It's Always Winter at the Airport

What's this?  More Nathan?

Yep.

Nathan and Frank playing at the airport, in winter garb at the end of March.

It's full-on spring here (finally!)... yet when Nathan and his friend Frank had a playdate a couple weeks ago, we made an observation we've made a thousand times before: it's always winter at RDU airport.  Well, maybe not in the dead heat of summer.  But seriously, it consistently feels at least fifteen degrees cooler there than anywhere else we go in Raleigh.

Bizarre behavior from our non-climber.

Why???

Maybe it's the open spaces and wind.  Maybe it's just that we're not outside for as long when we play in other places.  Or maybe it's for real always winter at the airport.

RDU aside, I think we're done with jackets til next fall.  And I'm excited about that!

Renovation, Days 37-40

Forty days.

Forty days we've been at this.  Part of me thinks it's flown by (it's been over a month already??) but another part of me can barely remember a time when we weren't renovating this house.

But hey guess what. 

We are done painting!!!  Done.  Like, DONE.  All of it.  Every room, every bathroom, every hall, every door and window and spot of trim, many cabinets, many ceilings, all the vents, all the touch-ups, even the new quarter-round to be installed with the new (and newly refinished) floors at the end of the week.  Painted. 

And the superstar award for this effort definitely goes to Another Nathan. We had a good handful of helpers over the last month, and we appreciate all of them, but only Another Nathan has come by every weekend.  More than that, he has been (almost) tirelessly cheerful, ever the optimist, able to keep morale and motivation high.  Oh and if that wasn't enough, he's also a really good painter.  (Somehow he can paint faster than either of us yet still make less of a mess.)  And didn't mind being the tiebreaking vote on color choice when we needed it (and making delicate suggestions even when we think we didn't) (but we did).  "Helpful" doesn't even begin to describe it.  No exaggeration, we would have had to change our move-in date if he hadn't been adding 50% more manpower (probably more, considering an hour of his painting efforts go farther than either of ours) to what Mark and I could have logged on our own.

Basically he's awesome and we will never look at the walls in our new house without thinking sweet Another Nathan thoughts while little cartoony love-bubbles shoot out of our heads.  True story.

Ok I'll stop now before I get too too obnoxious with accolades.

Anyway so the gray we finally settled on for the guest house bedroom/living area is indeed a winner:

The blue in the guest house kitchen also came out lovely:

One of the last painting project was to spraypaint all the vents in the house (all of them) to match the new white trim.  It wasn't as fun as it looks.  And like last time, (our) Nathan wasn't as helpful as it looks.

And...

I'm a teensy bit ashamed to admit this, but we did end up repainting the bonus room. 

Mark had this look on his face basically the whole time we were re-painting.

The lilac (I promise it was purpley in real life, even if it doesn't look like it here!) was... ugh. It was really bugging me. We had made the time.  So we just did it. 

Watch out! Picky pregnant lady on a ladder!

Seriously I love love love the new (warmer browner) gray we ended up with.  Eye-rolling aside, it was easier to fix it now than listen to me dislike it for the next two years, then move furniture to fix it.  I'm so much happier with the new color.  Behold, the least drastic before & after pics you've ever seen:

(those colors are a *lot* more different in real life, I swear!)

So... no more painting!  I almost can't believe it.  I kind of don't know what I'm going to do with myself now.  We're moving in ten days.  Ten days.  I guess I could, like... start packing?  Eh.  It's an idea, anyway.

Purple Eye

Nathan got a purple eye at school this week.  Not pinkeye, that's something else.  And not a black eye, because it's purple Mommy.

purple eye, day 1

Okay, okay, sweetie.  It's purple.

purple eye, day 2

(He has spent lots of time gazing at his injury in the mirror this week.  I figure he's got as good a handle as any of us on what the exact coloring is.)

purple eye, day 3

No one actually witnessed how it happened.  We've gotten several versions of the same story, all involving his favorite little girl in the class, Molly, who might or might not have hit him.  (Note: he's saying Molly.  Not Mommy.  Let's be clear on who might or might not have punched him in the eye socket, mmkay?)

purple eye, day 4

From the sounds of it, they ran into each other and hit heads (hers is not purple).  And then maybe she got mad and hit him?  But she didn't mean to?  And maybe he tried to hug her?  But she didn't want him to?  We're all a bit fuzzy on the details. 

purple eye, day 5

But basically it boils down to this: everyone is still friends, and now Nathan has a shiner.

