry ride to Guemes Island and did a 2.3 mile hike that took us up http://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/guemes-mountain. It was wonderful weather and the most rewarding hiking view I’ve seen in a while. D and their older son, who is almost three, hiked pretty much the whole way. It was fun to watch them play together so well. We also checked out their backyard ADU, which Jack helped design.
This year was our first complete year at home. There was less stress and more fun.
Friends and Family and Pets
House
Travel
Recreation and Food
Reading, Watching and Thinking
Work and School and Community
Jessica, one of my childhood best friends, who was with me in school from first through twelfth grade, married Adam, in Ann Arbor, in June. It was a beautiful outdoor ceremony followed by a fun party. My parents, who also knew Jessica well as a kid, came along and we made it in to a week-long trip in Michigan.
We spent the first night near the detroit airport and went to Belle Isle Park, which is a big island park in the Detroit River, right by downtown. Then we drove 4+ hours up to Glen Arbor (on the pinky of the Michigan hand), where we stayed in a nice airbnb for several nights. We did lots of short hikes at and around Sleeping Bear Dunes and the Old Mission Lighthouse. Our awesome down-stream canoe ride was a nice break from the slow hikes.
Look at all these scofflaws climbing back up the huge dune, past the “Danger” sign!
Then I rented a separate car and dove back to Ann Arbor a day earlier than Jack, D and my parents, for the bridal shower I co-hosted in Gallup Park. Then it was the usual, rehearsal dinner, hair appointment (acutally I have rarely done this for weddings) and the ceremony in the afternoon.
All the childhood wedding planning I did was with Jessica, so this was a long anticipated event and it came through with beautiful and thoughtful vows and details. Her other childhood best friend, Yasmeen, whom I’ve known from afar after meeting only during one visit when we were eight, and I pulled together a joint speech that I think went well. There were tears and laughs so that has to count for something. I also made this photo collage before the wedding.
My immune system carried me grudgingly through the toast but then gave up, relinquishing me to an excruciating sinus infection that was diagnosed when I got home, thus delaying this blog post for ….seven … months. Whoops.
Since my last house project post in July, we’ve accomplished a few more house tasks.
