I can’t believe Rosie is having her last day of preschool as I type. Being a parent is full of bittersweet moments. It’s such a push and pull feeling. Wishing for time to pass, or in this case, for the school year to end, while simultaneously wanting to freeze time. I’m so looking forward to this summer, mainly to experience the feeling of being settled in our new home. Finally at this point, we are starting to feel that way! Which is wild since we are soon approaching one year since we moved in.

Last summer was such a blur for us. A happy blur that I’m thankful for, but stressful at the same time! We had just moved into our new home and the inside of the house was still full of blue tape everywhere and a long punch list that our contractor was working through daily. I kept waiting for the excited feeling of being in a new home to hit me, and I know it seems ungrateful for me to say this, but I just didn’t feel that. There was just so much happening behind the scenes. We’d wake up and have a different subcontractor at our front door almost daily, so we were busy overseeing that in addition to tying up countless loose ends that were emotionally weighing me down.

Meanwhile, the yard was all mounds of dirt… for the entire summer! So our kids didn’t play in the yard, or lack thereof, at all. Outside time spent at home just didn’t happen. That house full of moving boxes, disarrayed furniture, subcontractors, a cat, 75lb dog, and two children home for the summer started to feel real stuffy real quick… ha! And of course that darn dog would go out there and then run back inside, tracking dirt all throughout the new house. Again, all “champagne problems” and at the time, they didn’t even feel like problems at all because we were used to this type of house grind. At that point, it had been almost two years that we had been working on home construction tasks, from the initial purchase of the property, to designing the architectural drawings, to interviewing contractors and making initial selections, initiating tons of surveys and unexpected tests to the property that just felt like bleeding money, to starting the home build, dealing with delays and price increases, and the list goes on and on and on… and on. 

I haven’t ever once spoken about this because I know it wouldn’t sound right, but to be totally transparent, this whole process the last few years has really taken a toll on me. I think a large part of it was building during a time when construction material prices were surging beyond belief, subcontractors were overworked, and we couldn’t get the materials that we really wanted due to the supply chain crisis, but it all was just… a lot. I went from being pretty carefree (aside from normal anxieties we as women and working mothers carry daily) to holding a huge amount of stress on my chest, which has compromised my health in many ways. I tried so hard for it to not affect my parenting, job, or marriage, so I held a lot of it in. Brandon, too. (I think that’s why I lost a lot of my hair in those older pictures I’ve shown in the recent Vegamour stories!)

“This project has really taught me the value of feeling settled at home.”

We’ve always been up for the next project, ready to sell our home and move any chance we could get. But I don’t know if I will be so quick to do that again! At least not building in the way we did this time and not when we have young children like we do. Or maybe it’s just me and I’m just simply not cut out for this! But this project has really taught me the value of feeling settled at home. I mean, that is truly a priceless feeling. It makes me so sad to think of those that will never experience that happy at home feeling. For the past few years now, since we’ve been working on our new home, I’ve mourned our last home and the sweet, settled feeling we had there. It felt just right, almost as if we were Goldilocks and it was baby bear. I’ve missed that settled feeling. So to know we will hopefully experience that this summer with our children, in a home with furniture that has an actual yard (ha!), brings me more joy than I can express!

Of course, for Brandon and me, this means working late at night after the kids go to bed since we will be with the kids during the daytime, but that’s a trade off I’m fine with. Throwing structure out of the window and having a break from the busy school schedule of getting kids out the door at 7am will be something I absolutely treasure. I’m so thankful for jobs that allow us to be flexible with our schedules. Especially since we will have a new baby in the family so soon and the desire for structure to return will hit us like a ton of bricks.

Aside from a few three-hour long day camps scheduled for the kids, we have no big plans telling us where to be and when. We have a family trip scheduled in June and I hope to sneak away one more time before baby comes, but otherwise, we are going to soak up the easy summer days–even if that means a lot of them will be spent watching Moana for the 3000th time and breaking up an argument with the kids because Rosie moved Watson’s Pokemon cards. My word of the year last year was “roots” and I just can’t wait to keep planting those roots while creating a home for our family and the memories to go along with it!

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(I should mention… these bathing suits we are wearing are from my collection with Lainsnow, which is set to launch on Friday, June 2 at noon EST. If you are in Charleston the very next day, we are having a launch party at Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina on June 3rd from 1-3pm! You can shop local vendors, see the collection in real life, enjoy games and fun for the kids, and lots of treats. Come join us!)