s/v Lark

A Year of Change

This has been a year of big changes!

First with deciding to set our goals on a new adventure, then fixing up and selling the house (a huge project). Now we are potty training Lorelei. We are currently on day 12, and she is doing really really well! We are still reminding her regularly but she is having very few accidents. I see the light, and I feel that soon I will not be changing diapers anymore. I know this sounds crazy, but I'm actually a little sad...it is a big step away from babyhood.

Now both Jacob and I have started new jobs. For me, this is the first time I have worked out of the home in over 5 years. It is a part-time job, and I'm feeling very lucky to have the best of both worlds. I still get to spend lots of time with my girls, but it feels nice to work again!

Oh, and Jacob has shaved all his facial hair for the first time in 7 years!

What's next?

Here are a few pictures I have been meaning to post:

Audrey Egg hunting on Easter

Lorelei egg hunting

Spending Easter with my cousin Zoe and my grandmother

my girls at the zoo

4/2

D-12 days until listing.

Experiments with spray-painting lighting and tub fixtures to change their finish yielded positive results today. Looks like we'll be able to save a few bucks there.

Not much else to report for today.

55 down, 29 to go, at 229.0.

4/1

For April Fool's this year, my girls decided on a destroying-the-carpet theme. Between doing lesson 91 and a lesson out of the Kumon addition book, and some stager-directed rearranging, I spent most of the day applying Resolve. A little urine here, a patch of barf there, 8 ounces of purple grape juice over here, and some cherry red chap stick over in the next room, just to make it extra fun. First world problems...

3/31

Well, not our most productive weekend in terms of preparing for this sale, but we made some good headway on clearing out and cleaning up per our stager's guidance.

Audrey continues to crank through these TYCTR lessons. She read us lesson 91 this morning.

We are getting lots of inspiration from South from Alaska.

3/whatever

Struggling... Audrey forges ahead with lessons, while I've come down with whatever the rest have had. No idea how we will have the house ready in time to list.

3/27

Amazing how much junk can accumulate in 1800 square feet. We keep hauling away loads of stuff and I keep pulling out more loads of stuff. Here's what I pulled out this evening:

And here's the state of the garage:

It's actually way better than it was, but I think I may have been premature in my declaration of park-ability. Well, we'll continue putting one foot in front of the other. Hopefully we'll be ready when our listing date arrives.

Audrey handily dispatched lesson 88 and a lesson from our Kumon addition book. Lorelei did a few lessons from her Kumon cutting book. Not sure what the educational value of it is, but who doesn't love cutting?

231

3/26

Audrey did a nice job with lesson 86 today. Yesterday, she wrote down her first original sentence: "Yer the gratist mom."

Lorelei made it through her first day without a potty accident. That's a big first. It will certainly help with selling the house not to have a smelly diaper pail in her room.

We got a bunch of the decor items that the staging consultant recommended. I've often thought how strange it is to fix up a house only when you're trying to leave it. So of course I wanted to see what that was like.

I dropped off 5 boxes of old papers at the transfer station that we had cleared out of the office this weekend and 90 gallons (in 3 30 gallon trash bags) of other junk from the garage. April also took 5 boxes of old kid stuff down the hill. Every box and bag we get rid of feels like a weight off of my shoulders. It makes me think of those boats at Cabo which were able to abandon their ground tackle and get away relatively unscathed.

230.3

3/25

Audrey did lesson 86 and and a bunch of simple addition lessons.

We finally completely unloaded all the too-small kid clothes. All the books we're unloading will go tomorrow, and 8 boxes of old papers to the recycle bin.

232.9

3/24

We did it. Almost. The garage will be park-able once we sell, donate, and throw out the contents of those respective pile. That was pretty exhausting. We also plowed through most oh what remained in the office which just boxes of miscellany

Audrey did lesson 85 in TYCTR and lessons 3, 4, and 5 in our Kumon Simple Addition book.

232.5

3/23

Audrey did lessons 83, 84 and 85 in the last couple days, and has been reading me some Frog and Toad. We also started our Kumon simple addition book.

April and I made good progress on the final office clean-up. We also did a purge of the kitchen cabinets so they're looking a lot nicer now. Tomorrow, we will get the garage to 2-car parkability.

230.5

3/21

Audrey did a great job with lesson 82.

I finished Vigor's Things I Wish I'd Known today. Lots of great info in that one. We'll definitely take that one with us on the boat. Thanks Mom!

Now for a little Mike and Alissa.

