It's been a while....

So I have not been actively updating for a while, but that's because this adventure called life has been my main priority.

A quick recap of highlights:
Alex graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in NH. He was there for four years and we are so proud of him. He got to play some tennis, learn a new language (Chinese), learn new sports (squash and Crew) and he had the opportunity to learn both in and out of the classroom from peers around the world. After graduation he spent several weeks traveling around Italy with his friend Giulio (pictured below) from Milan.
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We added two new furry friends to our family - Clover and Bee. Clover is an English Cream Golden Retriever (couch potato), while Bee was in theory a Husky/ Golden Mix. The consensus in our house from all of us is that Bee must be part Saluki because she is the fastest dog on the planet. She loves and loves to run around our yard. 

The kids have been incredibly busy playing tennis all over the country. They are making friends from around the world and are still really enjoying it. This picture below is Nicholas winning a gold ball (first place) in doubles at the National Championships (Easter Bowl). 

We love when Alex comes home to visit from Chapel Hill. Always a little friendly competition.

After going through the homebuilding process, I have continued to love everything related to building, construction, design and real estate. I've exchanged my design books and binders of drawings and construction details with books on real estate investing, market updates and bookmarks of all of the publicly available real estate research tools. Digging into public records and using platforms like Zillow and OpenDoor, I've now filled notebooks and spreadsheets with real estate investing calculations. Armed with what I thought was all of the information available, we decided to purchase an investment property in the Raleigh area. We engaged an awesome broker in the area and working with her opened my eyes to just how many tools were not available to me.

The broker had tools and databases that I couldn't see. She found properties that were not on my radar. How could this be? I learned quickly that tools like Zillow and Realtor.com etc don't have everything... I had no clue. This made me crazy to not have access to all of these fabulous resources and prompted me to go back to school to get my Real Estate License. I am astounded by how much information I now have access to. In addition to all of the databases I can access, I have the best resource of all - my firm - Helen Adams Realty. I chose the firm because it is heavily marketing centric, extremely collaborative, and the agents have a reputation for being knowledgeable, diligent and most importantly, kind. I am so thrilled to now have access to all of those missing pieces, as well as the support of an incredible team. I am beyond excited to combine all of these resources to help others in their real estate search. I love the research, strategy, and the hunt.


Because I have spent quite some time learning about things like real estate investing, Airbnb, House Hacking, Kiddie Condos, etc etc, I have decided to create a new blog to share some of that info for those interested. The more I dig, the more information I find and I am excited to share it. Some of it I wish I'd known many years ago. You can find the new site at: www.homecarolina.blogspot.com

I hope you'll check it out!

Goodbye Sweet Friend

Goodbye my Friend, Yesterday was a terrible day. Saying goodbye to Lanie after 13 years of a wonderful life with her was just awful. She was so sick and deserved better, but it doesn't make us miss her any less. My heart hurts without you Lanie, and the house is not the same with your wagging tail and warm presence. You will always hold a special place in my heart. I miss you girl.

Bloomin' great!

After the big Indiana Hoosier loss to Kentucky last night, the skies opened up and it rained all night....it washed away our sadness....and we greeted the day with some filtered sunlight. We shook off the depression and went outside to check the day. Ryan's plantings are looking great! Our first blooms on our lily were pretty exciting!

The entire bed is not very organized, with daffodils popping up all over the place, and little teeny tiny shoots from peonies and hydrangea, and we even broke off the dead old bits of Russian Sage and it is even burrowing its way out from the earth and we see vibrant green little branches making their way into this world!

Lanie thinks the nice cool mulch is just delightful for nest making. At least she is not making a nest in our little herb garden!

Even the stalks of Rosa Rugosa from Nany and Papa are springing to life --- the dead looking stalks stuck in the ground have teeny tiny little green buds, and if you look at the earth surrounding them, you will see little patches of leaves, brand new growth! It is so wet out right now, I don't think I can get a picture, but will put one in the next couple of days --- I'm sure we'll have even more growth then.

It is so fun to watch Ryan choose the plants, work to put them in the ground, water them daily or so, and then to see his look of delight with a new bloom --- the lilies had that effect this morning, and I can't wait for him to get to harvest his vegetable garden.... well, if we ever get around to planting it!

Saw this quote the other day, and thought it was very appropriate for these beautiful spring days.....
"When I bought my farm, I did not know what a bargain I had in the bluebirds, daffodils and thrushes; as little did I know what sublime mornings and sunsets I was buying."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Enjoy your day, we sure will!

Spring is here!

We have had such beautiful weather in the last couple of weeks, and suddenly everything is beautiful and blooming! Our moving crisis has been averted (for a while at least), so we are getting busy planting in the yard.....

The Yoshino cherry trees look so pretty with their soft pink flowers flanking the driveway.

The roses are starting to grow like crazy (Ryan trimmed them first), and we have planted some other types of roses --- mainly climbers (Eden Rose and New Dawn -these will be behind the fence posts --- hopefully we can train them over the fence).

Forest redbud pansy:

Ryan's plantings.... daffodils, hydrangea, peonies, gardenias, and even some tomatoes.... yum....

Rosemary:

New Dawn Rose --- just starting to grow....

Hydrangea: Starting to come back to life....

