14 Best Houses With Big Windows

Maybe this is a good time to tell about houses with big windows. We have some best of galleries to add your insight, imagine some of these amazing galleries. Well, you can use them for inspiration. We added information from each image that we get, including set size and resolution.

Okay, you can use them for inspiration. The information from each image that we get, including set of size and resolution. If you like these picture, you must click the picture to see the large or full size gallery. If you think this is a useful collection please click like/share button, so other people can saw this too. Right here, you can see one of our houses with big windows gallery, there are many picture that you can browse, we hope you like them too.

All the features of the construction industry will be divided into two categories: residential work (constructing properties) and business work which includes constructing schools, retailers, offices and different business buildings. Victorian style homes are usually two stories, with steep roof pitches, dormers, octagonal turrets and naturally the trademark gingerbread trim. These little homes make nice vacation retreats and are also suitable as a starter house or retirement residence for empty nesters. They’re there to inform all concerned in the build precisely what the owner or developer needs and expects out of build when it is completed. Well firstly, the method of making building plans starts when a developer or an investor decides that they want to construct a brand new mission. They are going to work with you from the very begin to the very end so that you’re sure to be happy with the finished venture. While this methodology may be an amazing concept, there are particular benefits to purchasing pre-drawn house plans. Building plans are extraordinarily essential from the very first point of building all the approach to the tip and if they aren’t ready properly there may properly be issues within the constructing process.

The building plans may also embody a listing of specifications that may cite what materials and methods should be used during the construction course of. Their role is to work as a staff to make sure that the constructing is protected, purposeful and that it fulfils the designer’s needs and wants. The architect will act as a go-between between the engineers and likewise as a channel of communication between the proprietor and all the opposite varied members of the design staff. Once the plans have been revised and accomplished they’ll then be given to the developer or the proprietor of the construct to look over. They may then bear a remaining revision if the developer decides to add any features of change any of the format. Large front porches, dormers and a roofline that lies parallel to the highway are the main distinguishing options of Country houses. Farm home and French Country plans may also be included in this class.

Custom designing of your own home can take months to be completed and is extremely costly, usually up to 10 instances the cost of predawn or stock house plans. Once they’ve been accepted the build can start. Once the ideas have been decided the plans will then be sent to the mechanical, electrical and structural engineers who will then look over them. The plans are prepared by architects and engineers and give an overall image of what the finished product should look like while acting as a blueprint to be followed throughout the development course of. Building plans are the single most essential factor in construction building. Take into account that the estimate value to build, would not embody the value of the plans, any modifications you make to the plans or building permit fees. Most of those permit you to search for house plans, by style, variety of bedrooms, baths, with or with out a garage, or by sq. ft. In case you find a home plan that you simply love, however wish to make minor changes, most corporations can have their designers do that for you, at an extra payment.

Pre-drawn house plans are these which might be drawn by architects or residence designers after which offered on the market, unlike those which can be drawn for a person, with enter from the shopper. Wood logs are the primary building material,. Using custom drawn plans can delay the development of your private home by many weeks There are dozens of home styles and actually thousands of plans to choose from, so you possibly can be certain to search out the home of your dreams. There will even be a bit that details the mechanical and engineering plan of the build. Building your new home from pre-drawn plans will be cheaper and doubtless sooner than having your house plans custom drawn. If the building plans are accurate and thorough enough then the building course of ought to be pretty much easy and plans make it more possible that the client will likely be satisfied at the end of the mission. Usually they are going to approach an architect an architect with their ideas and they’ll work collectively to know the kind of building that is needed for the project.

Both forms of constructing require properly prepared building plans if they are to be constructed successfully. If you are on the lookout for some further help with your design and build then why not contact the Gregg Street Group. For more information and for all of your design and construct solutions click on right here! Beach houses, are small one story houses, raised above the ground, and normally have an open flooring plan, with loads of home windows, to get a very good view of the yard.. The plans will include a section of architectural drawings including door and window positioning, flooring plans and partition schedules. This can include how and where the plumbing, the lighting and the wiring will operate. They’re much like Country model in that they feature front porches, dormers and roof- traces that run parallel to the highway. 70,000.00 and 95.000.00, cajun style house plans relying on what part of the country you live in. 133.000.00 relying on the place you reside. So how are these plans created?

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Below are 14 best pictures collection of houses with big windows photo in high resolution. Click the image for larger image size and more details.

Small House Big Window

Yesterday, with dreams of sunshine and dandelion fluff dancing in my head, I spent a better part of the evening feverishly writing out meal plans, complete with green salads and main courses paired with dessert, that I wanted to concoct this coming summer. I recorded appetizers to serve on wide plates and cutting boards. I made breakfast menus to be consumed on the patio in the late morning sun, the lilacs abloom and sparkling with dew, sparrows and chickadees flitting between the red pine branches overhead. The planning was not for your run-of-the-mill “turkey skillet” or “potato soup” weekday meals. They were not even for the occasional lazy weekend breakfast when the leisure of time allows you to slice the fruit prettily and swirl honey over the oatmeal just so. The meal planning I had written down with dark blue ink in a stray notebook, starred for allergies and preferences and bulleted for others; meals like salmon skewers with whole lemon slices and basil sauce, or kati rolls with chicken, mint chutney and mango, were for company.

The entire prospect of it – of preparing guest-worthy meals – filled me so to the brim with giddiness I had to refrain from jumping out of my cozy couch nest (the name I have given the swirl of blankets and pillows I cocoon myself in) and clapping my hands (which I occasionally didn’t refrain from… or apologize for).

This past year of in-person social scarcity, despite its palpable miseries, made room for some self-actualizing perspective. The time to myself preparing food for just my family (or, let’s be honest, opening a frozen pizza box) droned on and on as often a thankless, three-times-a-day event so flat and uninspiring that I needed to put my finger of what exactly the problem was. Questions like: What exactly is so ungratifying about all of this? Do I really miss all that goes into eating with other people? The risks? The self-conscious eating? The social nervousness?

Finally, after a good mulling, I feel able to articulate a few things. One being all that goes along with hosting; the planning, the recipes, the ingredients, the atmosphere… engaging in all of this, for me, is a vital expression of self-love. Because while it is rewarding to see others enjoying the food I make (and truly sometimes not enjoying), my hard-wired nature to make is really what is being satisfied in those moments of setting the table and creating the desirable spread. The event of others coming over to partake is really just a socially acceptable excuse to do it.