230.7

3/20

I have really been struggling to keep up my daily accountability to the blog. I'll get back on the horse...

But anyway. Audrey continues to make great progress on TYCTRI100L. She blew through lesson 82 this evening.

We've gotten Mike and Alisa through the Marquesas and into the Tuamotus. He's a really good writer. Really interesting new posts from him recently on thelifegalactic.blogspot.com.

229.3

3/17

We spent 4 hours in the garage purging. Man, does that feel good. Some of it was a little emotional too, but it sure feels nice to have it done.

Audrey did very well with lesson 79. 20 more lessons to go! Next I think we'll try some number games. We have these nice little Kumon books for that.

234.1

Letting Go

Lorelei wearing her 1st Christmas dress

I'm way too sentimental. We have been cleaning up and trying to get the house ready. Today we tackled the garage which included 5 or 6 large 30 gallon bags (or 150 gallons) full of kids clothes. We have been debating what to do with them for over a year...sell on craigslist, consign, donate. My goal was always to make some money from them in order to help finance our new adventure, so today I tried consignment. I loaded up the bags and drove down to Boulder, only to find out that our local kids consignment store does not accept consignment on Sundays. Next stop, Arvada. After lugging in all the bags, waiting over an hour for them to go through them all, they took about 1/4 of one bag. Leaving behind some really cute summer stuff from name brand stores because they were in small sizes! The whole process was so stressful for me. Even though I wanted to make some money, I felt like I would throw-up when they decided to take Lorelei's 1st Christmas dress. I'm so attached to those tiny little clothes, and the memories they hold. And to top it all off, I think I pulled a muscle in my shoulder hauling all of those bags. The thought of doing it all again tomorrow in Boulder sounds miserable so I think I will just donate the rest to the Nederland Community Closet. Hopefully it will be like ripping off the band-aid, and at least it will go to the community I love.

The purging is going well otherwise though. As Jacob mentioned, we really reduced the amount of STUFF in Audrey's room! It is so nice in there now, I don't know how we lived with it before.

Some photos from the last couple weeks that I have been meaning to post:

Audrey at her Mermaid swimming pool 5th birthday party

reading one of her birthday cards

Lorelei and Nani at the party

Lorelei with Grampsy

making a Build-a-Bear for her birthday

Everyone helping Grampsy re-level the dishwasher after tiling

Grampsy installing our new window sill

mountain climbing

mud-puddle splashing

tree hugger

shoveling our spring snow after dance class

3/16

We cleaned the ever-loving stuff out of Audrey's room. It took all day long, but it's finally really show-able.

We also got the last of the monstrosities down from the top floor.

Audrey read lesson 78 and a Curious George story.

232.7

3/14

Audrey and I struggled with lesson 78 this evening. I'm observing a definite impact of the time of day at which we attempt the lesson. We do much better with the lessons early in the morning, when we are both well-rested.

233.6

3/13

I finished up the last of the kitchen tiles this evening.

231.9

3/12

We said goodbye to Len today. He was a huge help.

Here's everything that got done during his visit: installed the overhead light in the kitchen; replaced the kitchen floor; cleaned out the fridge; installed a window-sill over the kitchen sink; built a mudroom bench and shelves; installed a bi-fold door on the upstairs bathroom; replaced bi-fold doors on the laundry room; and moved out the monstrosity, the chintzy shoe-racks, the baker's rack, and the plastic tupperware drawers.

As of this morning, I have finally lost 50 pounds from my high weight of 284.

233.6

3/11

We got the kitchen all put back together, mostly. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get the time to post pics and check off all the items we completed during Len's stay.

234.6

3/10

Yet another big day for flooring in the kitchen. Getting close...

235.2

3/9

Another big flooring day -- underlayment, screws every 4 inches, and primer everywhere.

235.2

3/8

We spent pretty much the entire day working on 100 square feet of kitchen floor. We're about a third done with it. Turns out flooring is kinda labor-intensive.

Audrey read her first new story in normal orthography. The last couple were repeats of stories we'd read previously with Siegfried's fancy letters. It went surprisingly well, though a bit of a struggle at times.

The hardest part of this whole learning to read thing for me is how she can read a word perfectly the first time she sees it and then struggle with it in the next line. I guess it's just part of the process. But literally today there was a sentence with "far, far" and the second "far" was really challenging, while the first didn't give her a second's hesitation. Crazy.