We have also planted some blueberries, raspberries, grapes, and peonies....Of course the kids planted seeds for a vegetable gardens, but they were just too early and I think we'll have to plants that stuff again!

So nice to see some green and color... finally!

Can we seriously be leaving..... already?

It has taken months and months to get settled since our move in July / August. We have loved every minute of this place! We've hosted Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years, several football parties, a Super Bowl Party, 11 year old sleepover birthdays, and book clubs. We have really enjoyed having all of our special spaces --- the beer fridges, the basement bar area, the playroom for the kids, the breakfast area, and all of the fun little details we designed. They have all been awesome! This house has officially been put to the test and we are so happy with the result! But.... (why does there ALWAYS have to be a "but?")

Just as we were really "done" with projects and organizing and finding homes for everything, it looks like it will be time to pack it up again and move. As we have always suspected might happen, Atlanta has officially called (in the form of a promotion), and this time, it is time to answer. On a day like today, it seems hard to leave. We played outside, rode bikes around the horse farms, worked in the yard (an endless project) and just hung around the house. It was awesome!

Ryan walked along with me the entire time I was seeding the yard (and he was too) and we "talked." After again asking me if we could just put this house on wheels and take it to Atlanta, he put his arm around me and said, "I'm just going to really cry when we have to leave this place, after all the work we've put into it." Of course, that about made me cry, and he is right, he did put lots of work into it! He was the kid out planting the blueberry bushes and the roses, and all of the daffodil bulbs. He trims the roses, and we've started planting some seeds inside to make our vegetable garden soon. He checks on the camellias and is interested in the pear tree. He shows every person that comes over the geode we had the stone mason put in the stone work. He shows off the stones that have fossils in them. He was quiet for a minute and then he told me, "You know what Mom, when I grow up, I'll just save all my money to buy this house, and then we can have it again!" What a kid! Nany was right, he will miss it here! Not even so much his buddies, but just hanging around here, checking on all of his projects, he is really proud of all of them!

The Realtors have visited and looks like the dreaded "For Sale" sign will be in the yard next week or so. I am really really not looking forward to keeping the house spotless for showings. I was so ready to just enjoy the spring, and watch the flowers and plants bloom. The Atlanta area will be nice too I'm sure.... Maybe we'll have lots more projects to post about.....

Looking forward to watching the leaves emerge --- it all still looks pretty dreary!

Happy Halloween... or perhaps.... Haunted Halloween...

The kids were carving pumpkins last night, and it appears we were not alone.... At least the small ghost in the Japanese Maple seemed to approve......

Rain Rain GO AWAY!

We have waited and waited to seed our yard, and plant some things because it has just been too hot. We picked out some beautiful trees, plants, bushes, flowers and after September 15th, went nuts planting. Everything looked great. The yard was freshly graded, we had many loads of dirt and we had a perfect empty canvas. Ryan and I built a pretty stone wall, and planted herbs. He was very proud of his hard work. I was having a dinner party on Wednesday night (last week) and the last loads of mulch went in by about 5 pm. It looked great! We could just imagine how nice it would all look once the seed filled in the yard. Sigh, it WAS great. Then, just as I was setting up my cocktail tables on the front porch...

drip, drip, drip. No worries, a little rain would be great for all of the plantings. But drip......drip........drip turned to drip..drip...drip..boom. Then the skies parted and we got a flash flood. The water started coming down the hill, gathering speed, and volume. It washed the new plantings down the hills, and the mulch, and the many truck loads of nice dirt, and giant sections of sod. The street was filled with the mudslide and the lot across the street was the beneficiary of much new dirt, mud, mulch and seed. Nick spent the evening before my party with his snow shovel digging the mud out of the street. I moved the party inside. It was a great time. I got to use my dining room for the first time, and my nice new linens from our Provence trip...yes Mom, I ironed them :-).

The day after the party it was back to work trying to get everything back in place.... but the rains just kept coming. I spent the afternoon after the morning rain scraping and sweeping the street. Ugh. What a mess. By Friday, we'd had about enough of the rain. Baseball practices were cancelled, games, cancelled and we wanted to see some sun! On Saturday, it appeared to be drying out. We got the wheelbarrow out, scraped muck and I re-seeded portions of the yard. We had an erosion control company come out and build a silt fence to stop everything from running into the street. We replanted the plants and bushes which has washed out in the heavy rains. It was looking better, and we were starting to feel like it was getting under control. We sat down to enjoy a beer, when the skies started to get a bit dark for the hour. Ugh.... not again.... a 15 minute burst of torrential rain! The rivers of mud picked up speed, gathering the 8 bags of grass seed, and mud, and anything in its path..... all running down the hill. The erosion control silt fencing is holding back a swamp of muck. Maybe we should get some pigs? On Monday, I went to Lowe's and got more seed. Finally, the sun was peeking out of the clouds. Hooray! Baseball was back on... 2 games Tuesday night how exciting! At the end of the games, as the boys were lining up to give "fives" we noticed some fireworks in the distance. Noooooo, it couldn't be thunder and lightning could it? We made it home, got snuggled up in our beds just in time to hear the storm. Back to replanting and seeding today.

The lot across the street is going to have the most lush lawn around!

Here are a few shots of some of our erosion and swamp area.... lovely, don't you think?