Which brings me to this new place I am at. A place of realization. And questions. For one: why the need for a socially acceptable excuse? Why the need for permission?

With perspective I can see now the effects a need for permission to make has had over the past year. For example, I didn’t take a pottery class because it inconvenienced my family’s schedule. I tried to paint “Etsy-ish” wall hangings so the time and resources I put into painting would have, at the very least, financial value. I tried to write and illustrate a children’s book because if “for the children” doesn’t knee-jerk the general audience into a nod for approval then I don’t know what does.

And with all this in mind, during a walk by the lake with a friend the other day, I wondered ALOUD, so loud, in fact, that the dude who had just jogged by turned his head to hear me shout, “What if what I wanted, what I needed, inconvenienced everyone??”

The freedom in simply wondering this was groundbreaking for me in a few ways.

1. As a woman, I have long been conditioned to believe my gifts, the ways in which I conduct myself in the world, must always serve a greater good or advantage other people.
2. As a free-spirited woman, I have long struggled with this blanket expectation. I have felt deep-seeded resentment toward those who came to depend on it, feeling stifled by responsibilities I never wanted to take on in the first place.
3. This resentment has recently manifested in unhealthy ways, singeing the fragile structures of important relationships in my life and perhaps even more harmful, caused inner-conflict and confusion, resulting in varying degrees of self-dislike.

And with all this in mind, this place of realization feels very much like the beginning. The beginning of what, you may ask? A conversation? Another list of questions?

Questions like: What does it mean to make art with no expectation of financial profit? To write a story, a poem, anything from your own heart, truly immune to criticism, and only satisfied with your own opinion?

Will it make you whole and healthy to come to terms with all of this? Will it encourage the energy that I have come to think of as “the figurative river” to flow clean and clear? The debris finally blown away, making way for new ideas, rejuvenation and transformation?

What does rejuvenation and transformation look like in a women’s life anyway? What does it feel like? Will you know, Moana sailing over the seas-style, when it is happening?

I don’t want to be misleading. If anything, the last thing my dear readers need is to feel that they are being preached at by someone who has “arrived” and has the answer for them. If my previous paragraph of questions hasn’t convinced you, I beg you to believe that I am not claiming to have any answers. And I am sure you have some questions yourself. Probably, that is a good start.

And, please know that, by golly, should you arrive at my home this summer, I will make muffins for you. I will pour you and myself a cup of coffee. I will dust off and draw out mismatched lawn chairs for you and your family around our fire pit and relish in the company. The past year has been too long already. I need friends to talk this out with.

The start. This must be the place.

to imagine gratitude

Like the wind that howled between the pine and cedar branches in our yard last night, sweeping snow drifts back into our carefully managed sidewalks and alley parking space, the late winter claustrophobia has settled upon us so savagely I dared to hope for sunshine and warmer temperatures to compensate. But I’ve checked the weather… negative and single digits make up that sullen feed. Small partial suns and little gray clouds. Needless to say, much of our time will be spent in our house this weekend.

I made a list of weekend games we should play, crafts we should do, rooms we should clean to keep ourselves from the stifling kind of boredom I so dread; the kind that too often coaxes me along the breadcrumb trail deep into the land beyond my phone screen. We will finish the book Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban tomorrow morning which will most likely welcome a request to watch the movie. And while I am an avid fan of watching a movie version after reading a book, I vaguely remember my highschool self thinking the third Harry Potter movie was particularly scary. As it is, neither my 8 or 4-year-old will journey upstairs alone no matter how much they need the bathroom. I can’t imagine a dementor visual helping with that. I might encourage The Sound of Music instead.

Last month, as my inbox filled with cheerfully reflective newsletters from various businesses and blogs, I fought a heavy de-motivation to take a step back and glance at the figurative snapshot of where we found ourselves in January 2021. I believe my last post on this blog captured a particularly gloomy early winter state, and I wanted to believe we had something to show for that; that we were finally swimming our way Diana Nyade-style to the sparkling surface, at long-last able to wave to our friends and family on the shore sputtering, “See? We’re okay! We’re doing really just fine! Hope you are too!”

So I took a breath, rolled up my sleeves and wrote a post updating whoever cared to know about our lives so far this year. The post sits unpublished in the archives now, collecting an imaginary layer of cyber dust. Because not long after I conjured up this rather neat-and-tidy figurative photograph of the four of us, almost as if on cue, what I thought was settled in our lives suddenly dematerialized, falling between my fingers like water.

My husband, a union plumber and our primary income, severed a tendon in one of his hands and needed surgery. His cast cocoons his arm now, making, for him, downward facing dog an uncomfortable yoga pose and me the lucky solo washer of dishes and folder of socks. I, after his surgery, spent last week driving across the state to take MTLE exams to apply for my state teaching license, something I had only a few weeks ago gathered up the motivation to schedule and pay for. With schools here back in session, I have started substitute teaching full-time.

I know I should feel some pride in our resilience here, in the evidence of what scrappy humans we are. Yet I can’t help but feel irritated by the disorder and unpredictability of it all; disappointed in the concept that our life so far in Duluth is much like a stubborn house plant, religiously watered, tirelessly fussed-over, yet writhing and threatening to die on us all the same.

It has taken me some time to crawl up from the gloom that settles in with things like winter claustrophobia, with the threat of so many metaphors and of honest-to-goodness dying plants. I have had to teach myself healthy ways to cope. And now, despite the irritation, the seldom dips in panic and fear, I have felt strangely equipt for this disorderly time in our lives. When spiking an emotional fever, I have found meditation in its many forms has been extremely valuable. I also find it a little funny in retrospect. Truly, one year ago, my knees bouncing over the floor, mind channels switching like mad, meditation was far beyond my reach. Now, I find myself craving the stillness, the calm, the visuals that help me to imagine gratitude.

So, I suppose this is my update. I know we are not alone. Many of us are flailing our way to the water’s surface during these long winter months. Sometimes I think we never will make it.

But nevermind that. I am finding it is possible to live peacefully for at least a time with my own flailing, my own defeat, pulling up a chair for it, letting it stay awhile. And I am keeping an eye on the house plant. It really does look unwell, doesn’t it? Nevermind that either. I have a feeling warmer days are ahead. And anyway, a lovely poem comes to mind… the one by Margaret Atwood, which at the end reminds us, “the best ones grow in shadow”

In the early morning an old woman

is picking blackberries in the shade.