See exactly how much distress Nathan's purple eye isn't causing him!

(Molly's head is not purple and she did not need a band-aid. In case you were wondering.  Or missed it the first time.  Molly is not purple. Nathan wants you to know. Ok?)

Ice Cream Truck at the Mall

We went to Crabtree mall for a playdate with a friend last week.  Nathan and Anneliese stuck pretty close together (well, actually, that's not true at all. Anneliese went where she wanted and Nathan followed her around, trying to reign her in with remarks like, where are you going baby girl? and stay close to mommy, Anneliese!  and come play right here, pretty girl. so... yeah... but for the purposes of this post, they were playing close together).

There were lots of vehicles to play in/on, so they climbed into an ice cream truck (this was for my benefit; when Nathan asks me mommy what's your favorite truck?* I usually tell him an ice cream truck**) and pushed all the buttons and giggled and danced to the music it played and big brother bossed little sister around and little sister tolerated it and mommy stood nearby and smiled.  And took cell phone pics.

And the moral of the story is, have I mentioned recently how much I love it when my children play well together?  I have, right?  Okay just making sure.

*approximately eight thousand million times a day
** hold your tongues, people

Renovation, Days 33-36

Another new house update. 

First, the bad news.  Well, not bad, but not awesome.  Unfortunately we've had enough budget surprises that we have temporarily cut the renovation of the pool from The Plan... at least until we can sell our current house.  We just can't make ourselves part with the cash right now when it would cause us to dip below our family's comfort level for emergency reserves.  It's kind of an important Goettsch Rule: no debt except mortgage.  Which means we need a solid emergency fund.  And no matter what my sweaty pregnant stretchmarky aching body is saying, a new pool is not an emergency.  So... later this summer?  We hope...

Now the good news.  My husband is a rock star. Mark has been off work since Tuesday, and it's amazing the amount of stuff he has been able to get done at the new house.  The honey-do list I put on his calendar was the tiniest bit insane (wait! I take it back! just a normal amount of insane!) and he totally spanked it.  I'm beyond impressed.  And so appreciative. 

Amongst other things...

He rebuilt (purchased, sawed, hammered, primed, painted) part of a window frame and baseboard in our guest house kitchen:

Is that spackle dust in his hair...
 or is this reno aging him *that* fast?? ;)

He sanded down so much spackled sheetrock that he created a dust cloud in the guest house I could barely photograph through:

His shirt was more valuable as a breathing filter than a shirt.
That, or construction work just makes him feel hott.

He made his first foray into painting ceilings.  He did about five rooms but the hardest was the guest house bedroom area, which required some creativity in the high awkward places, even with a tall ladder.  Yes, this is a paintbrush *taped* to an extension pole.  Mark claimed that Another Nathan would've been ashamed of him for this ghetto-awesome (ghettawesome!) solution. But dude. It worked.

Marky also pulled out a row of shrubs and replaced them with mulch and stepping stones so we still have a way to get to the rest of the backyard once the new pool fence gets put in (Nathan was less helpful than he appears here):

Yes, the siding will all be repainted and matchy before anyone comes to visit.

I was at the new house a lot this week, but didn't do too much.  I had some key copies made.  I taped a little for Mark (who also painted all the trim in the guest house).  I painted another black banister white.

Oh and I went through some samples for the guest room kitchen:

We picked the blue on the far left... and we love it.

And I went to the lumber place -- twice.  The second time with our sweet construction assistants in tow:

Up next for this weekend: we finish all (ALL!) the rest of the painting and then clear everything out of every room, because... new floors next week!!!

Shades of Gray

I've made no secret of the fact that paint color decisions have been... um, difficult for me.  I don't make snap decisions and I worry a lot about making decisions I'll regret* later.  Right now there are seven (yep, seven) samples of gray on the walls of the guest house bedroom area.  I know that seems like a lot, but... y'all!  Grays are hard! Grays have become my new Everest. 