I might be a believer in un-schooling. Since about lesson 20 I've abandoned pushing Audrey on this thing in any way. We only do it if she chooses to when I invite her to, and I always offer that we can set it aside for the moment if she gets really frustrated, but she almost always chooses to push through.

235.2

Memories

I helped my dad rip out our kitchen floor this morning. It brought back lots of good memories of helping my dad on job-sites as a kid.

3/7

Len finished up the mudroom bench and shelves. They look really great. Len and April got the fridge really nicely cleaned up. We got the new bi-fold door in on the upstairs bathroom. We also got rid of those chintzy shoe racks. I had Nick the plumber in to look at the upstairs shower and he said he'd do the job for $50 plus parts. And he'll also help me with hauling away refuse with his truck for $50. So good deals, I think

Tomorrow we'll work on the new window sill; replacing the downstairs medicine cabinet; replacing the laundry room bi-folds; and replacing the kitchen flooring. The garage is getting really chaotic at this point with 17 projects in varying stages of completed-ness and a million things we've moved out but not decided what to do with.

Audrey did great on lesson 76.

235.6

3/6

Man I'm struggling to stay on the wagon. Must ... blog ....

I've got my neighbor Nick the plumber coming tomorrow evening to take a look at these crazy shower fixtures we're trying to remove. No screws, no holes, no nothing.

I'm also going to try to talk him into renting his truck a few weeks from now do I can haul away demo refuse from all these projects.

Len's got a bunch of new stuff varnished up beautifully and ready to install: window sill for the kitchen; mud room bench seat and shelves; bi-fold door for upstairs bathroom; assorted other pieces.

235.4

Birthday Week

We have been so busy with getting this house ready to sell! We are doing lots of work boxing up, de-cluttering, and small maintenance projects (very well documented in Jacob's blog posts :). Also, we have been getting prices on painting, carpeting, and handyman projects. My dad is in town again (Yeah!) and helping with some other big projects, like our mud-room, doors, and kitchen floor.

Yesterday we had a stager come in and give us lots of helpful tips on making this house sellable. I'm excited to post some before and after photos of the house once we put her ideas in place.

One big thing on the shopping list is going to be art work. She wants us to have one or two pieces of framed art in each room. I asked if she thought my paint and sip art would work, and she said no. Oh well.

the new shelves for the mud room. I'm so excited about the pretty trim!

On top of all this housework, we are in the midst of Audrey's birthday week. Before the week began we brainstormed all of her favorite things, and we are trying to fit them all in. On Sunday she went skiing with Jacob and had hot chocolate, so that is one thing checked off her list. We already went for a fancy breakfast out where she was allowed to order fancy herbal tea and put in sugar and cream, so that is another check off the list. We are still going to go Build-A-Bear this week (Lorelei did one for her birthday, and Audrey has been waiting patiently since November for her turn), eat at Benihana, and the grand finale will be her swimming pool mermaid party with her friends. Oh, and she also requested that we make ice-cream cone cupcakes for her school party again this year. It seems like a lot when I write it all down….I really do love birthdays though, so it is fun for me to try and make if really fun for her. Also, with Grampsy in town the birthday stuff is even more special and exciting!

riding the Indian Peaks lift with Daddy

making cupcakes for her friends at dance and school

3/4

I gave notice at work today to start a new gig. The new job should be a little more travel-friendly so we'll see how that goes.

Len made great progress on the new mudroom bench.

Audrey did the first half of lesson 76

236.7

3/3

April and Len picked up new bi-fold doors for the laundry room and upstairs bathroom. I stained the one for the bathroom today. Len installed the new kitchen light and started building the mudroom bench, which is going to be great, and we moved out the monstrosity.

Audrey did lesson 75 this morning. It was our first story with normal type, and she didn't miss a beat.

238

3/2

We had another realtor up today and found her much more to our liking. Pretty sure she's the one.

I managed to replace one faceplate.

Len has arrived so now we'll start getting things done for real.

Audrey did the first part of lesson 74.

238.

3/1

Audrey did great with lesson 73. Next lesson is regular orthography!

We spent some time organizing our task cards and planning for the best ways to use Len's help while he's here for the next 10 days. Hopefully we'll be able to make good progress on replacing the bi-fold doors on the laundry room and upstairs bathroom; adding a little bench and shelves to the mudroom; repairing the busted drawers in the kitchen; putting up the lights in the garage; adding pantry storage; and possibly replacing the flooring in the kitchen and bathrooms.