It will be too hot later

but right now there’s dew.

Some berries fall: those are for squirrels.

Some are unripe, reserved for bears.

Some go into the metal bowl.

Those are for you, so you may taste them

just for a moment.

That’s good times: one little sweetness

after another, then quickly gone.

Once, this old woman

I’m conjuring up for you

would have been my grandmother.

Years from now it might be you,

if you’re quite lucky.

The hands reaching in

among the leaves and spines

were once my mother’s.

I’ve passed them on.

Decades ahead, you’ll study your own

temporary hands, and you’ll remember.

Don’t cry, this is what happens.

Look! The steel bowl

is almost full. Enough for all of us.

The blackberries gleam like glass,

like the glass ornaments

we hang on trees in December

to remind ourselves to be grateful for snow.

Some berries occur in sun,

but they are smaller.

It’s as I always told you:

the best ones grow in shadow.

Blackberries, from Dearly

By Margaret Atwood

all vitality

Rereading old books has been especially alluring for whatever reason. Turning pages to a book I last read while sitting on an airplane or the beach is a little painful, much like rubbing salt onto an aging, festering wound (forgive the analogy… unfortunately it feels appropriate). And yet, there can be something reassuring about rereading a story you have already embarked with, like tasting the sweeter side of nostalgia. My nights are either spent in a very hard sleep I struggle to revive from or awake every few hours. With the latter, like old friends, these books have been good company. Most recently, Rebecca Lee’s Bobcat and Other Stories has been my bedside companion.

One of the stories in her collection is about a woman who, enduring seldom dips of depression since childhood, was offered the tool of imagining herself suspended above her body and the physical situation around her. Kind of an “objectivity” and “perspective” strategy. The story goes on, and I really do recommend this book to you because the story is very beautiful and complicated. And this very morning, laying in my own bed, I gave the book character’s strategy a try.

I found what I saw from way up there a bit unsettling. It took me a bit of time to recover from it. And recovery, for me, sometimes comes in the form of writing:

Floating a few feet in the air I can see that I am laying in bed too late in the morning.

My kids are downstairs. One, two. Alone, and squabbling, as usual

about the dragons they are drawing.

I unfold into the morning wrapped in a sweater

to toast bagels and pour cereal

and then, tea. Warm in my hands.

The steam from it billowing up

Why does it feel like all vitality is

evaporating from my life,

emptying slowly with each breath

I searched through a notebook for a blank page to write this all down

and found many of the pages full of entries made years ago.

I had written what I had perceived

probably a year ago

the pros and cons of moving.

moving here was something I wanted very much.

I made a list of reasons it was right

to uproot us all and head North

into the city by a lake.

There is no hiding the truth that moving here

has thrown my body to the stars, so to say.

I feel like I am always floating.

The other day I received a letter from a friend by mail.

Why is it comforting to know that you are not alone?

That others are sad,

Sooo…. that’s pretty gloomy I do realize. Strangely, writing it, as sad as it seems, made me feel lighter, like grief can be liquified into dark blue ink and released onto an inanimate object, transformed into something kind of lovely in its sadness. Something, I hope, can be helpful for others to read.

When I really reflect on it, I realize probably it was the December calendar, drawn up with red and green colored pencils yesterday afternoon, that got me. Possibly in subconscious resistance for all 2020 had in store, we did not buy a calendar this year. I am sort of a planning/visual type who likes to see what will happen in the coming weeks every time I go to the fridge for a glass of water. Therefore, I have been making our calendar at the beginning of each month with printer paper, colored pencils and a ruler before magnetizing it to the fridge. This has served as an unintended yet fitting reminder that the best way to trudge through this year is more or less at that pace, one month at a time.

Hesitantly, carefully I constructed December yesterday, early afternoon light falling in through the window, draping over my hands like white ribbons. My 2nd grade son clicking away at a jellyfish presentation across the table, our first “real” Christmas tree winking cheerfully in his corner. We had had to rearrange the house plants in our small space, moving the peace lily to his and his brother bedroom to make room for it. I looked at him, my son, very busy and adapting to his new way of learning from home, and then the Christmas tree, a most profound mascot for nostalgia, both bitter and sweet. Under my hands, drawn up on a piece of paper were thirty-one red numbers written in neatly drawn green squares. Mostly empty.

In the past, planning out December was a bit overwhelming. My son has a birthday early in the month, and then, of course, there’s Christmas.

It hurts to look at the calendar now. It sort of hurts even to hope that next year will be different.

Because for now, I am floating between the thin lines of fearful and hopeful, “ok” and “not okay”, empty and full, contentment and desire.

Today, while driving home from a grocery pickup with my two lads in their back seats, I missed my turn home. I do this almost every time actually, miss 45th Avenue from London Road and have to pick a new road to turn left on, some of them dead ends, others an unclear, wiggly way back to where I am supposed to be.

I threw myself up then, about a half mile above us, snaking around in search of the way home.

From up there, I could see that the particular street was new to us. Through the roof of the van, the two little boys, wrapped up in coats and hats, were content in their seats sharing a Wild Kratts magazine. I could see myself, admiring the new houses strung with Christmas lights.

Last night, before crawling into bed myself, I checked on the lads. One, two.

One a gangle of long limbs wrapped in blankets, the other sprawled like a star fish over his sheets, both bodies warm and dreaming. I suspended myself outside the window, from which you can see the lake, peering in on the scene of myself breathing quietly, the peace lily filling the room with invisible oxygen.

From up there, I can see I have no reason for despair. The sight of it fills me with beautiful gratitude, strange and unexpected hope. And so, while floating among the stars is not my favorite place to be, while and I would much rather find myself planted somewhere, a bedrock under my feet, my littles boy’s hands in mine, looking up a Ursa Major, pointing out Ursa Minor, seeking Orion, I will try to breathe deeply and wait. Good things must be on the horizon. They must be.

all a dream

There is a spot along the lake that is special to me. Toeing from the shoreline is a large gray stone, worn smooth from water and time, indented just slightly, as if impressed by the thumb of God, or as if meant to nest a large, mythical bird. I make my way there while on a daily jog. When I arrive, I stop to stand on it and look out into Lake Superior, for once, my mind empty.

The Lake. It has no concern for the weight I bring to its shoreline. It lashes on, or paddles softly. However it likes. Its behavior is never the same.

