Puppet users - Jan 2014 - Trouble with notify/require/before/subscribe

Greetings,
I am trying to puppetize a process that goes like this:
1) remove package a.i386
2) create repo file
3) install package a.x86_64 from repo
4) update config_file_1
5) update config_file_2
6) update config_file_3
7) start service

Shouldn't be too hard right? Except I have played with every combination I 
can think of using with notify, subscribe, before, and require and I can't 
seem to get this to all happen in the same run. It always does a part of it 
the first run then requires a second run to finish up (a couple of 
variations required three and even four runs!). I am struggling to find out 
where I am going wrong. The code I have right now is the "best" in
that it
always requires _just_ two runs to complete. I edited out a lot of the 
parameters that are trivial just to focus on the dependency problem. I can 
share full code if I really need to but it is a bit messy as I pass all 
kinds of stuff to the template and I don't want to confuse the issue.

Here is the basis of my code:

package { ['a.i386']:
  ensure => absent,
  before => Package['a.x86_64'],
}

yumrepo { "RepoA":
  # stripped out other paramters
  notify => Package['a.x86_64'],
}

package { ['a.x86_64']:
  ensure => absent,
  subscribe => Yumrepo['RepoA'],
}

file { "/etc/config_file_1":
  # stripped out other paramters
  subscribe => Package['a.x86_64'],
}

file { "/etc/config_file_2":
  # stripped out other paramters
  subscribe => Package['a.x86_64'],
}

file { "/etc/config_file_3":
  # stripped out other paramters
  subscribe => Package['a.x86_64'],
}

service { 'a':
  # stripped out other paramters
  subscribe => 
File["/etc/config_file_1","/etc/config_file_2","/etc/config_file_3"],
}

As stated, I get a consistent run out of this. I just have to do it twice.
First run:
a.i386 is removed
Yumrepo is created
scheduling refresh of service
All three files fail to install
service fails

Second run
a.x86_64 is created
scheduling refresh of service
All three files install
service works

Why?

According to this page [1] subscribe "Causes a resource to be applied after
the target resource. The subscribing resource will refresh if the target 
resource changes." Thus the scheduling of a refresh shouldn't happen
until
/after/ the files and NONE of the files are supposed to run until /after/ 
the package is installed! But clearly, this is not the case! At least the 
service schedule happens after the files fail so that is somewhat in order. 
And the repo is created properly, so that is a plus. I have a feeling that 
it is because the yum repo isn't refreshed before trying to install the 
package, but I am not 100% sure on that. As far as I can tell through 
debug, puppet never even attempts to install a.x86_64 until the second run.
[1] 
http://docs.puppetlabs.com/puppet/latest/reference/lang_relationships.html

The only thing left that I can think of that I haven't tried would be to 
shove each process into a subclass then chain them together something like 
this 
{class::remove}->{class::addyum}->{class::install}->{class::configfiles}->{class::service}
but that seems /really/ silly.

Can someone please point out where things are going screwy for me? I would 
greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!

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