Dad

YAKIMA — Arthur Jayson , formerly of Ilwaco, passed away Nov. 5, 2016, in Yakima, Wash., with his family at his side.

Art was born June 2, 1939, on Sandridge Road in Long Beach to Eldon and Elise . Art graduated high school in Shelton and attended college at Eastern Washington University where as a member of the ROTC he enlisted in the Army and served in Korea in the Military Police. Upon completion of his service Art returned to Washington where he began work with the Washington State Patrol in 1957 as a radio operator and shortly thereafter became a trooper. Art served the communities of Yakima Valley, Olympia, and the Long Beach Peninsula.

In 1965, Art met a sassy waitress while on duty and proceeded to order cup of coffee after cup of coffee until she agreed to go on a date. Art and Georgia were married in 1966 and Art adopted Georgia’s son Kevin; they were an instant and happy family. They were joined by a daughter, Terri, in 1968.

Art was funny, practical and handy. He helped his dad build a cabin that still stands in Klipsan Beach, he could fix bicycles and repair just about anything with duct-tape or zip-ties.

Art issued warnings, speeding tickets and pulled folks out of ditches in Pacific County from 1977 until his retirement in 1988. He threatened to place an ad in the high school yearbook thanking the students and teachers for their patronage every year his poor kids were in high school. After retirement Art worked at Ocean Beach Hospital as a ward secretary and in Medical Records.

After leaving the beach Art and Georgia enjoyed life on the road in their fifth-wheel. They returned to the Yakima Valley and marked their 50th wedding anniversary this summer quietly in their home in Yakima.

Art was predeceased by his parents, sister Evelyn, and Katie the cat who adopted him, but liked no one else in the entire world. Art will be deeply missed by Georgia, Kevin (Denise) of Sandy, Utah; their grown daughters Erica and Nikki, Terri (Jason) of Renton, Wash., and one granddaughter, Lucy.

Based on his wishes, there will be no formal service, but an open house will be held Nov. 19 at 2 p.m. to allow friends and families to tell stories about Art. 

Back yard landscaping

Trees along the fence

The pretty maple and some rocks

stepping stones to the gate

the natural hedge/fence to soften the slope

Better late than never.

I planted dahlia bulbs in the spring and this is the first to bloom.  October 30th... better luck next year.

The sorting

Happy face

Ladybug

Well then..

Dad is sick. I am coping, supporting happily but when the world is quiet I am feeling this.

I cannot put down my love, appreciation, memory, and reality of what this man means to me. It is separate from the current reality of stilted conversation and stories retold and retold. Today is where I honor everything he gave me.

Grief happens before the final loss...I did not know this. I suppose it is a blessing that for me at 48, this is a new lesson.

My support system is solid, but I need a quiet corner. I hope that is normal and not a symptom of being walked off.

Blue Friday

Silly girl

Lake Roosevelt

Cousins

Chilling on the pontoon.

No hands!

Peeping Lucy

Teeth

Pre-K graduation

Summer

Love

That kid

It was soo hot that she didn't have time to change out of her school clothes before hitting the sprinkler.

I got  up to get coffee and she spread out.  

Weekend fun

Lucy got a doodle book for her birthday and she adds her own drawings to already pretty cute pages to make them even more cute. There's something about her little stick people that make me happy. 

  

She's growing up, so I let her use a new tool in the kitchen, the strawberry cutter. She did a great job being safe and not eating every other berry. I did give her the pick of the litter to eat before we got started and she ate one the size of her head.

Lucy got a doodle book for her birthday and she adds her own drawings to already pretty cute pages to make them even more cute. There's something about her little stick people that make me happy.  

Oh Eric....you're a silly man.

Zoo day

Is it me or is it EMU?

Zoo day

Fence me in!

Our fence is finally in!  Because the back nine is so far down the ravine the back part of the fencing is impossible to see, but indeed there is a six foot fence down there.   So far, the fence is doing exactly what we didn't know we needed it to do - keep the critters from the green space out of our yard. It has been a long time since a furry being has left me the heart of a dead rat as a gift, but it happened a few times. So far, no more gifts.

Whew.  That was gross. 

Game day

Lucy dressed herself for a game of backetball. Stripes on the ball ergo stripes on her dress and her tights. The visor is simply good sun management.

Easter 2016

The Big 05 Birthday

Whack a cupcake!

Dad will take a stab at it!

Ice Cream Cake!

Bestie Cousin Sleepover!