Our house is edging toward sanctuary, becoming more familiar. We have lived here for nearly three months now, but it feels like longer. The hybrid/distance learning school model feels like the chain that shackles me here. Folding laundry and putting it into drawers. Wiping down counters. Making beds. Sipping coffee.

What I love best about our house right now, probably, is the window of our son’s room. The dropping leaves from neighborhood trees have drawn the curtain on Lake Superior, shining silver today, between the branches.

Often, when I wake in the middle of the night, I creep up to this window, past the bunked bodies of my children, the room warm with sleep, and look for the ships. There is almost always at least one. A caterpillar of winking lights splitting the black water and sky.

We, my little lads and I, had been reading The Wolf’s Trail by Thomas Peacock, “An Ojibwe’s Tale, told by Wolves”. Last night my oldest son, wrapped in a blanket cocoon, listened quietly as I read the last chapter aloud, swallowing a hard knot in my throat. The book was so deeply felt, so rich with story. With history, and in turn, sadness and hope. If you are a Northern Minnesotan, I implore you to give this book your time. If you are a friend, please feel free to borrow it.

I have huge gratitude for the election of Joe Biden. I don’t know if we can relax and breathe any time soon, but it feels a little safer to dream of a better tomorrow for my kids. I am well aware there exists a large number of Americans who feel the opposite, whose values don’t reflect my own. And while I absolutely believe in democracy, believe in people’s right to vote for the candidate of their choosing, I am still very afraid of what has lured people to Donald Trump. Still screaming into my pillow at night, or out loud, in the car on the way to the grocery store, hoping that the very same hand of God will slap my face, shake my shoulders and say, “Hey! Wake up! It was all a dream!”

How funny. How sad. When whatever holds people to their belief system is what causes them to become the villain in their own belief system’s story. When personal prosperity is the end game. When you are asked to give up nothing.

When I turn and jog away, back up the hill to our little house, our evolving sanctuary, I leave the large gray stone behind and rarely think about. My mind goes back to puzzling over things both mundane and not-so-mundane, to work at the stubborn knot deep in my own head. I bring the weight of our last few months away with me; that hybrid school just switched to distance learning for the foreseeable future due to spiking Covid cases in our new county. The work of establishing everything new in complicated systems of living; new state drivers licenses and vehicle registrations, doctor visits and piano teachers. The fact that, on a day like today, when his little brother is blessedly still in preschool, my 7-year-old feels like an annoying office mate, asking me how to spell every other word in a paragraph he has been assigned to write about the weekend. He chips cheerfully away at homeschool SeeSaw tasks as I work on this post, randomly inserting a math riddle and shark fact for good measure, just often enough to make me feel crazy.

The stone disappears behind me, but I have already forgotten it.

what will grow

Money is a bit tight for us again, sort of like the early days of our marriage, I try to romanticize. Yet the other day, in an indulgent mood, I bought a pack of tall, cream-colored coconut wax candles from our local Whole Foods co-op. Yesterday, we lit one for some lunchtime ambiance. By the time dishes were cleared after dinner, it had burned itself down to a nubbin. I hadn’t even noticed how short it had become until it was gone.

And just like that, the sweet mercy of summer, the rare beauty of fall, is now behind us. Only a few battered yellow and red leaves cling hopelessly to tired branches. The first snow of the season blankets pine needle clusters. A smooth, slaty sky serves as a backdrop.

My family has welcomed a change in season at every turn of 2020 so far. My lads are thrilled about early snow, throwing Halloween costume plans to the wintery winds and begging for Christmas music (it is tempting… but I have refrained). Yet these signs of early winter have signaled a funky dread deep in my belly. The reality of Covid looms on. I had long abandoned a hope for “normalcy” to return anytime soon, embraced it even. But with the swift arrival of colder temperatures and winter weather, I fear for businesses, for schools, for whatever shred of hard-earned hope we have to be met with too-familiar challenges.

Why am I talking about this? I hadn’t meant to… I don’t even like thinking about it. Somewhere, deep below the frequency of anxiety rattling in my head like marbles in an old tin lunchbox there flows a steady current of hope; a lick of faith that humans were made to weather these hard seasons. Such faith, however feeble, manages to tamper the marbles, bring their incessant clanging to a rolling hum in my conscious. I am grateful for that.

Grateful enough to have been cultivating a to-do-list before the end of 2020. Very lofty of me, I know. But in this new space I find myself subconsciously developing new goals, hungering for all I can do with my hands.

Cooking and baking, my old loves, are still a sometimes satisfying endeavor, though most often not. I attribute some of this to the food allergy juggling… the wheat, dairy, egg, soy, peanut and tree nut-free cookies expanding to puddles in the oven, the inability to rely on trusty gluten, dairy fat and beautiful brown eggs to give baked goods their plush and shine. These days, overall, I find myself avoiding baking and other domestic tasks. I am still and probably forever an auto-pilot house cleaner. But the honest-to-goodness satisfaction I once felt for getting my weekday meal plan ducks in a row; slapping a meal on the table or pouring a fresh batch of granola into wide-mouth mason jars, has lost its old luster, if only temporarily.

Now… to tackle this topic? The election:

My 7 year old has been asking a lot of questions about the election, and we have been pretty honest with him. Somewhere out there is a child psychologist shaking their head, wagging a finger, perhaps even booming over a megaphone how important it is that the adult and child world remain SEPARATE; to let kids be kids and adulthood remain a muffled “wha-wha-wha-wha” voice, Charly Brown-style, well over their heads.

I can’t say I disagree with that. However, I am no better at minimizing good questions from children than I am at calling wine… shudder… “mommy juice”.

I mean, the kid can read. It would take an act of forced ignorance for a bright 7-year-old to not notice the endless parade of “TRUMP” vs “Biden/Harris” banners lining yards and highways, least of all the Biden poster in ours.

(Sidebar: our across-the-street neighbors have a SWEET Ruth Bader Ginsburg poster in theirs that says, “VOTE: Tell them RUTH sent you”.)

Our son internalizes our responses. Then asks more questions. We try to stick to the facts. It has long been our parenting philosophy that it is not our job to tell him what to think. I really, really try to be a gardener, not a carpenter, when it comes to parenting. I try to keep the soil healthy, well-maintained, and let what will grow, grow, with no specific outcome in mind.

I sometimes think he will remember these question/answer sessions for many years to come. I can almost see it in his sharp, sparkling green-gray eyes; the clouds parting and the shocking truth revealed: adults don’t have it all together. There is no such thing as a unified band of adults ruling over children. We are imperfect, through and through and through.

