Getting up to speed.

Ann says it's rained more than 16 inches since we started construction. That, paired with difficulties with bank draws and the holidays, have made for not much progress on the job site. Here's a photo of what we've got so far:


That picture was taken a week ago, and it looks the same today. You may notice it's a little blurry... I took it from inside the car. What?! It's cold and wet here! (Andy did buy me a pair of work galoshes for Christmas so I can get out there and help build the house in my free time. Ha! Free time! That's funny.) So yeah, those are forms, and they're ready to pour the exterior wall of the foundation when it stops raining for enough days in a row.

Speaking of Christmas, we had a good one, and we hope anyone reading this did as well. I've used up my quota on our flickr site this month, so there will be Christmas photos coming in 2009. (That makes it sound so far off... maybe it's just me. I am still dating checks 2007.) And, right on time as usual, I have our "New Year cards" ready to go out, just need to get around to doing it. Too many things to do, not enough time. It's going to be rough when I go back to work full time. (Nothing's for certain yet, but it will happen sometime in 2009.)

the latest.

There are more adorable photos of me on my flickr site.


We are now a two-car family. We bought this '03 Toyota Rav4 from a nice guy here in Eureka. It was a deal!


This is the best built pump house ever. We know this is an indication of building to come, and we are thrilled for what this means for the rest of our house. We're meeting with a couple of the subcontractors tomorrow to discuss things. We anticipate them starting the septic system tomorrow, too.


I went walking with my co-worker, Heidi, last week and captured this with my cell phone. Now imagine it looking 1,000 times more awesome in real life. We walked a few yards further and a flock of little shorebirds flew right at us, split around us and then reconvened just past us. It was so cool to hear them chirping and flapping their wings as they realized we were standing there in their path.

Ground has been broken!

Nothing says "construction zone" like orange fencing. (Hooray! We have a construction zone!)


The full length of our driveway was scraped and covered with gravel on Monday, Nov. 17, 2008.


This is the end of the driveway, and the dirt rectangle is where the house will go.


On Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008 Adam and Dustin (our general contractors) built the concrete forms for our pump house/tool shed. The first concrete on the job site was poured on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2008.


Ava, the foreman on the job, makes sure they're completing the work properly.


Looks good to me...


Adam's dog, Koa, and the cow next door decide that good fences really do make good neighbors.

More to come as progress is made!

7 months.

It's hard to believe, but Ava is already 7 months old. The other photos are me at six months and Andy at 9.5 months. What a bunch of cute kids.

Halloween 2008.

October 31, 2008. Halloween. A good day to sign your life away to the bank? We hope so.

We did it. We now have a mortgage. We went to the bank with our adorable ladybug and signed all the papers. We'll start construction as soon as it stops raining... there's supposed to be a break in the weather sometime next week. Forgive me for not being more excited, but I'm actually terrified. With all of the awful things that are happening with the economy right now, I can't help but worry.


Halloween evening, we went trick-or-treating on the Plaza. We didn't collect any candy because we already had too much at home. We dressed Ava as Flava Flav from Public Enemy, and we were two S1Ws, lesser-known members of the same 80s rap group. Not many people got our costumes, but that's okay. We got plenty of looks anyway. Here are our inspiration photos:


We had a good time showing off "Ava Flav." There are more photos of us and some of our friends on our flickr site. (Click the animated rectangle on the right.)

100th percentile for cuteness.

This morning was Ava's 6-1/2 month well baby checkup. Excuse me, she feels like typing... I must oblige or feel her wrath:
qwzlhh,m nyh v a MNJK KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKJZKESIU87 JMHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRYRDF C B.

Okay that's enough.

She's over the 100th percentile foe height, at the 100th percentile for head circumference and 90th for weight. She's a big girl for her age, but since it's all proportional, she's all good.

As far as percentiles go, I've had it explained to me like this. Someone took a random sampling of 100 female babies every month for X months. They made graphs of the height, weight and head circumference data. 0 was the smallest baby, 100 was the largest. So, in the case of height, Ava would be taller than all 100 other 6-month-old baby girls.

