kiwords

Hey, hey, HEY! Guess what we did? GO AHEAD, GUESS.

WRONG!

We BOUGHT A HOUSE!

It is an itty bitty tiny little adorably nugget of a house that is so cute I want to kiss it right on its lips. It’s a ranch, 808 square feet, with two bedrooms. ISN’T IT PERFECT?

Ok, ok, for those of you mentally tallying the number of children Clay and I are bringing to this marriage (answer=4) and starting to sweat a little, I should probably tell you that there is another 808 square feet in the unfinished basement. And Clay, who is just breathtakingly manly, has taken on the project of putting three little boy bedrooms, a play room, and a bathroom down there. *sigh.* Don’t you love him? He’ll be working on it like a madman for the next three months, so it will be ready for us to move into after the wedding. Did you catch that? One wedding and one house remodeling in the next three months. Ha! Ha ha! We have such good ideas! I still don’t have a dress! HA HA!

Moving on.

We closed on the house on Friday, and I took the boys out there the next day for lunch. Clay had already been there half the day, wielding a tape measure and tearing things apart. I passed out paper plates shaped like animals to the boys and nodded and looked thoughtful while Clay explained the projects to be undertaken in the days to come.

Honestly, I have no idea what he’s doing. I just think he’s sexy when he uses words like “joist” and “shim.” Did I mention the tool belt?

Anyhow.

We ate a congenial lunch, sitting on the floor of our new kitchen (our kitchen, as in, the kitchen we own because we’re mad purchasing house owner people now). The minute the boys were done with their food they raced out the door. Tre and Max shimmied up the tree in the front yard, and Raphael amused himself by running out the garage door and around to the front door, where he leaped inside with a cry of,

“GOTCHA!”

Several times.

Clay took me down to the basement to show me the plans he’d drawn up for the construction down there. Now, this is “Boys’ rooms, v 3.2,” so you’ll forgive me if I didn’t take it in all that well. I’m starting to mistrust lines drawn on yellow legal pads. I’ll believe it when I see it in 2x4s and dry wall. Raphael spent his time leaping up to grab the string hanging down from the pull chain on the light. After a few minutes of Clay drawing imaginary walls for me in the air with his hands, we went back upstairs, Raphael bouncing and chirping at our heels.

In the front yard we found Tre and Max, up the tree, and two boys circling it below. One was Ben, the boy next door. Tre had met him when we brought the boys out to see the house. He is thrilled with Ben, who is a first year Webelo, soccer playing boy after Tre's own heart. The other boy was

Tyler

, I think. All four boys stood around, on the ground and in the tree, casually muttering about totally random things and glancing at each other out of the corners of their eyes. It was a truly bonding moment, young boy style.

Several of our neighbors were similarly huddled in the next yard over. We introduced ourselves and chatted for a few minutes. The woman who lives next door knows every one on the block, and gave us the rundown (including whom else on the block is named Kira, and which house The One Unfriendly Guy lives in). We compared kids' ages and talked about who worked where.

I leaned against Clay’s warm shoulder as we chatted. His arm was around my back, and above our heads Tre and Max were making friends. Raphael kicked through the leaves at our feet, and it felt like home.