Those what-is-left-of-the-year goals I mentioned: I want to draw once a day; to get better at forming an image in my mind and, by trial and error, coaxing it to life. And to improve on observation drawing, too. I told my lad the other day, as the 7-year-old struggled to draw a dragon, discouragement and fear radiating from his sandy blond head, that he must always have the courage to draw; that it is the one thing I find adults are consistently afraid to do. Drawing is hard work and risky business, but bringing forth oneself into the world in such a way is sacred.

I want gulp down a few more books, and read more poetry. I just finished a third read of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender, which took me on a real nostalgic and enlightening journey. I read it first probably 9 years ago when my husband and I were newlyweds here in Duluth. I remember finding it in the library after returning one of my other favorites by her, Willful Creatures. I remember swallowing it whole. Then, years later, being surprised to find it in our new local library in Northwest Iowa.

Very recently I was craving the companionship of this old friend, longing for Aimee Bender and her melancholy, and ordered in through a local book store here in Duluth. Over the years the story has landed differently for me. A gift.

I want to learn how to make Terrazzo plates. To pour the resin ad assemble the colorful pieces and sand it down smooth. Any tips or suggestions?

I want to start at least one wood working project.

And if what remains of 2020 burns itself down as inconspicuously as our candle, just under our noses, so be it.

If we are haunted by the the nightmarish monsters of our own making to the very end, let’s take it as it comes. Lets fix what we can. And we can.

I will be grateful for what I can get done, and what feeble hope I feel now despite the low-rolling sounds of anxiety marbles. There is much to do.

My oldest son and I finished a pint of cardamom ice cream last night, standing around the cardboard container in my hand like witches over a cauldron, our spoons dipping in one after the other. We were sneaking the moment as his father tucked the little brother into bed. I looked down at my oldest son then, spoon in his mouth, knowing full well it wouldn’t be long until his long, great dane-like body catches up to mine in height, and wondered if this is what I wanted for him.

We have been together so much since Covid began. So isolated from other people. So soley together, facing the world and its problems. I felt that sickly weight of doubt: I don’t really know what I am doing, how to pace myself, how to garden his and his brother’s life into their own.

I also felt strange peace. The rolling marbles still audible, but the humming undercurrent of faith promising it will be okay.

Maybe it was the ice cream.

a descent

I hadn’t opened my laptop in a while. When I did early one morning recently, before my kids awoke, I was stung with the unpleasant reminder of what I had been previously working on: my Minnesota teaching license. I had been through that wringer before in both Iowa and South Dakota. It turns out, much as I expected but had procrastinated learning, Minnesota has its own set of benchmarks, standards for licensure and financial dues. I clicked out of all the tabs and screen shots acquainted with it. I would deal with it later. I wanted to write.

A tiny bowl of sea glass kept me company that morning; little nuggets of dark emerald and smoky, pale green, pearly white and rich bronze: a treasure collected by my youngest son. He had been sorting through and trading them with his brother the night before and had forgotten to take them up to his room before bed.

The past few weeks had found us in the thick of a most pleasurable early fall, high on the beauty of silk, yellow birch leaves and the splashy hot oranges of maple. Whether it be along a sparkling sapphire lake, reflecting a cloudless sky or a trail in the woods, wafting a cool fog, every evening run or walk outdoors felt like strolling through a theme park exhibition; a beauty that doesn’t seem real.

That morning, as I sat, my fingers tapping away at the laptop keys, I wondered if my children had noticed, really noticed the fleeting, rare loveliness, if they were drinking it in as I was. My guess was probably not. They have a knack for taking advantage of situations, assuming everything is normal. If the glories of a northern fall, the freshness of this air, the sight of the lake from their car window as we drive anywhere is “normal” and therefore, slightly un-special to them, I could live with it.

From where I sat that early morning, we were feeling a little more in a rhythm with school. I had begun to substitute teach on days that line up with both my son’s school schedule. To my surprise, the hybrid system had gone smoothly on our end so far, though not without shortcomings. We are privileged to be able to make this work; to ensure my kids are being educated in a way I see sufficient. I know many, many other families are not so fortunate. Many parents have to work full-time. Many families are struggling to keep up. I want to scream in the face of the unfairness of it, much like I want to scream in the face of the humans responsible for the images of Donald Trump looking saintly, at least to the extent that is possible, showing up in our mailbox.

If I can go back in time, to the many months ago when we decided this move was something we wanted to do, even in the year 2020 when everything feels quite risky and big, I can almost pinpoint the beginning of a descent for me. I do not mean “descent” in a negative sense. But more on that later.

Before our decision to move I felt, for the most part, sane and steady in our predictable life. And then, after my husband committed to a job in Duluth, MN came the tidal wave of actions that needed to take place in order to make it possible. I pat myself on the back for the fact that I think I raised to the occasion. I am a good planner, and usually, a good communicator (aside from within my family… that ball usually gets dropped on my toes). We listed our house with a realtor. I prepared it for showings… so, so many showings. I lived alone for weeks with my kids and cleared out unwanted storage. I donated baby items and clothes and furniture. I sold tables and a deep freeze on Craigslist. I packed by myself while crying to the Hamilton soundtrack. I drank a lot of wine. I booked a rental property and signed buyer agreements on a house we hoped very much to buy. I worried. I read alone in bed. I slept by myself for 6 weeks.

And when the day came to move, my brother and father-in-law drove up from Des Moines with two trailers. A friend came back form Duluth with my husband and we packed up everything we had and drove 6 hours north to a storage unit. That day ended up being, hands down, the most physically and psychologically challenging day of my life. I suppressed my feelings pretty well, I think. I was the only woman in the presence of men, after all, and had something, I guess, to prove.

I adjusted to a temporary life in a rental with my two sons and made more decisions: where to send our kids to school, which doctors to use, where I should work, and when, and if. We waited for an announcement from the governor over what school would look like this year due to Coved, not knowing what to expect. I was offered jobs, good jobs, I didn’t expect to be offered. I did what so many women are disproportionately doing right now… I turned them down. Because as much as I wanted to work, without full-time school, and no promise for change, there didn’t seem like a good way to do it.

We bought a house and moved into it. I do not say that with even a hint of casualness. [Read with elation and joy in my tone of voice!] We never dreamed we would be able to buy a house in Duluth. My husband and I, combined, have a lot of student debt. My husband and I, good millennials, have never made enough money. But by some stroke of luck, we did. We bought this house. We love this house.

