#13: March Madness

Wowsers, was March a whirlwind! Since the last time I posted about the concrete wall pour (mid-Feb), we’ve been hustling to finish up our sitework so we could be ready to start building the catamaran, the parts of which have been sitting around whispering our names since we picked them up in January. About a month ago, Nick said we need to just pick a start date for our boat. I immediately said April 1st; that way, if we don’t really begin by then, we could always just say we were joking. But still, we strived to meet that deadline—and meet it we did! Yes, folks, we have finished playing in the dirt as of last Friday, then enjoyed the Easter holiday weekend, and actually started building Felicity on Monday, April 1, 2024. No joke! The next blog will tell you how Felicity’s build is going, but this one is for highlighting what we’ve been doing since the wall pour, mostly in pictures since one is worth a thousand words, right?

We had our tenth family concrete pour on February 20:

And two days later, our final concrete pour:

Nick had to sit down in disbelief that we may have just poured the last of the gray stuff:

We sold our RV park at the end of February, so that freed up Nick’s time to figure out the water sprinkler situation at our house:

We bought a bunch more dirt to flatten out the land and prep for new sod. (Mar 5):

We had a wonderful visit full of delicious meals at my parents’ house in Longview, where we helped split firewood. (Mar 10):

While visiting my parents in East Texas, Tristan happened to spot some Christmas palm trees for sale, which is the type of tree we decided just days before to plant in our yard. We couldn’t find local nurseries that sold them. In the end, we drove back to the coast with six beautiful clusters of palm trees. Let’s hope they stay that way:

Tristan and I built a garden bed because I was running out of things to do around here. (Mar 15):

The boys progressed in their homeschooling subjects but also took advantage of a peaceful morning in nature that turned into a wavy and windy adventure:

I asked Calvin what he did the most of in the past month in his spare time, and he said, “Walk on rocks.” Sure enough, I have a visual of that from February 25:

In some of Tristan’s spare time, he designed a remote control Lego gyroscopic motorcycle that works really well, but he's now working on one that can go even slower without falling over:

We framed the laundry room and bathroom in the barndo (the cat’s hulls will straddle the massing), and it has ceiling joists and subfloor now:

Nick trenched and laid more pipe for the sprinklers (pictured) while I had a few days of jury duty (not pictured . . . you’re welcome):

We finished laying rock along the sides and back of the house, then went to Victoria to pick up four pallets of sod in Victoria. We ate outside at a lovely restaurant called the PumpHouse overlooking the Guadalupe River, then drove home and laid most of the sod until it was dark-thirty. (Mar 27):

We laid the rest of the sod the next day on the inside of the wall:

And finally, to top off the day and the “working hours” of the month and 99% of our sitework (stick a fork in us—we’re done!), we planted nine “Green Cloud” Texas sage bushes and xeriscaped with more rocks on the street side of the wall:

The next few days for Easter weekend we had fun with family in town:

So, if you haven’t heard from us in a while, just know that we’re reaching felicity every day with steps made toward progress, including taking moments for peace and fun. (Because progress should always include fun!)

Now, it's time to have some fun making progress on Felicity!