We're glad she's healthy. Period.

Saying goodbye.

Just thinking about what I'm going to say is causing me to tear up and see things all blurry. Ugh. My dad passed away on October 14, 2008. It was much more sudden than any of us expected. We all knew he had been sick for about six months, but the final decline only took a day or two.

Vasculitis is a chronic condition, and he was going to battle flare-ups for the rest of his life. On his third flare-up battle, he got a massive infection and it basically shut everything down. He was in bad shape at the very end and we made it to his bedside just in time to shut off the life support machines. It was awful to see him in that condition—the ventilator artificially pumping his lungs full of air—it was just his body at that point, not my dad.

I think I get most upset when I think of all the things that he won't get to do with Ava. He was never comfortable around her as a baby—during their visit in July we had to force him to sit down and hold her. Make no mistake, he thought she was an angel, I think he was just nervous about hurting her or not keeping her content. As I look back on my relationship with my dad, it was the years between toddler and kindergarten that I remember most fondly. We would roughhouse and sing songs and laugh a lot. I was beyond the fragile baby stage and too young for school, maybe things were just so much more innocent at that stage. After that though, Dad worked a lot. It seemed like he was only there for us financially; family vacations consisted of Mom, me and Bob, and usually included a soccer tournament. Anyway, I'm not upset about my own relationship with him... it's that Ava is turning into a little person, and my dad is missing it.

Just a quickie

Ava's second tooth popped through on Saturday.
Her 6 month birthday was yesterday and we celebrated by driving 1.75 hours each way to our nearest Home Depot to price stuff for our house.
My dad is doing worse, so we might be headed down to the Bay Area later this week.

Happy Monday!

The ramblings of an insomniac.

Ava is cutting her second tooth. It made the hours at home pretty interesting yesterday. She always seems to behave better when we're out; I think it's because she gets distracted by all the new things happening around her. At home, she just gets bored with me and her toys. Two days ago, my back pain started again, the same back pain that put me out of commission and started early labor a month before Ava was born. It's a bit better now, but it is still difficult to lug around a 17-pound teething 6-month old. (Yes! She'll be 6 months old on Sunday!!!)

My dad is back in the hospital again. This is the third time since Ava was born. They say he's got vasculitis, but he's not responding to the typical vasculitis treatment: chemo. (Vasculitis is not a cancer, but chemo is the recommended treatment.) Apparently it's a chronic condition and he'll have to deal with flare-ups until it eventually gets him. It has now caused a pulmonary embolism--a blood clot in the lung--which could move and cause stroke, heart attack, etc. They have put him on blood thinners and expect to do some kind of surgery in a few days. I don't watch the show "House," but I feel like my dad's case may be perfect for an episode plot.

We got the appraisal for our project back earlier this week... it came back $35,000 to $100,000 less than we thought it might appraise for. It just figures that our construction project would be appraised on the worst financial week since the Great Depression. Anyway, we found a way of scraping $30,000 of stuff from our construction costs, and that may make things a bit better. Still, our monthly payments may be too high and the bank may decide to not give us anything. If we wait until Spring to start this, could things be worse? If they do get better, could they be significantly better or will we have wasted another 6 months? It's such a game and I'm really tired of playing it.

I'm really tired in general, but I can't sleep. My back hurts, my allergies are giving me problems, I can't stop thinking about my dad, SIDS, illegal street races, the dumb song playing over and over in my head, PG&E bills, our house, the cardigan I'm crocheting for Ava and 37 other craft projects in the works... I could go on...

First tooth!

At 5 months and 6 days old, Ava has cut her first tooth. It's the bottom front left one, and it came in without too much of a problem. We dealt with daily fussiness and discomfort with her gas, and this tooth hasn't been much worse than that.

Well, we're on our way out the door... Headed down to the Bay Area again for another wedding. I'll have more to post when we get back, I'm sure.
:)

a fresh new look

This is my new haircut. Andy says it reminds him of my hair when we first started dating.