If you don’t believe in the human soul, or a human psyche, I get it. I see that perspective, pretty clearly, in fact. And I used to agree. You will probably read what is coming with more than a hint of disbelief. And I can live with that, too. I am a woman, after all. I am used to suspicious, sideways glances.

Yet within all this outward activity, deep in my mind, in my soul, I had been/have been descending, I believe, into deeper parts of myself. I have been asking questions I never dared to ask: who am I, really? Am I just a mother? A wife? Am I only as valuable as a clean house and neatly packed lunch boxes? What have I never allowed myself to do? Who have I always wanted to be, but resisted because what it took to become her was too self-indulgent, too unimportant by a societal outlook, too risky?

Making the moving journey a reality and asking these questions freely has changed parts of myself, of my heart, mind and soul in ways I do not think I would have liked a year ago.

There is photo on the fridge that I keep meaning to take down. All four of us are in it, frozen for a moment in time on a September afternoon one year ago. In the photo I am in that “sane and steady” phase of life. I look so put-together, almost laughably so. My long hair glows almost white against a green pine background. My burgundy turtle neck, tucked into black high-rise jeans, is complimented by a circular pair of small, gold earrings. My sons have fresh hair cuts and are smiling easily, leaning in on us. My husband and I stand on either side of them, our bodies positioned in a traditional photo arrangement.

The family in that picture, my family, has changed since then. Outwardly, yes, a bit. Especially on account of my growing sons. But my hair is still long. The turtle neck hangs in our new closet and I wear those jeans almost daily. The earrings; their whereabouts are beyond me. But the women in the picture is a different person. She would have been too afraid to move to Duluth. She would have held even entertaining the possibility of it at arms length. She didn’t want to descend, to ask who she was. I cannot relate to her anymore.

We are almost through the whole Ramona series with just one book left, Ramona Forever. In a previous post, I came down quite hard on Mrs. Quimby for being too consistent, too good. I must retract because the Quimby’s have been through significant change since. My sweet Romana, a beloved book character from my childhood, and now, my children’s, is in the thick of what it means to be a family that evolves. I reflected on this today, proud of the fictional family. And then, proud of us; for the changes being made that you can’t see. For the changes beneath the river.

When my kids awoke later that morning, from where I sat typing in the same room, they started playing checkers. A bowl of sea glass glimmered to my left. A tall window, brining in a peaceful, gray light was open to my right. And though I looked at my children with fierce, wild love, I also looked out that window and was filled with fierce, wild longing for myself.

early september

(This post has been in development for the past few days. I have had to go back and edit a few times to keep feelings or perspective up-to-date. Life is fleeting. No mood or circumstance stays relevant for long. And while some of this post doesn’t exactly match my current state this early morning, I thought I would post it anyway. There is value in that, I think; in marking a moment, even in the midst of much change. And so…)

My laptop sits, sinking slightly into the plush gray blanket in the new house we officially bought and moved into nearly two weeks ago. Also sitting on the blanket: a tangle of necklaces sprawled like hastily stashed pirate’s bounty: A post-moving treasure.

The rental house we occupied during our first month here was across from an understated park with cascading sidewalks, colorful murals and a stone turret overlooking the city. Because the weather was glorious, my lads and I seized every opportunity to pack lunches and spend the afternoon by the lake.

If the weather was less than glorious, there were creeks and waterfalls and woods to explore.

I established an adventurous, uphill running route that spat me out on a street dotted with houses draped in ivy and buried in pine. A deer family would frequently meet me at the top; casually nibbling lilac leaves, studying me with caution.

I turned down a job due to the mostly citywide hybrid system of learning and uncertainty of childcare.

My sister came to visit; a much-needed balm for my soul. On a hike through the woods, we saw a black bear.

My husband and I decided on a school to send our oldest son; quite a different one from where we anticipated.

And when we all began to feel that the life we were living was something we could get used to, the lake turned cold and color began to drain from the leaves. We closed on a house and moved to an entirely new neighborhood.

The house we now call ours, built in 1893, in a small-world circumstance belonged to a college friend of mine. She has very good taste in curtains and paint colors and left behind the gifts of her green thumb. The garden in traced with tall, climbing pea plants, blooming with pink and purple petals now. There are beans, in an early fall state, and squash, lettuce, a nice variety of herbs, colorful zinnia and large orange and red blooms that are either Chrysanthemum or Dahlia, I do not know.

Sunflowers bow along the fence at the back of the yard with young lilac bushes, maple and plum trees planted nearby. An apple tree shades the trampoline we bought on day 2 of home ownership; a distraction for the lads as we did the unpacking.

Wistful and elegant, a silver birch leans over a large sandbox nestled up against a sweet little stone patio. The branches of what I believe to be an old white pine loom over it, dropping pine cones here and there. My youngest son collects them and delivers them to me all day. Woodpeckers visit us in the morning. Pileated woodpeckers, my oldest would want me to say. Blue jays and goldfinch flit in and out all afternoon, migrators I suppose, and little brown rabbits eat grass near the compost in the evening. The house is a dream.

And yet, in the quiet and in-between moments, a strange feeling can creep in. Restarting, again, has brought on those familiar waves of emptiness. The reoccuring questions without answers.

Last weekend I opened my first can of pumpkin to make muffins; the kind with a thick, crunchy cap of blended cinnamon and sugar. My husband and I packed hats and mittens and drove our lads to a rocky beach to eat our festive breakfast on a blanket and watch a loon drive for fish and reemerged.

Last night, for dinner, I made chana masala, a dish rooted in India, and served it with lemon wedges and plain yogurt and cilantro. My kids ate only a little. I had four helpings.

Today is our oldest son’s first day of in-person learning. At drop-off he bravely climbed out of the van to start a second grade year in a new school where he knows absolutely no one. For dinner, he has requested “pizza sandwiches”, to which I will happily oblige. He asked I pack him a few wafers of stroopwafel as a school snack; a child after his father’s own heart.

These may seem like small things, futile to some. But for me, through transition or tragedy, the kitchen in an anchor. While last week we made due with the end of chip bags and last-minute ham sandwiches, this week I find myself looking through the fridge and cupboards, planning what to cook for my family. The location of the salt and pepper grinder, the place for my glass of water, where to mindlessly scoop the bowls and spoons from, and the light the summons time for cooking are all becoming friendly and familiar. And for that I am thankful.

