Busy Hands Homestead

At this moment Adam is driving across town with a door strapped to the top of our tiny car. We bought this door at Home ReSource a while ago, but as my house plan has been developing, it turns out that the door handle is on the wrong side and opens out rather than in...  oh. the details. This is the wrong door..  the new door has identical carving except that the holes for the door handle and lock are on the opposite edge.   This door is intended to be our entry door someday.   But while were were digging through the stacks of doors, I found an identical door.  Well, it is almost identical - except for one important feature: It has an opposite swing and is therefore more ideal in the grand scheme of what our house will become. The new door as a few more dings and scratches so we are exchanging it for the door as well as handles and a dead bolt.  Great trade, right? Our stockpile is up to: 9 windows 4 doors (with some hardware pieced together...

Some days are just hard: full of worry and stress. Sometimes, those days full of worry and stress happen to coincide with important days - Sylvan's birthday - to be precise.   We opened Sylvan's first birthday present before breakfast.   Slam dunk!  Adam fixed us all french toast and then we mulled over what to do.  I had not planned our usual birthday pot luck because, well, it was Thursday and Adam was supposed to be working until five and I had class at six.  My plan had been that we would have cake between Adam's work and my ceramic class, but our was wide open, too open, but we were going to make the best of the day.  We picked up and headed downtown to take dizzying ride after ride on the carousel.  When we ran out of tokens we strolled on.   We ducked into Taco Del Sol (you know it is a celebration when the Wests actually eat out), where both Sylvan and Ivory love the bean and cheese burritos. ...

"Boat, hand, x, o,"  she loudly declares, first with both eyes, then covering one and the other. "O, x, boat, hand", she proudly states as the nurse points to each shape on the kinder garden eye chart.  We are on our way out of the doctor's office, the eye chart being the last stop before Ivory's four year old well child visit is over.  I stand next to her, trying hard not to giggle at her earnest approach to reading the symbols.  It is hard to believe that my know-it-all, suddenly tall, with hair almost touching her bottom, reading books to me little girl has been in my life such a short time. Ivory, so excited to ride the city buses for the first time.  I was the last to know I was pregnant, and I have to admit, terrified.  Every day I rode my bike past the hospital, twice, once on the way to campus and once on the way home.  My heart would start pounding and twice a day I experienced what bordered on a panic attack.  I did prenatal yoga, ...