You may notice the blog has a new look, too. I felt that the old look was hard to read and it was difficult to tell when one post ended and the next began. I hope it doesn't throw you off too much. :)

We applied for our loan yesterday. (sob sob)

If we had been able to build this house 2 years ago, it probably would have cost $100,000 less. Since we started the whole process, materials costs have gone way up and property values have dropped; not a good combination when building a house.

As the bank lady was looking through all of our numbers, she didn't have a really positive look on her face. I knew that the number that we gave her for the estimated cost of building the house was higher than we expected (much higher, in fact) but she said she'd have the people upstairs look at it and see if they'd recommend it for approval. Thank goodness we have "premium" credit scores and hardly any debt... if we had any debt besides the home loan, we'd be over the 55% debt to income ratio, and they wouldn't approve the loan. Then we'd really be back at square one.

As it is, we're looking at areas to cut back our estimated construction costs. We can't really cut back the major costs, such as all the work for the foundation, septic and water systems and I'm not willing to sacrifice the radiant heating system. It looks like we'll have to tighten our belts in places like cabinetry, tile, trim and appliances.

We'll figure it out even if we have to live in an unpainted (but warm and dry) shell of a house for awhile.

On turning 30...

About 2 years ago, it seemed to me that just about every milestone birthday had some traditional event that went with it:
16= sweet sixteen party
18= buy yourself a lottery ticket
21= go out drinking
25= rent a car without paying extra fees
...but 30 was totally lacking. I figure that's mostly due to the fact that by the time most people turn 30 they are married with kids and partying is kind of out of the question. Last week I thought about how different my 30th birthday celebration was going to be from some of my other friends. They had adult dinners at fancy restaurants and I had friends over for a casual kid-friendly barbecue. Not that either party is better than the other, they're just different. (Ha. If our regular gang of friends were to go out for an adult dinner at a nice restaurant, we'd employ just about every babysitter in Humboldt County.)

I needed some sort of rite of passage activity, so I decided to chop my hair off and donate it. I've done it before, and I'm not particularly attached to my hair, so I think I'll do it every 10 years on my birthday. I don't have any pics of the new 'do yet, but I'll post one soon.

30's not so bad. I've decided to start wearing makeup. (We'll see how long that lasts!)

Our trip to the Mad River Fish Hatchery in Blue Lake.

These pics are from our trip to the Mad River Fish Hatchery in Blue Lake. I guess it wasn't the right time of year for little fishies to be in the long "tanks" they've got out there because not only were there no fish, but there was hardly any water in them either. No matter, it was a beautiful day and we were pretty much there to enjoy the sunshine and the river anyway. By "we" I mean myself, Ava, Marina and her two kids, Owen and Ruby.
The weather was ideal... we found a warm spot in the shade on a gravel bar and just hung out. Owen played with his lizards and caught a strange bug in the water and Ruby ate any rocks, leaves and twigs within grabbing distance. Ava enjoyed the fresh air and didn't mind standing in the river with my help.

lots of posts coming your way!

I have a few different things to post about, and I'm going to try to get them all done this evening. They'll probably all be short and sweet. Here's a link to more pics of Ava on our flickr site.

4-1/2 months!

Ava had her 4-1/2 month well-baby checkup on Thursday. As you can see from the chart above, she's growing like a weed! She's literally off the charts in height, which would explain why she's wearing 9 month size onesies (or any other clothes that go over her shoulders and snap at the crotch).

OMG! We have an address!

One of these days, we'll live at 40 Buckley Road. (But don't try to send us anything there, we won't get mail delivery. We'll announce our P.O. Box number out there when we get one.)

We're still collecting estimates from the subcontractors so we can give the bank an idea of how much money we'll need for the loan. Once the loan goes through, we can start building! I'm trying to not get too excited... a lot of things still have to go right for us to start building before October 15. October 15 is when the county declares the rainy season has begun, and that can mean all kinds of expensive problems for construction.

Ava's first Bay Area visit

This video pretty much sums it up... Ava talked to her goat and we spent a lot of time in the car. Pretty much every time Ava woke up she was in a new place, meeting new people. It was a lot to ask of a 4-month old and she ended up getting a snarfly runny nose.


