Fall is in the air. It rained for the first time since spring and the yard feels fresh. I’m inspired to reflect on this past summer’s scrumptious explorations.
Thanks to M&D’s generous time share gift, we kicked off summer with a weeklong trip to Whistler, British Columbia in May. The snow was still ski-able, but that wasn’t our purpose. We went to relax. Whistler and the surrounding mountains are absolutely breathtaking. We saw 13 confirmed black bears (and several unconfirmed). We visited some of the Olympic facilities, hiked The Stawamus Chief, toured the mining museum, successfully made it through the Lost Woods without getting lost, and did some great relaxing.
If you’re a fan of the trail up to Yosemite’s Half Dome, you will love
The Stawamus Chief. There are three peaks so you can “choose your own adventure”. Each of them (I’m told) involve chains, ladders, and other climbing features. It’s not nearly the time commitment of Half Dome, but arguably more vigorous. We were very pleased to have stumbled onto this adventure and earned the post-hike Oreos.
We spent a day in Vancouver, what a beautiful city, and stopped in Seattle to experience the home of the Mariners. When we got home, the months of June and July were busy with house projects. We did have some graduation, bachelorette, and birthday fun during those months too. After our relaxing vacation, we were excited to get back to work on the house. Our motivation was the July 30th BBQ we hosted. It was our first shindig in the house and are looking forward to many more.
After the BBQ we entered “project appreciation mode” and dived back into the house projects a couple weeks later. This leads me to the house status report.
Inside Status:
- The Living Room is no longer being used for storage. We purchased a giant comfy couch from our favorite store (Costco) and have a REAL living room. Suitable for hosting guests! (Clearing out the storage involved putting the bookshelves together and actually unpacking the boxes. What an idea!)
- “The Construction Zone” is still in full effect, but much progress has been made. The exterior walls in the office are insulated, sheetrocked, mudded, and primed. Ready for paint! The radiant heating leak is fixed with shiny new pipes and ready for the concrete pour. Then we can re-build the wall we took down and actually put the office together!
- We got a new tankless water heater / radiant heating boiler installed and are looking forward to all of our floors being warm this winter.
Outside Status:
- We let ourselves be distracted by outside projects during the warm summer weather.
- The oak tree stump is cut down to the ground. All of the wood rounds that were strewn across the patio are neatly cut and stacked into a custom (hand crafted) bin.
- The overgrown vines are slashed and gone which means, our yard has been less appealing to the deer, but they still come through.
- We’ve got patio tables, chairs, and a BBQ. It was great fun entertaining in the back yard this summer.
- A worked hard to re-build the outside of the family room. He had a minor trip up with some wire mesh resulting in six stitches, but that area of the house is now stucco instead of mismatched rotting plywood and looks great!
It’s been nine months of home ownership and we are still in love with our house. We are also still Giants fans and had a great time watching their games this season. Although they are not in the playoffs, and I’ve been working too hard the past few weeks to watch baseball, I’m looking forward to some quality October baseball. The Giants had a great season and will come back stronger next year.
Other summer highlights include:
- Visiting the Jelly Belly Factory
- Touring the Budweiser Factory (right around the corner from Jelly Belly, so why not?)
- Wedding fun in San Luis Obispo
- Betting on the good looking horses at Golden Gate Fields while eating food truck yumminess.
I welcome Autumn with open arms and look forward to our first holiday season in our house.
