Leaping for Your Dreams

After a summer of various challenges, mostly given to us by Oksana, we were 10 minutes from landing back in Pittsburgh. We were in first class again like when we left a few weeks ago. "Mama, do you think the house is done?"

I looked at my now 7 year old and smiled. "I don't know sunshine. I would hope so but I won't know until we land." To be honest I didn't think it would be ready right now, but that didn't mean I didn't hope. "Are you worried that you won't have somewhere to sleep sunshine?" She nodded. I leaned over and kissed her head. "Don't be. We won't be out in the cold without somewhere to stay."

Soon enough the wheels hit the tarmac and it was official, we were home. The three of us moved tiredly through the crowd towards the luggage carousel. Of course for us it was just after 10 pm so I wasn't surprised we were tired. The 12 hours of flying had something to do with it as well. "Come Annushka, we rest in a little while." She perked up a little bit and worked to keep up. She had grown more over the time we were gone but she still had trouble keeping up when she was tired.

Soon enough we got to the baggage carousel and were able to stop for a few minutes. While we waited I turned my phone back on, of course there were messages, but I didn't bother checking them right now. Instead I dialed Moka and waited for him to answer. It rang for a while before I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to find him in front of me. "Hey boss lady, you need a ride?" I threw my arms around him and hugged him.

Evgeni saw some of our bags and went to get them while Anna leaned against Moka. I saw more of them and grabbed them as well. We were only missing 2 bags, one of which was his hockey bag. I spotted it while I heard him spot the last of our personal bags. We collected them and returned to where everyone else was waiting. By now Moka had gotten a luggage cart and was loading our bags onto it.

The first place Moka took us was the old place, not realizing we had sold it. Boy was he surprised. He then took us by the new house and we were able to see first hand the progress. We stopped and got out for a closer look. "Mama it's our house!" Anna shouted loudly as she got out of the car. "Can I go see my room?" She tried taking off but Evgeni grabbed a hold of her.

"Need to see if we can first Annushka." He said deliberately. Fortunately Anna had been so loud that we were noticed and I saw our Foreman coming our way. He waved as he came closer.

"Well here's a surprise! We didn't expect you back for a week or more yet." We all smiled. "Did I hear the little one right? She wants to see her room?" Anna nodded forcefully. "Well then let's find some hardhats and show you around." We found ones for all of us, even Anna, and began the tour.

The foyer looked incredible. The floors were in and the walls were ready for painting. Sneaking a peek in the dining room, it was painted the color we had wanted. "We try and get the enclosed rooms done first and then get the foyer and open areas." That made sense, so it would dry evenly. He showed us the entire first floor first, not letting us step on the tile floors. "They got laid yesterday and they need to set another day before we grout them." We didn't have any kitchen counters yet but everything look good otherwise. The windows in the breakfast nook looked great and gave the area more light.

Anna went into the living room and began doing circles inside it. She made herself so dizzy that she fell down laughing. "I love it Mama! Can I see my room now?" We all laughed at her silliness.

"Well now Miss Anna, that would mean you would have to get up and come upstairs with us. Do you think you can do that?" She almost bounced up at the prospect of seeing her room, even with how tired she truly was. Gene held out his hand. "Come on then, we'll go see if they are done painting yet."

We climbed the stairs and began exploring upstairs. Evgeni and I stopped in the master bedroom to check on its progress. The walls were a shade called Ozone as we had requested. Going to the doorway to the bathroom, it was clear that it’s tile had also been set recently. No counters in here either but everything else looked great. You could even see into the closet and see that it was finished. "I can't wait to get in here and make it really ours." I said cuddling up to my loving husband.

"Me too, now is house but we make it home." he said into my hair. We were all tired but would do our best to stay upright and moving until it was time to collapse. "Come, we go see nursery." We went across the hall to the smallest bedroom in the house. We had decided that when we got pregnant, this would be the baby's room if and until the little one outgrew it. Heading inside, the walls were the Frosted Jade we had asked for. It didn't make the room seem smaller as I feared. "Good room for baby." Evgeni said as he came up behind me and curled around me, resting his hands over my stomach.

"I thought the color might make it feel smaller but it doesn't." We stood there in the room for a few minutes before we heard a shriek of joy from Anna. Then pounding feet came our way.

"Mama Papa come see!" She said loudly as she came into the room we were in. "My room is _so_ pretty!" She came over and began tugging us towards her chosen room. "It's _so_ much better than I thought Mama. I can't wait until Reece can spend the night." That stopped us a little bit, we had gotten a message that Cookie had signed in Minnesota, Reece wouldn't be here this year.

Shaking off our nervousness about telling Anna what had happened, we rounded the last little corner and entered her room. My breath was taken away. Everything we had asked for was done, including the window seat across from her main wall. They were currently painting the trim the white it needed to be. "Isn't it pretty?" Anna said breathlessly. She had fallen for her new room.