We drove down to the Bay Area on Wednesday. It was incredibly hot. It took 7 hours this time; it normally takes us 5-1/2 to 6 hours. We had dinner with the Parodis as soon as we got there, then visited my dad in the hospital. (The Parodis' 2-month old daughter is SO cute and mellow! Her uncle made her a onesie that says "James Brown is my godfather" on it. Adorable!) Ava didn't nap between 5 and 11 p.m. so she was super tired and super cranky by the time we made it back to my parents' house. She then proceeded to sleep 7 hours straight, which made us pretty nervous since we're used to only 3 hour stretches.


Thursday morning we visited my dad at the hospital, then met Janessa and her 2-month old daughter, Jenna, in Walnut Creek for lunch. We had a diaper blowout (all over Ava and me) and then a meltdown at the restaurant. That was not fun. Then we went shopping at Whole Foods and then back to my folks' house. Jenna is a doll, despite being fussy due to colic and reflux. Janessa is a great mom and has the patience of a saint. :) That evening we had the Horvaths over for dinner, and their almost-2-year old son, Julian, is a ball of energy. It was nice to make dinner, visit with them and not have to worry about going anywhere for the evening.

On Friday, we took Andy to the BART station so he could get to SF State in order to take an exam to get back into the graduate program there. Then my mom and I visited my dad in the hospital. (Of course Ava was there, too. She went everywhere I went.) He received 2 doses of chemo that day. Then Mom and I went shopping at Macy's to find a dress for Jules' wedding. None of my old dresses fit quite right anymore, even though I have reached my pre-pregnancy weight. I guess the weight has just rearranged itself. Then we picked Andy up at the BART station, got food from Los Panchos (mmm!) and went over to Heidi's house for dinner. It was nice to see Heids and her dogs, Madison and Reuss, but we're sorry we missed her husband, Mike, who was out of town.



Saturday morning found us driving again, this time to Fremont to see Andy's family. It was his Grandma Pauline's 90th birthday, so we had a little party at her retirement village. People in attendance included Roger and Louise (Andy's uncle and aunt), their daughter-in-law, Miho and her 3-year old daughter, Kiarra. Their son Matthew was there, but their son Randy was in San Diego (thanks to the Navy) and daughter Darcy had a wedding to attend. They all had plans to drive to San Diego to see Randy the following day. After that birthday party, we drove over the bay to see my family in San Mateo. At Mary Ellen's condo, we celebrated Rich's 60th birthday with those two and Marcia and Joanne, all of who are my dad's cousins. We gave my mom a call from there and found out that my dad had been discharged from the hospital--good news I guess. It seemed silly for him to be discharged so soon after 2 doses of chemo, but hey, I'm not his doctor. Then we drove to Mountain View, where we had dinner and spent the night with my friend Elizabeth, her husband, Brian and their 19- (or so) month old daughter, Adriana. She's as sharp as a tack and has a pretty wide vocabulary in sign language.




Sunday morning we drove back to my parents' house in Martinez. Then we drove across town to see my Grandma Bev's best friend, Ruth. She's the closest thing Ava has to a great-grandparent on my side of the family. Then we went to a different part of Martinez to see my brother's new house. It's a big newer house and he has 3 roommates to help him with the mortgage. After Bob's house, we drove home to get ready for Jules and Sean's wedding, which was later that evening. For some reason, I had it in my head that the wedding started at 6:30... it actually started at 6. Had it started at 6:30, we would have been there in plenty of time, but as it was, we just barely made it as Jules and her parents were walking in. We took a seat near the back once the processional was over. Good thing we made it when we did, because the whole ceremony lasted about 5 minutes. During the reception I was able to catch up with some junior high/high school friends: Sara Bonner, Steve Cox, Matt Smart, Mike Davis and Allie Rostkowski. That was nice. We left early because of Miss Ava's bedtime... in our childless days, we would have stayed and cut a rug all night.