Don't worry, we did finally pick one of these (the fifth one from the left... the ones to the right of the blue tape are duplicates of our final three choices... oh man everything about this parenthetical statement makes me seem like a raving lunatic).

I started counting up the number of sample paints I've bought and splashed on the walls of the new house earlier this week.  And as of today, that total has reached... sixty-seven. 

That's all, though!  Picking the gray was the last color and it's done!  I swear, no more paint samples!  I'm done.  Really.

Throughout this whole renovation process, I have been maintaining, emphatically, that I am just a normal amount of crazy.  Yes, crazy.  But not crazily so.  You know?  But I'm worried my sixty-seven paint samples are making a liar out of me and my "normal crazy" claim.  Yes?  No?

*That's true about me in life in general. And also paint colors.

Storm Door Fail

Because we don't already have enough home improvement projects in our lives right now, the universe threw us another one: a storm door that quite literally fell off the house onto our deck this windy afternoon.

Um, isn't it supposed to be a storm door?  Withstandandable in storm conditions.  Like, oh I don't know, wind? FAIL.

Mark got it fixed (well, fixed enough) with the help of this sweet little lady.

Anneliese's contributions included standing in front of the window saying dadadadadada and then a lot of uh-oh whenever he dropped something or banged the door in any way.  She's quite the assistant.  Every handyman should be so lucky.

(Nathan apparently got his tools and "helped" a good bit as well, but as I had already left for a class at church by that point, we have no photographic evidence of such assistance.)

Man I hope none of our potential house buyers are reading this blog.

The Potty and the Organ

Things have been sort of Nathan-heavy in this corner of the internet for the past few weeks, and I'm continuing the trend... with a post about two Nathans.  Playing the organ.  As a reward for pooping on the potty. 

Yes, really.

The backstory.  A couple of months ago, Nathan, who is in underwear 100% of the time these days but still in the bribery/reward phase for pooping on the potty, pulled this idea out of his ear (or somewhere):

But we were happy to try and oblige his request.  Mark especially.

{The back-backstory. From the time little fetal Nathan first let me feel him kicking with the music at church (our organist at the time played everything at one of two volumes, loud or louder, and unborn Nathan seemed quite into it), Mark has had it in his head that we'd raise up a good keyboard player. He hates that neither of us ever took piano lessons, and is jealous of that kind of skill in other people, and doesn't want to be pushy about it but makes no secret of how thrilled he is when Nathan is entranced by youtube videos of people playing the organ (yep, those two have a whole playlist of them bookmarked) and how it's easily Nathan's favorite part of worship every week.  He may be a music nerd in the making (and hey the organ is kind of a cool way to be a dork, right? Jon Acuff said it's like landing a plane and I'm not sure he's wrong), but Daddy couldn't be prouder.}

ANYWAY.

Fortunately we happen to be pretty great friends with a pretty great person who, amongst a myriad of other talents, is an incredibly gifted organist.  Who Nathan looks up to.  A lot.  (Coincidence in organ-playing request?  Unlikely.)  Oh, sweet Another Nathan.  Coming through for my family's crazy requests.  Again. So a month later when the pooping/organ thing got brought up again, I gave him the heads up and he agreed without batting an eye.

So the next time Nathan pooped, he was ready to go play right then.  And even though I assured him I had already cleared it with Another Nathan and he could definitely play the organ after naptime, he seemed leery and wanted to call him himself, just to be sure.  That conversation went something like this:

Nathan- (jumbled toddler talk on speakerphone) Hey Another Nathan I pooped on the potty can I come play the organ at church really loud is the organ for pooping?
Another Nathan- Hi, friend! Um... what?
N- (more excited jumbled speakerphone talk) Can I play the organ?  I pooped!
AN- Okay you can play it, now what did you do?
N- I POOPED!!!!!

When I asked him later if that was the strangest phone call he had ever gotten from a three-year-old, he said he thought it was the only phone call he's ever gotten from a three-year-old.  Well.  I'm so glad his initiation was the famous is-the-organ-for-pooping conversation.

