My three teen boys all have vacation and I just love when they’re home together!

The hazard of having them home is they like to all congregate together in my room at night to hang out so it’s hard to do any writing or go to sleep. The years go by quickly and I don’t want to lose this time with them.

Yesterday was the first day of them working together; it’s so, so nice because first of all, I love seeing them together, and secondly, every single one of them is really helpful and knows how to get things done. When they work together, they’re an amazing team. When I ask them to do something, they do what I want in the time frame that I want. I have yet to find anyone I can pay who works nearly as well as them; my daughter who lives here has had the same experience.

The progress of my kitchen renovation has been very delayed. The first stage of the electric work needed to be completed before any cabinets could be put in place, and the electrician finally came two weeks after he said he would come. That’s pushed everything off, and though I’ve felt some impatience to get this going and get it done so I can move on to Pesach preparations, it’s been okay that it’s taken longer.

This is how it’s looked for almost two weeks while we waited for him to come; there’s a light switch and outlet behind where the wall units that needed to be moved.

Once the electrician came and moved the light switch, ds15 and ds17 were finally able to put together the wall units. It was so nice to have them in place.

I still need outlets above where the new counter area will be, before moving the base cabinets and countertops into place; the electrician said he would come back in a few days.

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I had to go out for a few hours in the morning and since they didn’t want to take apart the kitchen if I wasn’t there, the boys found constructive activities to busy themselves with.

Our porch upstairs is a nice size but as a porch it doesn’t get much use (other than the teens sleeping there at night since they like the fresh air) since we have so much outdoor space downstairs. As the families of our married children grow, it’s harder and harder for parents to share a room with all of their children. When they come on a weekend when no other married siblings are here, it’s no problem to give them two bedrooms, but when we have other guests, we don’t have that option.

For the last five years we’ve been paying higher property tax for the open porch as if it’s an enclosed part of the house and that’s kind of annoying, so I’ve often thought there’s some additional incentive there to rebalance things (ie and close in the porch) so we have the benefit of what we’re being taxed for.

My mother-in-law and sister-in-law will be coming from the US to stay with us for all of Pesach. This year we had four married children who wanted to come for the Pesach seder but even after the teens agreeing to vacate their room for my mother-in-law and sister-in-law to stay in, we only had two more guest rooms. Obviously the math doesn’t work out for everyone to be here at once!

I didn’t want to tell anyone not to come but we just didn’t have space for everyone at one time. This is the first time I’ve been unable to accomodate everyone, since my local daughter has guest space and was able to host our overflow guests for sleeping.

After several weeks of feeling stymied, I finally decided that we’ll split the hosting of the married kids. Two of them will come for the seder, and the other two will come for the end of Pesach. One family will come for the middle days of Pesach. One has lived locally until this week (they’re moving to RBS-D near my oldest son’s family) so they aren’t coming for Pesach. Then next year, those who came for the last days this year will come for the seder, and those who came for the seder will come for the end of Pesach. So the plan is to alternate guests for the seder every year, instead of having everyone at once.

You can see that we can use some additional sleeping space!

My teens were enthused about closing in the porch but my husband requested a pause on it, explaining that when there’s a project with details he wants to be able to oversee it. With the kitchen renovation still very much in progress, he asked that we not have two big projects simultaneously taking place.

I could see the logic in that but felt it was a shame to waste all of the manpower available during this very short period of time, since if we don’t do it now, they won’t be available until the summer. With so much family coming for Pesach it would be nice to have more hosting space but I respected my husband’s preference and we put the porch project to the side.

I don’t know what changed when I was out for just four hours – my husband said when he was watching the boys work he saw how competent they were and that made him more comfortable with them doing the porch now. But when I came back, I heard very loud noises from the porch and as I came into our yard, looked up to see my sons taking apart the metal pergola.

That took me by surprise! It was a huge job, since it’s constructed of heavy duty metal pieces welded in place, and it took several hours to cut it down. The three of them started working on it together but then ds17 did most of the work to cut it apart. They recognize their strengths and tend to assign jobs according to who is best at/ enjoys what the most. They joke that ds17 is best at deconstructing and ds18 is best at constructing, but the truth is they’re all good at everything.

Here’s what it looks like once the metal pergola was taken down:

The next step is to order the building materials to close in the porch. My husband spent a couple of days working out the specifics on exactly what we need, and will place the order tomorrow (assuming they have what we need in stock – if they don’t, they said we’ll have to wait until after Pesach).

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While ds17 was working on that, ds18 and ds15 began building a new chicken coop for the Brahmas that we bought a few weeks ago. I planned to build it in our small backyard but then I changed my mind, and decided they’ll need more room than we have there since we’re planning to expand the Brahma flock.

Our first three Brahma chicks hatched a few days ago – ds17 had been planning to incubate a new batch of eggs at the end of the week they arrived, so we stuck in the few eggs they had laid along with the rest. Now we have a batch of 70 new chicks. We’ll start incubating another batch of eggs probably this week, this time mostly Brahma eggs, and in all likelihood that will be the final batch of chicks that we’ll hatch out until next year.

They made great progress on the coop and it’s looking good. They needed more supplies and weren’t able to complete it, but in the next couple of days I’ll make a run to the hardware store to get what’s missing so they can finish it.

But before that, tomorrow I want to work on the kitchen, and take out the sinks, counter, base cabinets, detach the top of the island from the cabinet part, then cut down the stone counters and hopefully reassemble it all together. That’s the plan!

Avivah