On Monday, we packed up and left my folks' house a little before noon. We stopped at Los Panchos again for lunch, and ran into an old junior high/high school friend there: Erika Raun-Linde. Then we headed north. It took us NINE hours to get home! Part of the reason it took so long was we were stopped for construction in Laytonville for at least 45 minutes. Ava screamed all the way home from Scotia. (That's usually a 45 minute drive without stopping.) We stopped often to try to soothe her, but nothing worked. It was a nightmare. We finally made it home around 9 p.m. Halfway through Eureka we stopped to quell Ava's shrieking. I walked her for a few blocks, and Andy called our friend Sara then. She came over while I was putting Ava to bed after we had made it home, and she brought tasty chocolate-mint ice cream sandwiches. That was our dinner that night.


All in all, it was a good extended weekend. I'm not calling it a vacation because no part of this trip resembled a vacation except for the fact that we weren't at work. There were some trying times, but I'm glad we got to introduce Ava to friends and relatives. I don't know when we'll do it again... maybe on a smaller scale next time. A few more pictures can be found on our flickr site.

photos from our weekend of fun!

This will be a short post. Lots of stress surrounding the house and family lately. More than usual--I think I'm just about at my limit.

This last weekend, we attended the Humboldt County Fair and took a cruise on Humboldt Bay on the oldest continually running boat in the U.S.: the Madaket. (It also has the smallest licensed bar in the state.) Photos can be found here.

August 1st: a good day.

August 1, 2007: The first faint pink line appears on a home pregnancy test. A good day.


August 1, 2008: We go to the offices of First American Title company where Art & Ann sign over the deed for Parcel 2 to Andy. Then we head up to the County Recorder's office, and right at 10 a.m., the lot gets recorded in Andy's name. Next, we go to the bank and, amazingly, the lady we had talked to before had 15 free minutes to talk to us again and really get our loan process started. Another good day.



Found at the Hum. Co. Recorder's office: a beautiful view, gorgeous weather and REALLY old maps.

We'll see what August 1, 2009 holds in store. (Hopefully we'll be living in our new house by then!)

Not much actual jumping happening yet...

...but she does like to bop around and make the battery operated part light up and make sound. Andy and I enjoyed a quiet Christmas last year and realized it would probably be our last for a very long time.

Well, this was my first attempt at editing video and then posting it. Even though it views the right way up on our computer, it loaded sideways for the blog. This time, tilt your head to the left and I'll remember to not turn the camera when I'm shooting video next time. :)

New photos and a house update.

A few new photos on our flickr site. Ava's first Annie & Mary Day, bouncy swing and hanging out with Grandma.

The house update is this: tomorrow morning Art & Ann sign the deed for Parcel 2 over to Andy. Then we take that new deed to the County Recorder's office to be re-recorded in Andy's name rather than Art & Ann's. Hopefully, that will only take a few days, and we can take the new deed to the bank next week and get a loan. Who knows how long it will take to get a loan approved, but as soon as it is, we should be able to pull our building permits and start construction. That's right! It's going to happen this year! After FIVE AND A HALF YEARS of just trying to split the lot, it's finally coming to completion. We could be living in beautiful Blue Lake by this time next year! (There's still a part of me that doesn't want to get excited about this yet, after having been through so many ups and downs already. We're SO close, I don't want to get crushed again.)

R.I.P. Toof

He wasn't the one we expected to go belly up first, but oh well. He was a good fish, even if he was mean. He was a big fish in a little fish's body and beat up on the bigger fish in the tank. We're not sure what killed him. (Don't tell the other two fish, but we're kind of waiting for them all to die so we won't have to deal with the tanks anymore.) There's just not much time for fish care when you're changing diapers, feeding and getting spat up on all the time.
(BTW, that's not Toof in the picture, but it looks just like him. I don't know who the guy in the background is.)

I think she's part cat.

Ava DOES NOT like the water. Last night we took a dip in the Dronks' warm hot tub, and you can see the result above. I bought that adorable swimsuit while I was still pregnant, and had to make sure Ava wore it before outgrowing it. Unfortunately, I don't think she'll be wearing it again.

P.S.- Bath time at our house is usually just as unpleasant. She is fine as soon as she isn't touching the water anymore. Poor girl. She'll grow out of it.