234.9

2/28

I let it get too late for coherent sentences.

Painting contractors, lesson 72, and South from Alaska today.

238.

2/27

I got the china cabinet emptied out today. Tomorrow, it and our second-to-last bookcase will go out to the garage.

Audrey did an awesome job with lesson 72. We're excited to make the switch to normal orthography in lesson 74.

We've got Mike, Alisa, and Elias almost down to La Paz in South from Alaska.

235.9

2/26

I took down most of the infamous pegs this evening.

I had a doc appt today and had BP of 112/78, even with the white coat right there. I may be having the fight of my life with the upper 230s, but I'm winning on the BP front. Hooray for not having heart attacks on passage!

238.4

2/whatever today is

We had another realtor in as a matter of due diligence. She was a huge downer.

2/24

We took today off of house selling.

Audrey did lesson 70.

2/23

I finally got all the grout sealer cleaned up in the kitchen. I also sealed all the new grout in the shower. I got my wardrobe thinned out sufficiently to fit everything in a dresser and a closet, and I repaired the closet bar in what is now my closet.

Audrey did a great job on lesson 70.

234.8

2/22

We got a call from a realtor for someone who wants to have a look at the house. Commence scrambling...

235.2

2/21

We made good progress on emptying some furniture today. I also paid my dues in tile cleaning.

I think we may have seen the error of our ways on the FSBO thing. You still probably have to pay the buyer's agent their 3%, then the attorney is 1%, then the MLS listing is several hundred dollars, plus whatever other marketing expenses we'd incur. Our prospective agent only charges 2% in the first place, so in the end I think we'd be saving ourselves something like .75%. So we'll just go for it I think.

I finally broke through 237 and got to 236.6 this morning.

2/20

I figured out how to clean that grout sealer from the tiles. It's not too hard, but does take some elbow grease. Like many boat projects! I got about 1/4 of the backsplashes done. The shower's going to be a real treat.

I also installed all the missing drawer and cabinet pulls in the kitchen.

Slow but steady wins the race, as Dad always told me, and as I was telling Audrey the other day.

Speaking of which, she did beautifully with lesson 69 this morning.

Now for a chapter of South from Alaska...

237.0

2/19

So our neighbor two doors down has just listed. That's a pretty good comp. We'll be very interested to see what happens there.

That darn grout sealer is pretty tricky to clean off the tiles afterward.

237.3

2/18

I got the kitchen grout all sealed, the window trim back up, sorta, removed the last of the baby gates, and all the baby locks on the cabinets.

I also did some pricing research with some comps. It's really weird the way things are priced right now. Big beautiful houses are cheap; little ones are expensive. Fortunately for us, ours is little. Hopefully things will be better sorted out in a few weeks.

Audrey did a great job with lesson 68.

239.4

2/17

I got all the tile caulking done. Audrey did lesson 67. I compiled another exhaustive list of tasks to prepare the house for sale and sell it. Again.

I bounced off of 237 again. I will break through it no matter what.

239.2

2/15

I didn't get to do much toward the goal today, but did do a bit more reading on FSBO on the bus today.

I'm infatuated with a beautiful old boat these past couple days -- a 47 foot Ted Brewer ketch from 1975. I know it's an awful lot of boat to handle but she's sure a beauty...

238.5

2/14

I got a book on selling your house and read about a third of it last night. I can't remember the title at the moment, but I'm really happy with it. It's got lots of good concrete guidance on how to do this. I believe it will be a great help.

I need to get back to the tile project and wrap up all the loose ends with that, hopefully I can get it all done this weekend.

237.7

2/13

We took a night off housework tonight, but Audrey did a nice job with lesson 65 today and I got to spend some good time on the bus today reviewing Pat's swing trading strategies.

239.4

Today is the groutest

Ok we finally finished that grout job. That'll really take it out of you.

Oh for crying grout loud

OK, that was bad, I know. Not as bad as going down to Home Depot for another 10 pound bag of grout, getting all psyched up for another night of it, putting on work clothes, mixing, taping, spreading, and then running out again. Oh well. Anyway we made great progress and now we get to do one more night of bonding over hard labor...

239.7

2/10

I installed the other new light in the kitchen today. I'm not sure I like it. It's the one on the right.

Also, here's a picture of the new tile in the upstairs shower. It's grouted on the left and but not on the right. You know how we ran out of grout and all. But anyway I think the grout makes it look better.

Now for a chapter of South from Alaska and a snooze.