Today, my youngest plays contently downstairs for the first time in a very long while without his brother.

The dog sleeps in his new spot.

I have reheated my coffee 4 times. The necklaces wait for me.

There is a lull in most mornings now

where I grasp for substance

and meaning in how to use this freedom.

I am very comfortable with being told what to do, to have expectations laid before me.

I relish a deadline. The nod of approval from someone high above me.

My two children care nothing for these things.

They want warmth and nurture.

I had been reading Beverly Cleary and and Shirley Hughs to them,

trying to glean from the mothers in these stories

all that is required to deliver such things into the world of two young lads.

Recently, we started reading Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach.

Adults fail in his stories.

They are villains, most often

which I was grateful to recall

when I threw my son’s Lego airplane across the room

after he taunted his brother with it

and it shattered into a hundred pieces

that we kept finding

their earliest narrative

My two lads and I spent the entire morning in each other’s company. While I certainly appreciate morning solitude – a cup of coffee with a book in my lap or a long stare out the window, alone with my thoughts – I also have come to not mind when a fleshy, sun-kissed someone with his underwear on backward (to show the picture in front, of course) slides under the sheets next to me without uttering a word. He knows he is welcome.

When they both awoke, I made them pancakes. They proclaimed that they dearly miss waffles though I have explained, possibly every morning, that the iron is somewhere in storage.

I made myself a pot of coffee. I sat on the couch and read a few chapters of Ramona the Pest to them while they tinkered through an enormous pile of Legos sprawled within the bay window and intertwined in the deeply shaggy rental house rug, now a floor tapestry of white dog hair.

While the lads watched their morning shows, I made minestrone soup with leeks, fennel and green lentils for friends who just had a baby. After lunch, we drove to the co-op to pick out a few orange and burgundy Dahlia stems and a pint of vanilla ice cream to go with the pear, ginger and caramel cake I baked in an aluminum pan the night before. We delivered the meal, admired the baby from 6-feet away, and drove to a little river with big gray stones and fallen trees and waterfalls for climbing. The river makes its winding way close to the house we plan to close on at the end of this month. The school my oldest son will attend is named after it.

The lads wore their swimming suits and goggles. Here and there, thimbleberries that grow along the river were ripe for picking. I gingerly stepped off the path to pick them for the littles lad, who loves to snack on them. We drove home and the lads requested a movie, which I had to admit, despite all my qualms and conflict with screen time, sounded nice. I made popcorn and another pot of coffee and let the dog lay against my legs on the floor. It was a better day.

There have been a great deal of crying on my part these past few days for reasons I don’t entirely understand. They occur suddenly and without warning: over the dog hair in the shaggy carpet, when it rains unexpectedly.

I went to bed at 9:30 pm and woke up much earlier than my typical witching hour, 11:38 pm glowing on the screen of my phone. It soon became clear that sleep would not return.

I started thinking about the memories my husband and I shared from our childhood before we fell asleep that night. His memories reside in Southern Iowa. He recalled the evening glimmer of small fishing lakes and homemade applesauce with red hots stirred in.

What came to my mind: Reading Beverly Cleary’s books about Ramona and Beezus Quimby and Henry Huggins; digesting a world where children, while sometimes misunderstood by the adults around them, feel safe and secure in their presence. I shared with my husband that within the stories there is an undertone that adulthood seems like a rather uneventful time in a child’s perspective. When I read the books as a child, this assumption was something I could relate to. Reading these books to my children now, as an adult, has made me feel very lucky for that.

And while I long for this assumption to be true for my kids; for their lives to be consumed by interests in dinosaurs and dragons and rocks and pine cones, for their imaginations and curiosities to occupy much of their thoughts, for my adult presence to be seamless and reliable, boring as an old stump compared to their childhood glory, I fear it is just not so. I fear that I have demonstrated for my children the exact opposite. My kids know too well that adulthood is messy. That it is emotional. And I fear I have dragged them so deep into this knowing that their own childhood feels obsolete compared to the puzzle… dare I say, the nightmare… of being a grown up.

I try to remember that the Quimby’s, ordinary and middle-class, didn’t raise children through the pandemic of COVED-19 or the terrifying reality of the Donald Trump presidency. That Mrs. and Mr. Quimby probably did not share our student debt burden. That Mrs. Quimby was able to stay home with her children without much trouble (at least in the early years… Ramona and Her Father takes a turn). That they didn’t move 6 times with at least one child in tow (yes, yes we have) and change jobs possibly the same amount of times and therefore juggle full-time childcare with everyday life or even the complicated emotions that come with teaching your own spirited child at a public school (for the past two years I was my son’s art teacher).

Or maybe there was an undiscussed depth to Mrs. Quimby. Reading Mother’s Before, which I so, so recommend to all women, should have taught me to assume so. Perhaps she, the product of her generation, was a lot more restrained; a lot better at managing the ups and downs of adulthood in the presence of her children.

Or perhaps for Ramona, Beezus and Henry, resilient and very busy with their own world, simply carried on their merry way. Perhaps they had not the faintest interest in the weight of adulthood on their parents. And therefore, it had no place in the narrative.

As for my lads, I wonder, what will their earliest narrative be? Will they trust that I adored them at the tender ages for 4 and 7? Will they believe how much I wished I were perfect for them: patient, sweet and gentle despite my more fiery reality? Will they remember the bedtime songs and soft sweeping of hair from their eye? Will they remember pancakes and popcorn and afternoon movies? Will they remember the books and books and books I read aloud to them? How hard they could make me laugh? How many times their father and I had to exchange suppressed smiles of amusement over their statements about the world? The hot chocolate and hand-thrown mugs and piles of miniature marshmallows after playing in the snow? Will they recall my praise for their drawings of dinosaurs and birds and fish? Of homemade Halloween costumes? Of readily applied bandaids, always enough to go around, and the faithful kisses laid over two-week-old scabs due to the claim they still hurt?

Of swimming along side me in the lake, their little pruny fingers wrapped around my legs and waist, or my dedicated ventures through the woods for ripe thimbleberries?

Or will I be a shadow in the background of dinosaurs, dragons, rocks and pinecones?

who were they for?

