Building the Dream: Vacation

Just a quick update on the house. Not much has changed this week.

Our building crew is on vacation for one week, so things are sort of at a standstill on the home front.

We do have a meeting on site today with the company that will be installing the pool. Hopefully, the installation will begin next month, as long as we are granted the building permit.

And we are expecting a big delivery on Friday.

I am expecting things to start happening very quickly once the crew is back. This whole process has been quite a test of patience. With our new expected schedule, it will have been a full two years from the time we found the land until the day we move in.  At least the heatwave has finally broken and the last time Eddie spoke to our builder he said that they were finally at a point where enough of the house is under the roof that they can continue to work even if it rains, which will be a big help because we were getting very frustrated with losing time to weather. It still looks a lot like this, although there is more plywood on the front of the house now.

I am on an emotional roller coaster, feeling very excited/grateful/blissfully happy one minute that we are fortunate enough to build such an amazing space for our family and the next minute feeling very frustrated about our family being displaced for almost an entire year. I’m also a little nervous about our finances. We have done the budget a thousand times and on paper, it always works out, but right now it feels like we are just bleeding money.  The money is there, and I know it was reserved for this purpose and we are staying on budget, but watching it all disappear at the same time is more stressful than I thought it would be. 

We also have a little bit of guilt about having the ability to have such a nice space when we recognize that so many people don’t. Eddie says that we just need to recognize it as a blessing and a gift and make sure that we are being hospitable and sharing as much of our space as possible as often as possible, but I still feel guilty, which might be silly, but it is how I feel. 

On a lighter note, while this doesn’t have anything at all to do with the house, it does have to do with building my dream: I have shared with you before that I am working with a publisher to release a children’s book next year. It’s a long process. I signed with them in December. We have worked through all the edits, the promo copy, the author bio, and this week I was finally able to start collaborating with the illustrators, which is super exciting! They had me fill out a long, very detailed questionnaire about my characters and the style that I wanted the illustrations to be. In a few weeks, I will be getting my first preview of the characters. Squeee!!