Constructing Memories

We try to do all things with our own special style and flair. And since this construction project is, Lord willing, the biggest construction project we'll ever do, we knew we had to add our signature to it! I mean, to be fair there are lots of our own special touches (like a bike room!) but when we knew that we were going to have a whole palate of three truck's worth of concrete to play with, we started brainstorming how to make it ours.

We ended up deciding on two pieces of flair.

The first represents all of places that are special to our family:

• Maryland (where Steve, Sam, and I were born)
• Utah (our home for the last 20 years)
• China (WanYing's birthplace)
• Kazakhstan (Sasha's birthplace)
• Mexico (home of Hogar de Amor and our spiritual second home)

The coins will sit right inside the door and they look awesome.

The second decoration (so far) is a pair of unicycle tracks in the bike room.

We thought it was too risky to have somebody ride a unicycle across wet cement, so our first plan was to rig a unicycle to a board and reach as far as we could to make a squiggle in the cement.

It worked remarkably well, especially when the concrete amigos (who were so good-natured about the whole thing!) lent us some pads for Steve to walk on to extend the markings even further.

At the urging of the concrete amigos, we then roused Ben from bed at the crack of 11:30 to ride through the concrete to make another line. We had originally thought this wouldn't be a good idea because:
a) riding a unicycle through wet concrete
b) we didn't really want tracks in the mud room, only in the bike room

But, apparently b was an unfounded concern because when we do the epoxy floor in the mud room the track won't be visible and a was an unfounded concern because Ben.

So, ride he did!

And both tracks look simply marvelous. I love these little touches that make the whole project uniquely ours.