Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Day 15 - Your Dream House





Well, let's get the gushy stuff out of the way...any home that I live in with my family is my dream house!

Okay, now down to brass tacks...Actually, I'm pretty fortunate. I've got an awesome house. We watched go from a big pile of dirt, to creating our own big piles of dirt. (See picture series below, I'm still figuring out how adding pictures works. I'm not very proficient at it.


Dirt Pile (in the rain) Spring 2013
Foundation and framing ready to go.



Getting close to completion.
Almost done!
I did mention I have two boys (three if you include the Mr.), and there's nothing but dirt all around us, so yeah, it's a dreamy mud pie. :) We bought into the house when Mom was living with us (read back, Mom moved in to our tiny house just before baby boo, who's now 4, was born), it was a perfect set up, and was to have a finished 2 bedroom basement apartment for her. Now it's just the four of us, and the three cats roaming around in it. But I love it! No home is perfect, but we are way better off now in terms of not tripping over one another than our old house.


We have 4 bedrooms, which means both boys have a sizeable room (read can keep a majority of their toys out of main living spaces and aren't fighting with one another) and there is an extra room for all my craft stuff and things! Something I had to give up in the old house between the two additions (babyboo and Mom). The piece de resistance, and what makes it dreamy, is our Master Suite! It takes up the whole back half of the house. There is an ensuite with soaker, jetted tub, a frameless glass shower stall with two shower heads and a two sinks. It's funny, because the other bonus to the house is the main floor powder room which should alleviate my need to run up the stairs when I need to go, but I don't use it. I love my bathroom so much, I run upstairs and rarely use the powder room! LOL!! We also have a walk in closet and room to spare for a love seat. Future improvements will include moving the closet door and installing an electric fire place.
Floor Plan (linked to builders site)


Other dreamy qualities of our home (other than the toilets) include laundry on the second floor. Just outside the Master Suite, is our laundry. Which does mean that frequently there are baskets of unfolded  laundry awaiting the return of the master of the house, but at least I'm not slugging them up 2 or even 3 flights of stairs from the basement. It's divine!

We also opted to pay for a premium lot. We have a 42' wide property that is 200' deep, typically the lots are about 100' deep, half of that is house, so we have not just a double back yard but really, a triple back yard. Lots of room for the boys to burn off some steam. Of course, as mentioned previously, it is just dirt and weeds. They've got 3 more months to give us grass. I would have liked to have had more width, there's only 8 ft between us and the neighbour's house (only one neighbour so far) but what we found is so rare in a new community. The only thing that keeps this from being an absolute dream home, is the amount of property, I would have liked more, had it wider, and maybe even be more remote. But the neighbours so far have been stellar, we are building a nice little community here and I feel like I'm living a dream!

Friday, July 25, 2014

Boys will be boys (Always)



I don't know why, but at an early age I realized I was destined to be a mother of boys. Maybe it was just my secret hope to have boys, their lives seemed so much less complicated than mine as a girl. Maybe it was because I grew up with boys, having two older brothers and living in the country surrounded by other families with boys. I always seemed to gravitate towards guy friends and was a bit of a tomboy growing up. (Although my one brother would lead you to believe I thought myself a princess, I don't think I ever really felt that way. Of course, now he has 3 girls, so he might see my attitudes as different now.)

My wish or dreams, whatever you want to label it as, came true. I am the mom of two boys. Currently, they are 10 and 4. Yup, big age gap, that's a discussion for another post - I wonder why I never blogged when I was ttcing. They are a lot of fun. We still have dolls and talk about princesses. I believe in non gender specific role playing and developing their archetypal feminine attributes. They are also very rough and tumble. We recently moved into a new house, like new as in we watched it being built. We are still waiting on them to complete the grading (lay clean fill) and landscaping (top soil and sod). We've been waiting since Oct. 2013. This spring/summer has been an exercise in patience and I've had to pick my battles. I no longer wash the walls in the front hall/powder room. If I applied a damp cloth one more time, I would be washing the drywall away...sigh...builder grade paint sucks! I should invest in a first aid supply company as I never seem to have enough for all the cuts and scrapes. I'm pretty sure that I've said about a million times this month alone, "Stop beating up your brother." Usually to the youngest, the oldest is a pacifist. I've been sending them outside despite the fact the backyard is a disaster, they have energy that needs to be expended.

Thankfully the 10 yr old is old enough to help with laundry because the 4 yr old loves puddles!
They love it, and I love it! The boys make me happy, I'm definitely in my element. I doubt that I would be any less happy if I'd of had a girl, or two, but my life with boys is exactly what works for me and exactly what I have. I'm happily a mom of two boys. Well, three really. Conversation in the car on my way home with the kids...

Me: "I love you two boys more than any other boys in the whole world!"
Jonah: "But what about Dad?"
Me: "Dad's not a boy, he's a man."
Jonah: "Well, he sure acts like a boy a whole lot."
Me: "Okay then, I love you three boys more than any other boys in the world!"
They keep me entertained. As they say, out of the mouths of babes, and they certainly have mouths on them...where is that volume control button, come on evolution, at least give us that for the first 20 yrs or so!

Maybe I'll tell you more about the SO's unsupervised exploits in a future post!

If you've found me, I once was lost, but now am found? Anyway if you are reading a long, and have snooped through past posts, you will see that I once upon a 2011 started a 30 day blog challenge. I've decided to resurrect this to inspire me to keep writing. I left off on Day 14 out of the 30 Day Challenge. Through my posts you will learn why I left blogging behind. I'm not the kind of person who airs their dirty laundry and just didn't feel like blogging was the appropriate place to put my struggles ...it's been a wild ride these past couple of years. Life is good, always has been and always will be, but there are ups and downs, and when I am down I don't write. Anyway, I'm in a place now where blogging can and will be a part of my world and so to help me stay inspired to write here are the posts you can look forward to reading about:


Day 15 - your dream house
Day 16 - a song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 - an art piece (drawing, sculpture, painting, etc)
Day 18 - my wedding/future wedding/past wedding
Day 19 - a talent of yours
Day 20 - a hobby of yours
Day 21 - a recipe
Day 22 - a website
Day 23 - a youtube video
Day 24 - where you live
Day 25 - your day, in great detail
Day 26 - your week, in great detail
Day 27 - your worst habit
Day 28 - what's in your handbag/purse
Day 29 - hopes, dreams, and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 - a dream for the future

Friday, July 18, 2014

Getting back on the proverbial horse

I fell off. I fell hard. I probably should have been blogging, it might have helped me process everything but I chose silence instead.

One of my favourite visionaries or activists if you will is Mahatma Ghandi, and one of my favourite quotes from him is, "Be the change you want to see in the world." I subscribe to that in many aspects of my life. I am a socially/environmentally conscious person, but I keep failing in one big way - myself. I want to see change in my life, and yet I keep failing at being that change.

So, now is the time to start. Take it all on, be the person I want to be, that I know I am and should be. I'm going to start by writing more. At the very least, monthly, then maybe weekly. I won't get crazy and say daily, although really, that is what I should be doing.

Life will always get in the way. I have learned my lesson. Every time I set out to do something I give myself the excuse that life got in the way. But I'm not going to let the things that life hands be the ability to take over. Otherwise I'll never get back on that fucking horse, and it will run free in the pasture, all the while laughing at my sad ass sitting there in a pile of it's own dung. Been there, done that, not going to let that shit stink up the rest of my life!

So here I am, ready to tell my tales again. I will find my stride and I won't worry if I have a following or not.