We carefully came in, avoiding bumping the painters and got a better look. The accent wall was also done neatly, the stripes were the right width and color but they ended at the windows which would bracket her bed and from there they were the same purple as the rest of the room. Gene smiled as we came in. "Julie and I were talking a little bit about just _how_ we were going to do this wall with Ryan, the head painter. He came up with what you see here, it unifies the room and still gives the extra oomf the room needs." I smiled and checked out the closet, the inside was the same blue as the stripe. Going back I found the attached bathroom was the same blue.

"Thanks for making the closet and bathroom the same shade of blue as the stripe, we did that in the old house and she loved it." I said as I took it all in. The house was coming along nicely, even without toilets and countertops.

"Actually ma'am, thank _you_ for giving us something to do this summer that made all of my crew work to the best of their abilities. The house market hasn't quite bounced back so if this project hadn't come around we would have to lay off some of our guys, not that we wanted to. With this I've been able to keep everyone on and get us past that hump." He motioned us out of Anna's room and back downstairs. As we walked, he continued. "The house wouldn't be so close to completion without my entire crew working as hard as they could to make everything perfect." He leaned in a little bit, "I _might_ have told them whose house we were doing to motivate them."

Geno threw his head back and laughed fully. "It work!" We were now on the main level. "We see downstairs too?" We were nodded and headed down.

Once down we saw that this level was more complete than the other two. "The tile was laid on this level 2 days ago and they should be grouting it soon, if not right now. We're then waiting for countertops and final installations before getting the final inspection for habitability. We should be completely done in 2 weeks, around the time you _said_ you were coming back from your long trip." We looked at each other and then felt guilty. We weren't supposed to be back for another 2 weeks, after a trip to the Black Sea but we were all kind of itching to see the progress that we canceling that trip and came home.

I looked at Gene and smiled shyly. "Caught us. We cancelled a trip to the Black Sea to come home a bit sooner, but if it helps we could easily take a short trip and let you finish without us looking over your shoulder." Zhenya shot me a look that I couldn’t _quite_ decipher. "What? We cancelled a trip to Montreal before we left because of _her_, why can't we take it now? I'm sure we can find places for you to workout and such. If nothing else we can call the guys and ask." The evil grin that spread across Zhenya's face made my heart flutter; he liked the idea of surprising the guys.

“We go stay with Lazy, make him work hard.” Geno laughed and pulled out his phone. I just shook my head and continued looking at our soon to be home. About all that was missing were the countertops and fixtures, but I had faith that they would be in soon enough for us to get into the house before school started.

Gene, Anna, Moka and myself left Zhenya downstairs working on getting a hold of Nealer and went to look in the garage. Inside were all of our appliances, sinks and faucets waiting to be installed. “As you can see, we have everything except the countertops. We’re keeping the garage doors windows covered so that no one knows they are in here. I got a call not long before you got here letting me know _why_ the counters are late. It turns out they had a problem at the plant where it’s made and it set them back a few weeks. They are working 24/7 to get back on schedule and should have our counters soon. In the mean time we get everything else as done as we can get it and inspected if we need to.” I walked through the appliances as he spoke, savoring what would soon be my kitchen, bathrooms and laundry room.

Anna broke my reverie, “Mama is this our kitchen?” I turned towards her and happily nodded. Her young face broke into a huge smile. “I can’t wait Mama!” She skipped into my arms and hugged me tightly.

Zhenya joined us a little while later with a smile on his face. “Lazy say hi, Gary say I come train, be there in 2 days. We go rest now then we figure out driving. Lazy say his mama will be happy to meet you.” Anna squeaked in joy, deafening me temporarily.

We said goodbye to Gene and left our soon-to-be house for Sid and Aleks’ new house. When I had emailed them that we were coming back early they volunteered their new place for a temporary abode. Coming in the door, we set everything down and thanked Moka profusely. “I can’t thank you enough Moka.”

He put a hand up. “Stop, you don’t need to thank me. This summer has been slow. Stace, Ferret and I have been brainstorming ways to streamline our operation and make our offices even better. We can handle another week or two before you really get back.” He was giving me that look that clearly said ‘do not argue, just agree’. I put my hands up and acquiesced. He took my right hand and laid a gentlemanly kiss on the back of it. “Go, do _not_ call. We will be here when you get back.” He checked the time on his phone and cursed mildly. “Crap, I have to go get Robbie. He’s only doing half days right now. We’ve been trading who opens the office and stays a half-day.” I nodded; it made sense to only work half days unless they were needed. “Anyway, you guys will be ok here?” Geno and I both scoffed and nodded. “Ok I’ll see you in a couple weeks.”

He left and we were alone. I went and checked the time and found it was 4 pm now. I looked at my fading family. “I’m not driving tonight, but we need to eat so we might make it to 8 or 9 pm here.”

Geno looked up. “We go out, I drive slow. Go to Eat An Park, have what we want, forget diet tonight.” So that’s exactly what we did. We didn’t even get pulled over either.

Once back at Sid and Aleks’ house, we put in Avengers to help keep us awake for a couple more hours. Sadly this plan failed, we all originally fell asleep on the couch. Geno shook my shoulder sometime later. “Anna in a bed, come we go too.” He walked me to the room we were going to use and helped me get into bed. As we curled around each other, a peace set over me. I drifted off to dreamland safe in the knowledge that we were where we belonged.