Spring

The first mow of the lawn!  March 19.

I'm 5!

Whew

We are in!

Two weeks of box moving, carrying, unpacking and sorting and we are mostly finished.  There are still a few zones that need attention but we are living in the house very well at this point.

The beautiful shutters were installed yesterday and we are thrilled.  We are feeling zero guilt about the mix-up and will claim them as our own from this point on.  How they came to be in our lives shall never be spoken of again. 

My office is a happy place to spend my day.  I've got two desks side by side and now my home computer is farther away from the work computer which gives me more work space and less distraction from the duties at hand. Heck, maybe I'll get more work done. 

I have a view from my window where my work desk is of the three homes that are under construction across the street.  It has occurred to me that instead of picking the color of your own house, home buyers should be allowed to select the color of the house(s) that they have to look at the most.  My fingers are crossed that these three beauties will be nice to look at.  We purposely selected a house style that didn't have a heavy stacked rock facade and the house that I can see out the window will be covered in brick or rocks.  I'm hoping for brick.  No matter what, I love my bright place to work.

We broke up with the gym because we never visited, even when we lived at the other house and used part of our furniture budget to purchase the one workout machine that we used when we did go to the gym.  This morning, I took Lucy to day care came home had my morning meetings, then zipped down to the basement and jumped on the elliptical for 25 minutes.  I showered at my lunch break and I think I'm in love with the new routine.

Terri

No-man cave

  Jason's land of the big tv and big couch.  Sadly, during the super bowl party all activity took place upstairs in the tiny tv land.  His wounds were soothed by a Bronco win.

Super!

Toothless luc

Fancy!

All the waiting for the fancy stove and my first meal is a grilled cheese sandwich.

Wait...what?

Ok, now the shutter saga is getting shadier, pun intended.

So, it appears that our builder feels bad about the window treatment order being messed up.  I don't think they can be held responsible for the one shade that arrived broken, but it also seems that they failed to order the shades we paid for on both back doors as well as the large window in the princess bathtub area.

To make things right, they have offered to upgrade the treatment on the door on the main floor to a shutter to match the other two windows (only one of which we have installed.)

This is a VERY pretty option and of course we said yes, but I'm still in awe of the earlier mishap where the windows were measured for the wrong type of treatment.

We will wait in anticipation of when these items will arrive, we have not yet heard a timeline, but I do know that one of the reasons these shutters are so expensive is that they make them custom to fit your exact window.  I don't imagine they have a warehouse of doors and window shutters just laying around.

These lovely things will not be in by Friday.  So, to use the master bathroom we will have to install a lesser temporary solution.  Jason says we should just tape a blanket to the window.  We have this extra one - classy?

Four sleeps until the house is ours.

 

Final kitchen

Stairs

So much for not popping over to look

I was 100% serious about not dropping over to the house to look at the progress, but that evil Jason made me go last night.

I'm so happy we did.

The detail work is happening now.  They are installing the closet and bathroom fixtures.  Our sod has been rolled out and the yards look amazing.  Our front yard is still extremely tiny, but now we could bury at least three people where as at the other house it was a single body yard.  The back yard is by no means expansive, but it is large enough for croquet and I love it.

There were workers in the kitchen installing our crown molding and the posts that will support the overhang on the island.  When selections of cabinetry and crown molding were done we did not have the benefit of having examples of all the other finish work that was standard to the house (posts, doors that sort of thing) and I think our selections look great!

There have been some drawers and pieces with our cabinets that have not been finished and last night we were told that some of the pieces arrived broken and had to be rebuilt.  We had ordered pull out cabinets in the island and in one of the cabinets flanking the stove.  It turns out pull outs were ordered for all the cabinets (which would be one extra) but one of the sets came broken.  The installer was in the kitchen mulling over how to custom build the pull outs and asked us what our preference was.  We made his day by saying we were happy with the one set that was already installed and that he didn't need to rebuild anything.

Making his day made all the workers happy and we got a high five.  Then I walked over to the fireplace to look at the paint job on the tiny and super wrong mantle and the lead wood worker called across the room to me and said "we're going to fix that, you'll love it."   I said "it was supposed to have an overhang right?"  He said something about the paperwork being confusing, but that he was still working on it.   I don't have many expectations as to what it will look like, but I'm hopeful that it will not look like a mistake and be reflective of the other amazing finishes in the house.  He said "trust me, you will love it."  All the other guys were all "he's the best, it will be great,"   I can live with that.

