Speed Bump

Just a few more days and our hard hat zone will be gone!

This move thing is finally happening. This is the current state of Izzy's room in the loft (she doesn't sleep there anyway, perfect packing zone). There are a million gazillion things that still need to happen at the new house before we move in on Saturday.

I need to write this post before we move or it will never happen. There won't be much looking back once we are finally in our new house. It was my idea to live downtown while we remodeled our new house. I wanted a distraction, a place far from both our old house and our new house, a location that would allow us to explore new things rather than just impatiently wait for this life phase to be over. It has definitely been different and we have kept busy and entertained. Living downtown you might get a parade of elephants right past your front door, or wake up on a Saturday morning to find the American Royal Parade going down your street. In many ways, this is the ultimate neighborhood - full of events and people, never a dull moment and always something new. Our neighbors are tattoo parlors and a bartending school, a coffee shop, LuLu's Thai Noodles, and Union Station. We can walk to Crown Center, and the River Market is a stroller ride away. We walk to the...

Lost in the stress and excitement of finishing our new home is the fact that I had a monumental birthday this week. Monumental. Friends and family have been waiting for the melt down, the freak out to occur over this number 40. And with good reason -  I've never been super excited to see my birthday roll around, and I had a bit of a quarter life crisis at 30. Life at 30 and life at 40 are night and day for me. I accomplished a lot in my 20s - traveled the world, earned my doctorate, ran 9 marathons, lived overseas. But when I turned 30 I was ready for the next phase of my life, one that would be shared with a man I loved and would include a family of my own. I'm a worrier, and at 30 I worried and worried. Worried that my Prince would never come. Worried about where my career would lead me, worried about where I would live (I had lived in three different cities in three years), worried I would miss the chance to have children of my own. At 30 there was so much uncertainty...

It has been a rough week for the future dwellers of Modern on Meadow . I can say that we met our all time low last weekend. Rock bottom. I consider myself someone with a significant amount of mental toughness and effective coping skills. And yet, as I felt myself put to the test for the umpteenth time over this house in the past week, cracks in my armor began to show. I felt the wheels coming off and I was powerless to prevent it from happening. I was downright depressed over this house. Depressed enough to not shower for two days, to not even look in the mirror when I went out the door for the day. Depressed to the point that I went to the drugstore and stocked up on allergy meds thinking that might put a dent in the pounding ache emanating from my skull. Many things have gone wrong with the process of renovating this house. And I know this is part and parcel of every build, every remodel. I know that. I think we've put up with our share, not without complaining to be sure. T...

I've been dreaming about the day our kitchen cabinets would arrive for what feels like forever, and now that day is here.

We had a fantastic trip to our Nation's capital last weekend for a friend's wedding. We took in a lot of the city in a few days, most of it by bike. A few highlights... The Capital BikeShare program is amazing (and I'm proud to say KC has a great bike share as well. I wrote about it here ). The bike docks are all over the city and you can pick up a bike and drop it off at any location. $7 per bike for 24 hours. We saw the entire city for $28. I highly recommend it! Next time we're bringing helmets with us or figuring out how to rent them... DC neighborhoods are so charming...and expensive. We enjoyed a few adult beverages during our stay. We also had some fabulous meals - Thai and Indian on Thursday and Friday nights, respectively. Both reservations were for 10pm. Needless to say, we slept in during this trip... The Library of Congress -  Jefferson's library was fascinating and I wanted to sneak down to the main reading room and stay awhile. ...