240.0

The grouting hands grout all they can

Well, we started to grout the shower. Then we ran out of grout. I sure hope there's not some dire consequence to allowing half your grout project to dry before doing the other half. I mean we didn't let big glops dry on the tile or anything. I will say that I'd be perfectly happy if this turns out to be the last time I ever have to grout.

I also hauled the debris from demoing the old hardboard travesty in the midst of a blizzard. It snowed for 20 minutes today and I spent the whole time at the dump. Good times.

241.3. Sigh.

2/9

After a couple days' hiatus from tiling, this evening I cleaned up all the stray mortar in the upstairs shower in preparation for grout tomorrow evening. Then it'll be caulk in the kitchen and shower, then replacing window trim in the kitchen and then grout sealer in both places and that project will be done.

241

Taking Stock

Wow. I feel completely exhausted and spread-thin and pulled in a million directions these past few weeks. Witness my recent series of barely-there posts. Not that I've ever been all that long-winded in posts...

I'm going to take this evening to just pour it all out in hopes getting a better handle on it all. It's going to be a classic brain-dump -- disorganized and inarticulate. Enjoy.

So I've finished Live on the Margin, by Pat Schulte of Bumfuzzle and Nick O'Kelly. It was really great. It was one book about 4 or 5 different things, all of which were just the right things for me to read at this point in the endeavor.

We're in the midst of South From Alaska, which is both inspiring and provides a pretty unflinching look at the realities of cruising, fun and otherwise.

We've been doing our DTRs religiously which has been great for our relationship. There's nothing like a joint BHAG and tons of shared meaning to replace bickering and nagging with support and warmth.

Audrey and I have been cruising through Teach Your Child to Read. I've been learning so much about how to be my kids' teacher, and she's been, you guessed it, learning to read. Check out the story she read tonight.

We've been doing all kinds of things to sell the house and have a million things still to do. The clock is now running quickly on getting everything ready to sell. We should probably list officially around April 1. Over the next 8 to 12 weeks we need to:

Learn a thing or two about selling a house
Fully bake our FSBO plan
Finish home repairs and improvements
Market
Stage
List
Show
Close

Here's the house stuff we've gotten done in the past couple months:

Got one of the three missing overhead lights installed in the garage
Replaced front door
Replaced kitchen door locking knob
Got rid of lots of stuff
Cleaned up a lot of entrenched messes
Got rid of horrible old stove hood
Put in beautiful new OTR microwave
Tiled backsplashes in kitchen
Got rid of horrible old upstairs bahroom hardboard "surround"
Took down baby gates
Scraped, sanded, filled, hardened, primed, and painted kitchen door and windows.
Tiled shower upstairs

I've been stalled out on losing weight at around 240 pounds. I'm down 33 pounds and very proud of it. All my old pants are loose and won't stay on without a belt. For the first time in my life I am able to ski Eldora top-to-bottom for hours without my legs burning. Still, I cannot afford to stop here. I must and I will find the motivation and the approach that will get me to 200 this year.

It's all left precious little time for things relating directly to cruising. Things like learning everything there is to know about boats and diesels and hull and deck and sail maintenance and repair and storm tactics, and the logistics of entering and exiting countries and how to fish and how to pilot and first aid. But we'll get there.

Something I've told myself throughout this effort was that it would be a long and winding road to ultimate success, and that while the entire effort might encompass a number of other separate arduous and mundane efforts that we have a good chance of achieving our goal by simply putting one foot in front of the other on each task and never slackening our pace. Hopefully that will prove to be true.

238.4

2/6

Audrey did great with lesson 63 today. That is all.

239.7

2/6

Whew! We have been busy around here! The house is really starting to come along, thanks in huge part to my dad. He was here for 10 days helping with our big tiling projects. He did an amazing job, and it is nearly done. As we complete things off our list, it seems like new projects are popping up. For example, our medicine cabinet has decided it has had enough and is now falling apart. Our new list is a bit shorter now though, and hopefully we will get it all done in order to officially put the house on the market by early spring.

playing a little pinball with Grampsy

We tried to have some fun with my dad too, and did some skiing (both with Audrey and the adult variety), swimming and just hanging out. We discovered the series The Tudors and managed to watch the entire first season during his trip (beware, it is occasionally slightly uncomfortable to watch with your dad), now we have to wait until his next trip out to watch season 2. I'm dying with anticipation.

Jacob, 1/2 contortionist, 1/2 gymnast, trying to plug the stove back in

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