Obligatory year end post (2017)

Well hello there.  I had started a back to school post back in September, but then life got really crazy and it didn't happen.  The kids are doing great.  They just turned six and they are growing like weeds and losing and growing teeth right and left, and loving their new school.  We seriously won the lotto.

We lost my step-father in mid-October at the age of 64.  I still haven't fully come to terms with his passing, as it was very sudden at the end.  He was cruising along with his (stem cell inhibitor) clinical trial and chemo (though he'd lost a lot of weight) and then in late August, he got his first bad scan since January (when he first got into the trial).  This indicated that his aggressive cancer was not going to cooperate and since a bad scan gets you kicked out of a trial (insult meets injury), he wanted to qualify for another (this one immunotherapy) at Mayo, that he got into in September.  But it was sadly already too late.  He was willing to do whatever he could to get to watch his grandkids grow up.

We got to be there at the end.  It was eerily like my grandmother, who passed when I was pregnant with the twins, though she got an extra 30 years.  Within a few hours of our arrival, he was gone.

Dave became my step-dad when I was 8, a role he took seriously for the second half of his life and the vast majority of mine.  He loved us like his own, which was no small feat.  He saved us.

He met my mom when I was my kids' age and starting kindergarten and she was starting her new life.  She's doing as well as can be expected.  We just took her and my eldest sister on vacation with us, which will likely be how we do it for awhile, maybe forever.

It's overall been a pretty shitty cancer year for us.  My brother in law lost his dad and my step-mom lost her mom (both to metastatic liver cancer), and I lost a 40 year old high school friend and the twins' best friends lost their grandma who we saw every week at dance (both to metastatic esophageal cancer).  My kids have been to more funerals just this year than I did in my entire childhood.

I had my best year professionally since I went out on my own, but now that the kids are in school full time, I'm thinking of going in-house full time.  I will never be satisfied.

Speaking of that, we finally went to see Hamilton for our November anniversary. It was great.  Get the soundtrack, it's at least half the experience.

Wait for it

Death doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners
And the saints
It takes and it takes and it takes
And we keep living anyway
We rise and we fall
And we break
And we make our mistakes
And if there’s a reason I’m still alive
When everyone who loves me has died
I’m willing to wait for it
I’m willing to wait for it

Well hello...Summer

Summer seems to start earlier every year, so we've been trying to make the most of May.  My step father is still fighting his cancer, and undergoing chemo and his clinical trial, but since he is still feeling ok (and his latest scan, the week of my sister's wedding, showed his aggressive tumors are shrinking), we decided we should all take a little trip together. 

We went over to Holland, Michigan for the final Tulip Festival weekend and had a great time.  The weather was amazing, which made up the many of the flowers being past prime (again those earlier summers).  Our twins found two random flowers all alone and we declared them the twins.

The kids finish up preschool (forever!) next week and then their fourth year of summer camp (now up to four hours/day, yay!) starts right away, which is great because I've been keeping busy with work (my biggest project yet, a repeat of one I did last spring, but this time I'm doing it mostly myself).  It should wrap up at the end of June and then we are headed back to the Hamptons for the week of the Fourth, since back to school (kindergarten!!) events in mid-August required a rescheduling of our usual vacation time.  No showhouse for me this year, as it starts in late July. :(

The kids are doing great and while it's been crazy, I'm so glad that they each got to go to their respective schools this year.  We've met tons of new friends and are super excited about our new school. They will be in different classes since they always separate sibs, but they are old pros and will have some things together, including the bus rides.  They will be 5 1/2 in a few shorts weeks.  The time does fly my friends.

I'm working on figuring out what to do with myself come September when the kids are in school full time (~9-3 plus bus time).  I may do contract work while we get used to the new schedule, or if something great full time comes along, I may do that.  Anything to avoid all the home projects that still don't get done with kids in school just over two hours a day.  Ack!  I'm really not looking forward to finding someone to come help us in the afternoons/evenings (see also: why I'm still a SAHM) for when the kids get home, making dinner, watching them until we get home.  Ugh, time to bit the bullet after I procrastinate most of the summer.