We get to do the formal walk thru tomorrow.  That leaves them with three official work days to finish it all up.  We sign our paperwork on the 20th or 21st.  Money transfers happen on the 21st and we close on the 22nd.

Lucy is holding it together pretty well.  We are being very lenient with attitude and making sure to focus our family time on playing with her.  She's ready for normalcy and I can't wait to give it to her.  She is a champion.  Leniency does not mean that I'm letting her get away with barking orders at me "Mom, I'm HUNGRY.  Juice, Toast!"  That is not how I roll.    She crossed the line this morning and we had a talk about it.  A calm, low toned talk.  Those are scary.

We are letting some rules slide because of the changing environment.  She gets to eat her breakfast in our room until we move, and I'm allowing her to watch the movie in the car on the way to school.  Once we move, our room will be a food free zone and the commute to school will be so short that we'll be back to no movies.  Right now, these are small accommodations and we've already talked about the new rules at the forever house.

Nine days

The Princess Tub

  Can you see it?  My favorite spot in the house will be this six fool long bathtub.  Yes, we had a tub in the old house, but this one is designed for a solo soak. 

It was hard to focus at work yesterday after seeing all the exciting changes in the house.  I stopped by after work and found that the carpets were fully installed, the mirrors in the bathrooms have been placed and all the shower doors are in place.

The under cabinet lighting seems to be working, and Jason's speakers were finally finished.  

We are getting right down to it and the time is going fast, and super slow at the same time.

We have our walk thru Friday, and I'm going to try and stay away until then, so that there are surprises when we do it.

Imagine the soups I will make on this cooktop!

New Photos

The progress last Friday was disappointing and Jason came home from the inspection deflated.  His faith that they would get everything done was diminished.

However, here we are just three and a half work days later and whamo!  It is starting to look sexy as heck in our new house.

I snuck in at 8:00 am this morning and snapped some pictures.   The top pictures shows the under-cabinet lighting and the progress on other electrical requirements such as plugs and switches.  The vent hood is in progress and the oven is ready to go.

The second picture is the nook next to the refrigerator cabinet.  This will be our coffee zone.  Cups up top, and coffee fixins in the drawers below.  

Looking across the room to our sink you can see how bright our kitchen will be even with the counter tops covered.  Jason assures me that he will install a dimmer for the under-cabinet lights so it won't always be as bright as an operating room, but we'll have the option if we want it.

coffee zone

bright kitchen

shutters

office

The last two pictures are the window treatments in the main living area, and then my office.  The Office picture has funky lighting because the walls look yellow when in fact they are grey.

I was thrilled to see that window treatments were mostly installed and that the carpet men were putting down the carpet pad and working on installation.

At a friend's urging we upgraded the carpet pad to the best they had to offer and I don't think we'll regret it.  The warmth, softness and durability will add to the longevity of the carpet (also an upgrade from the standard offering.)  We did learn from the builder grade carpet in the other house.  GO BIG because changing carpet is hard.

I imagine they will be done with the carpet by tomorrow.  I wasn't able to get upstairs because of the carpet install, so all my fun finds were on the main floor.

In addition to what you can see, they also installed the shower door on the main floor.  Because the tile goes all the way to the ceiling, the standard height shower door looks dwarfed but I think I will be able to get over that within about 4 minutes of moving in.

They haven't painted that bathroom the custom color yet, but they will.

I could see that the shutters in the princess bathtub area had been installed on the back side of the house. but not on the window facing the neighbors.  The blinds on all the main floor windows were in with the exception of the door to the deck and the second main living room window.

So...here's a story.  We really wanted the wood shutters on the windows in the main living area, they are beautiful, but super expensive - like $600 per window expensive.  So, we opted to do little shutters on the two windows flanking the fireplace and do the faux (fake) wood blinds on the large expensive windows.  Our logic was, we'd likely never have the little windows open, so the shutters would let in light but be very pretty.

We made our selections at the design center and months pass.  As I'm walking thru this morning I see that one of the two main windows has a shutter on it.  A SHUTTER.  The two little windows have faux wood blinds.  HOLY HECK!  Did the person that came and measured the windows mess up?  We are hoping so.  We won't know until Friday, but keep your fingers crossed.  This would be the first error that has worked in our favor.  The only downside of the shutters is that they can never really be open - we can tilt them, but a clear view of the back will not happen.  But, if you need a clear view of my trees in the back, put your shoes on and go stand on my giant deck!