(No pictures for this post, and boy does it feel like it is missing something. Goodness knows my camera is full of them. My USB cord, however, is buried somewhere deep in a storage unit. So until next time…)

For these past few nights 3:00 am has been my witching hour. I am lucky to be a good sleeper, and so, after checking the time and lying awake a bit, sleep normally finds me again. Tonight, however, 3:00 am struck with the sound of my youngest son falling out of bed. On his back, on top of the sheets due to the warm nights with his little ankles crossed and a swell of “buddies” under each arm, my youngest son has been cozily returned to the bed that he, for the month, shares with his brother and is once again fast asleep. The reactive jolt that woke me, however, brought me here.

I have done a fair amount of journaling this past week. For me, journalling is a new phenomenon. Writing used to only happen in blog format, my thoughts unraveling in a way that was intended for others to read. It has felt good to keep a private journal. To write in a way that is deeply honest for the sake of myself.

Before we moved my mother gave me an old journal she had found somewhere in their house. The journal, I eventually recalled, was given to me as a gift in high school. I examined the exterior objectively, noting how good it felt in my hands and that the pages, mostly blank, were smooth as butter. The journal held no writing. Instead, there were a few pages, oddly spaced-out as if more was intended to be used, of picture collages I had made for a few people who were important to me at the time.

My sister, 6 years younger, had a few pages dedicated to the world we had fashioned for ourselves in 2007. Her pages were strewn with computer print-outs of movies like Moulin Rouge, Phantom of the Opera, and Pirates of the Caribbean. There was a drawing of a beach, a place we were going to live together someday. There were pictures of her and I together, feeling silly, looking happy.

I wanted the discovery of the sister collage to summon only sweet nostalgia. I wanted to block out an undeniable sadness flooding in. Because the early version of what are now socially acceptable “selfies” cut and pasted onto the pages of the journal attempt to mask how we were both hurting in our own secret ways, not knowing how to share it with the other. There was a lot to be reckoned with that we couldn’t articulate then. And so we held tight to worlds that transported us to Paris, to the ocean, aboard pirate ships.

There were computer print-outs, carefully cut out and trapped in the binding of early renaissance and bohemian-ish French art, of birds and trees. Who were they for?

We are renting a house for the entire month of August and plan/hope/pray to close on our own home at the end of the month. This time of limbo has been graced with beautiful weather that has kept me from twiddling my thumbs in a house that is not mine and welcomed us to the shores of Lake Superior almost daily. My hair is a gnarly mess, matted from lake water and sand. They boys nightly bath in the rental house cast-iron, clawfoot tub doesn’t leave enough warm water for my husband and I to wash our own hair, so a bit mangy, at least for the near future, we will be. Our beach towels flap gently over our rental house patio chairs and a pale blue plastic bucket sits full and content with special rocks collected from the beach.

I am trying very hard to be able to stand not knowing what will happen next. I am trying not to dread the hybrid system of school and all the uncertainty it promises. I am trying not to dread future scarcities that come with moving and buying a house, with coved-19 and depending on one income. About how we will fit our son’s beds in their new tiny room or where to put their Legos.

I am trying to stand not knowing what the future has in store for me beyond motherhood, beyond dishes and laundry and potential home schooling. There aren’t answers today. But there is a big lake down the hill rimmed with pine trees and blue sky. There are loons there, and woodpeckers and seagulls. There are wildflowers and mosquitos and minnows and beautifully smooth stones and black and brown squirrels and a whole topology to digest, to revere.

There is a hope for my lad’s internal clocks to be set by whether the lake is just warm enough for swimming, when it’s time to search for thimbleberries, when the trees along their favorite trails turn red, orange and yellow.

Hope. What a thing.

one more time

I had hoped to write one more time before moving. Up until tonight I was beginning to fear it wouldn’t happen. It turns out that parenting solo during a pandemic, even without homeschooling, is a little tiring.

An update: My two sons, dog and I are nearly through week 6 of living without my husband and their father. On June 22nd he began living and working roughly 6 hours from the place we have called home for the past 7 years. He has made that long drive back each weekend to help plan and pack for when we join him. And this Saturday, together as a family, we will turn left at the old oak tree at the end of 4th street and drive North. This time, for good.

While 6 weeks ago I felt strong, capable and confident in my single-parenting ambitions; in remembering to put the garbage out Tuesday night and locking the doors before bed and only forgetting to make coffee for myself a handful of times…

…learning to close the attic garage access (that never would have happened otherwise) and fixing a doorknob and getting the coals just right for marshmallows…

… making our way through the Wings of Fire series and Beverly Cleary with my kids and brushing their teeth and sliding elastic bands behind little ears and keeping the face masks handy…

…in spite of the short list of what I consider to be personal success during these past weeks, today, my faults seem to trail long over the page. My fear. My pride (are they the same thing?). My rage, which so easily catches fire these days and burns everyone within a 100 mile radius. I am trying to forgive myself. My kids do it so easily. But it is hard for me, as my husband kindly reminded me over the phone tonight. It always has been.

For whatever reason I thought writing this would be easy. I though saying goodbye to a community and a home that brought shelter and “place” for the past 7 years would be graced with a dash of wisdom. That folks could admire a knowing, far-off look in my eye when I explained why we were leaving or when I said goodbye.

Do you want to know how I actually feel? Unsure. Loss. And while we are saying “yes” to raising our young family near lush pine forests and clean water, “yes” to individuality, and “yes” to a new home and community, I can’t shake the fact that we are also saying, “yes” to a good amount of chaos and possibly struggle.

I am trying to remember that is simply how risk works. That through struggle and chaos comes new development. That with all endings, all death, and all that can be laid to rest, comes new life. And the cycle continues.

We are leaving behind a few very heavy pots of petunias, chives and peas, and also, our little garden. We were able to get a few very good yellow wax bean harvests. My sons picked shiny green peppers and refused to eat them, like every summer. We will not see our tomatoes slowly blush from green to red or our sunflowers bloom.

I find it strange, though, that our cucumber and squash plants, always faithful, did not come up this year. Instead, eggplant has made its debut. Its stands tall, proud and has given us three beautiful, shining eggplants. Whenever I go to the garden now to pull weeds or pluck a bean or two I cant help but take a moment just look at it for little a while; at the pale, violet flowers and cheerful, sage-colored leaves.

A third bird has made a nest in the bird box my son and his father built together this spring. Since clasping it to the fence in late March I have watched the past two birds heave out what nesting materials the previous bird used to make room for their own eggs. We told our son we would build him another bird box in our new yard. He wants to build a bat box for our new home instead.