Happy Memorial Day weekend!  Happy Summer!

Amazing News!

Enjoying our first snow in three months

(which is already gone a few days later)

I've droned on for years about the kids' schools and I've been researching them even longer, since we've lived here nearly a dozen years now.  It's hard to believe that they are starting all day kindergarten in just five short months.  We registered at our neighborhood school (a STEM academy) last month, and then had to apply to enter a lottery for our top choice open enrollment school.  It was seriously more nerve wracking that anything I've applied for myself.  I had to write essays, though it was supposedly a straight lottery, so it drove me crazy that I couldn't do anything to up our chances.  And given we had two who had to get winning numbers (or we'd have to decide to split/try again next year if only one did), and how low acceptance rates have been in recent years, it was even more unlikely.

By some random act of luck, we found out yesterday that they were both accepted.  Unbelievable.

Beyond being ranked in amazing company (I'm looking at you Chicago's Classicals and the suburbs' best), it is a smaller school (about half the size of our neighborhood school), all while being K-8 (bye bye middle school hell), super diverse, with mixed grade classes and a curricular focus on multiple intelligences.  It's starts/ends later than other schools, and they'll take the bus together since it's several miles away, but conveniently located otherwise.  It's basically like private school, without the bills. I will not miss having them in two different schools. 

We literally don't have to worry about where they are going to school again until high school in nine years.  We also love our neighborhood school, if for some reason it doesn't work out.  I wish I could say my work here is done, but of course it's all just the beginning.  And I wish I could claim some credit, but unlike conceiving, carrying, birthing, nursing, getting them to finally walk and talk and potty train (by force), there wasn't a damn thing I could do.  Craziness.  Now we may never move, since we'd have to stay in district anyway.

Work is keeping DH super busy, so he can't take off for a proper spring break. :(  Instead, I'm taking the kids up to visit family in sunny WI, as my step-father is still fighting his cancer valiantly (it has spread quickly and he's now doing a clinical trial as well as more chemo) and they love nothing more than their cousins.  Then I head to NYC for my solo spring break.  Can't wait!

Hamptons Designer Showhouses (Part Two: Traditional Home)

Traditional Home sponsors THE annual Hamptons Designer Showhouse, which while it is a spec house, it is truly a showhouse for designers, as there are many represented.  My favorite room was definitely the living room by Kate Singer Home.  I could have just pitched a little tent in front of the fireplace (and under those panels) and lived their happily.  But the outside was great too, with a pool, tennis court...  I should have gotten a job on Wall Street.  This house was a lot busier, so I got lots of photos bombs to go with my sketchy IPhone photos.  Sweet!

The house was up on a crazy hill and they had us park in the driveway, which was weird.  Hello parking brake I never use, nice to meet you.

The Living Room!  Swoon...

Hamptons Designer Showhouses (Part One: Coastal Living)

There were two big showhouses in the Hamptons last summer since Coastal Living joined the club (the regular annual Hamptons Designer Showhouse is sponsored by Traditional Home).  I planned then debated going to both, but then realized they were five minutes away from each other and sucked up the cost ($35 each, and only one was for charity).  Lucky for me, when I got to the Coastal Living House, there was not a soul working there, selling tickets or collecting money, it was just open with a few other ladies perusing so I got in and got out before anyone asked me for cash.  Slick Katie.

One of the main differences between the Coastal Living House and the other, is that they had one design firm, Meg Braff Designs, do the whole house, unlike the other where they have dozens of designers with each doing one room or nook.  It was also generally less impressive, save all the awesome tile work by Fireclay, which we almost used for our kitchen, which was the general theme of the house.  White and lots of colored tile, with all the rooms having a different color scheme.

J. McLaughlin, the clothiers, contributed to the mudroom, so it was prep haven.

The beginning of all the beautiful tiles in the powder room off the mud.

I found my place!  The poolhouse!

 I'm super predictable, but man I love two tone blue tilework.  The mini kitchen in the poolhouse.

 And the bath!

Back inside and downstairs...