Its not a sprint, its a marathon… that ends with a sprint.

After all these months of work we’ve still been accelerating into the finish line. With our rental lease up July 31 the pressure has been on to get the house up to spec so we could move in. In anticipation, I took off the last 10 working days of the month, giving me almost two full weeks to finish projects (oh, and actually move all our stuff). All told I’ve burned nearly 70 vacation days in 7 months and will end the year in single digits for the first time since I started working at the University.

The July leveling up post will be going up soon with its enumerated list of accomplishments, but for this post let me just say its been a hell of a ride. Physically we held up surprisingly well working 9 days straight on construction projects and then the 10th day moving furniture. I chalk that up to the months of “training” our bodies have gone through leading up to this. The move itself also went pretty smooth thanks to lots of great help from our friends. To all of you who are watching this blog, thank you from deep in our hearts for all your help and support along the way and for the sweat and toil here at the finish line moving our possessions and helping to clean out the rental place.

I am writing this post sitting on my couch in the home we’ve been dreaming of for decades. Its still part construction site, with an area rug on subflooring and a stack of uninstalled doors leaning against the wall over my shoulder, but I wouldn’t trade it. Truth is Amy and I have lived in a construction site for most of the years we’ve been together. This one is just a little more under construction than usual. Each day it inches closer to the true vision we had in mind. Only now we get to work on it and enjoy it at the same time. I was getting pretty tired of being a renter already, so I think this house will exceed the utility of our last abode pretty soon. Getting a few towel bars and interior doors hung would go a long way toward that. 😉

Look for a healthy list of July accomplishments coming soon, and then a slower, more relaxed pace of development from here on.