Welp. It’s been 5 months since my last post. I won’t bore you with all the boring stuff of the first half of the year in one post. I’ll probably split it into two boring posts. But I think that’s a sign that major house projects are winding down and maybe it’s time to think about archiving this little spot on the web. It’s been great to keep track of everything and create a sort of house journal for this experience. We just don’t have the same churn we did the during the house build and immediately after we moved in. Plenty of ways to fill our time, but not always on showy progress. This post will cover the first three months of 2023 and hopefully I won’t be so late in getting the next few months posted.

The biggest thing we did in January-March was go to New Zealand for 2 weeks over spring break. That meant that March was mostly awash on house stuff or anything that wasn’t trip related. There’s a lot of prep and anxiety to get ready for our first international trip as a family. There were many times were I didn’t think we’d manage it, but we did and it was most excellent and other than the insanely long flight I’d happily go back. But otherwise, here’s a small list of things we did before that trip:

• Our vehicle that we ordered in July came in the first week of January. We were down to a single car for 5 months. Tricky but we made it work with diligent planning and coordination. We had to wait that long b/c of the car market that was just INSANE near the end of the pandemic. Happy to have the freedom to just go and not plan and verify schedules.
• Hung some pictures that I received for Xmas. It’s so nice to spend time on decor and personalization.
• Began some of the final trim work in closets. So weird because no one will see them, but kinda required. And it was slow going that I think we didn’t finish until sometime in April.
• Snorkel practice at the local pool. We almost got the kids scuba certified before we left, but they decided not to and we booked a snorkel activity. We wanted to get some experience before jumping into the ocean and I’m glad we did. It was fun, both at the pool and in the ocean.

Until next time… which hopefully won’t be quite so long. That has a bit more obvious house progress that’s fun to show off.