So we went.  They played.  Not really loud after all, because Nathan got a little nervous at the last minute.  But they sat and talked and pushed buttons and played something that caused a general joyful racket and created a pre-bell-rehearsal audience in the gathering space outside the sanctuary.  They had fun.  It was very sweet.

Like a good mommyblogger, I took pictures.  Like a good daddyorganpaparazzo, Mark took more.
 

And the whole thing made quite an impression on our Nathan. 

He's kept a print of the picture above with his toys for the last month, including at bedtime.  And he spent the following weeks telling his friends and playdates and teachers how he got to play the organ and that Another Nathan can play the organ, too. Just like me!

Yeah. That's how it is.  Exactly, sweetie.  :)

Renovation, Days 28-32

The most important development this week in the new house is that we finally got the furnace repaired and we now have heat!!!

Yes, we have been torturing ourselves and our helpers by working in really chilly conditions for the last month.  I think the warmest we ever got it in the living room, with a space heater, was fifty-nine degrees.  (The first time we viewed the property, in early January, it was thirty-five in that room.  Thirty-five.  That's ridiculous, even for outside, during the middle of the day.  The point is, it's been cold in our house.) 

But now?  It's a (cheaply) comfortable high-sixties-ish inside.  And oh so lovely.  It feels like a real house now!

In other updates...

We have new siding all around the bonus room.  This was the section of the house with the worst termite damage (besides the guest house) and it had to be taken down to the studs and completely rebuilt.  Still needs paint, but having it all reconstructed makes me happy in the meantime:

The guest house is pretty much rebuilt too! Subflooring + new french doors = real progress:

Word on the street is Mark and Another Nathan are going to organize a mutiny if I take any more pictures of them painting. {sigh}  So, since they claim the internet is ready for new material... how about the two of them wrestling a broken/dead riding lawn mower (free for the cost/energy of fixing it up: housewarming present win! thanks mom) right on Anderson Drive instead?

The lawn mower is currently in our driveway.  And this cart that attaches to it is still in our front yard.  Yep, we're classing up the neighborhood already:

Two more bonus room sample colors (we already had been through three)...and yes, we finally chose one!  The one on the left:  

The result is more purple in real life (and less gray) than it looks here:

... and while it's not our most favorite color in the house, we like it well enough not to redo it.  Over the last month I have become even more a subscriber to the theology of good enough (it's the happy medium between cutting corners and being a perfectionist), and this room (after touchups) is undoubtedly good enough! For sure.

...And with that, I am pleased to say all our painting work in the main house is finished.  Over the last month, we have painted every room and every scrap of trim in the whole house.  I am exhausted just thinking about it.  (Oh right, that's because I did it.) 

Save a few ceilings (and a healthy handful of touchups), we're ready for the new floors!  I think between the paint and new floors, it'll really feel like a whole new place.  I'm getting excited!!

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Look!  A non-house related post!  Proof for the internet (and for myself) that I do so think about things other than renovation schedules and home improvement projects and moving logistics these days.  Occasionally.  Kind of.

Last week we went to a baseball game to see Clemson play NC State with some friends from church (the same friends who joined us last fall to see Clemson and State play football, actually).  I didn't get a picture of all of us at the game, but here's most of us (not me):

Natalie & Kyle, Mark & Anneliese, Another Nathan & Nathan

We had really good seats close behind home plate and in the fourth row.  And we got them super cheap (thanks, Groupon!).  As you can see by the way we're all dressed, it was cold out.  I'm sort of mad at North Carolina this week.  It's spring.  For real.  We should not be wearing long sleeves, much less jackets.  Hmph.

Oh!  And Anneliese had her first hot dog.  She eats anything we put in front of her, pretty much, so it was no surprise she was a fan of stadium food too (I mean... who isn't?  You either love baseball game hot dogs or you're a liar). 

lots of mustard... that's my girl

I'm not sure how much of this she ate vs how much Daddy actually got for himself.  :)

Despite the chilly weather (and the fact that Clemson lost -- badly), it was a great way to spend an evening away from working and house stuff and just have some downtime with our friends.  I think maybe we've started forgetting how to do stuff just for fun.  We'll re-learn in a month or so, right?