Thanks for my house

I always have a Thanksblogging post about being thankful for my house. And I am! I have been so grateful to have had a cozy and affordable place to live for our entire marriage. I love to be home. I love coming home. Our current house is finally starting to feel like home after a year.

If I’m totally honest, I’m a little worried about the future of the housing market where I live, if the blustering promises about gutting the federal workforce turn out to be true… if major changes do happen and jobs move out of this area, the local economy could either eventually or suddenly take a big hit.

But I am hoping that it turns out to be bluster after all and that our local economy, public school system, job market and housing market will all stay stable. Here goes nothin’.

Thanks for my house

I have done thankful posts in November for several years now and I always say thanks for my house. It feels so weird to say thanks for my house, in my new house. The new house doesn’t feel like home yet. Frankly it is a huge mess. 😂  I am reminding myself to be patient and enjoy the journey. And despite the chaos I am very, very thankful for this house!

Look, you’ve started across already

Ok so we are officially out of the townhouse after two furious weeks of packing and moving, and two chaotic weeks of unpacking and losing things, and now that I’ve had two seconds to breathe, I have been thinking about why I had such strong feelings about leaving the townhouse.

We bought the townhouse when I was 26 years old, our first home purchase. Theo was 3, Ida was 18 months, and Lars and Polly were tucked away in the “don’t even know that I want this yet” corner of my dreams.

We bought it from a bank, who had taken it from the divorcing couple who could no longer afford the payments. In 2010 there were a lot of homes like that: mortgage defaults after the house of cards fell in 2008 and families had hung on as long as they could.

The first year in that house was a rollercoaster. I mostly have really happy memories of it. Just Theo and Ida and me, doing our thing, free as little birds.

By the end of that first year, I was heavily pregnant with Lars and back at work during the day. After the furnace broke during a cold snap and the AC broke during a heat wave, we replaced the HVAC. 

Because of course, you have to have a huge expense in your first year in a new house that you already couldn’t quite afford.

When Lars was a baby we had a few more major things in the house, like a big basement flood which impacted three rooms of carpet and baseboards.

In the next several years we updated the bathrooms and the kitchen and added one more baby.

In the next several years after that, we replaced all of the siding and the windows and gutters, reconfigured the yard and the plants a zillion times, dug out a dead tree and planted a new one, and added a fourth bedroom downstairs with a new window and new carpet.

And everybody grew.

You might know that I like to keep records. I have always kept a journal (and/or a blog), I print my instagram into Chatbooks, I make videos every year for my kids’ birthdays with sentimental songs attached. A tradition we’ve kept up at each kid’s birthday has always been to watch all the old birthday videos of that child.

Right around the time we bought our new house, I discovered that the hard drive I had kept alllllll of my data on… including all of the photos and videos I’ve created, audio interviews I’ve done with parents and elderly friends, everything… had malfunctioned and was totally unusable.

“BUT DIDN’T YOU BACK IT UP?!” Well of course I did, but I was not scrupulous. I have some of it in iCloud and some of it in Google Photos and some of it in Amazon Photos and some of it on another hard drive.

And… some of it, apparently… nowhere else.

NO. WHERE.

I have tried Geek Squad, who, after giving it the white-glove clean-room treatment, pronounced the drive dead.

I am going to try a few more companies and see what happens, but I am not optimistic.

Anyway, all of that is to say: I realize that 

(A) my whole life isn’t wrapped up in one tiny little house in a corner of the suburbs, and 

(B) my whole life doesn’t have to stay preserved in photo and video form,

BUT… I am still very sad to lose those things.

Even though 

(A) I have a new house now which I am so thankful for and so excited about (despite the pouring of money and sweat into things we didn’t anticipate and haven’t anticipated yet)

and even though 

(B) I have living breathing children who are still growing and laughing and crying and running and skipping and falling and talking and all of those things that happened in the last 17 years whether or not I took videos of it.

I guess I want to keep everything locked up where I can access it anytime I want. 

I am a little mad at myself for removing myself from that little home and VERY mad at myself for losing that precious data.

I want to snap my fingers anytime I want and watch videos of my babies.

A Bible verse that has always pulled at me: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

I think I am pretty good at living in the moment. I would say it’s one of my strengths. But I also value the past, a lot. 

And saying goodbye to part of my past (the physical walls of the home where my children learned to walk, talk, feed themselves, tie their shoes, play the piano) feels like maybe a little too much to ask of my heart right now. 

Yet it’s done. Look, I’ve started across already.

"At the Border"

by Carl Dennis

At the border between the past and the future

No sign on a post warns that your passport

Won't let you return to your native land

As a citizen, just as a tourist

Who won't be allowed to fraternize with the locals.

No guard steps out of a booth to explain

You can't bring gifts back, however modest,

Can't even pass a note to a few friends

That suggests what worries of theirs are misguided,

What expectations too ambitious.

Are you sure you're ready to leave,

To cross the bridge that begins

Under a clear sky and ends in a fog?

But look, you've started across already

And it's one-lane wide, with no room for U-turns.

No time even to pause as drivers behind you

Lean on their horns, those who've convinced themselves

Their home awaits them on the other side.

Moving day

We are moving today.

Not far. Same schools and ward and everything, but we’ve lived in this house for 13 years, which is most of my kids’ lives and most of our marriage, and it’s a weird feeling.

We have moved most of our stuff over to the new house already, in dozens of van loads of repurposed laundry baskets and half-open cardboard boxes. The movers will take over all the furniture and all the heavy boxes (books), and we’ll sleep there tonight for the first time.

As we stood and surveyed our mostly empty house last night, Ida (who does not want to move and has never wanted to move) said, “This is sad.” I said, “That’s valid. I have mixed feelings myself.” She said, “Not me, I just have one feeling.”

As for me: I feel sad, hopeful, wistful, grateful, happy, nervous, excited, and very very tired.

This has been such a good house.

Thanks for my house

I love our house. We always talk about moving and maybe someday we will, but this house is definitely home. ❤️

Thanks for the rooms

I’m so glad my kids have their own (tiny) little corners to retreat to. I wish they could each have their own rooms, but they cannot, so corners it has to be. Ida and Polly got little canopies a while back so that there could be some semblance of separation. 😆 I’m thankful for cozy happy places where my kids can feel safe and warm. (And be as messy as they want… within 10 or so square feet)

New year, new you, take two

One fun thing about being home this New Year’s is that for the first time, I can fully participate in the January Cure. https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/january-cure-2021-signup-36836645

Maybe “fun” wouldn’t be how everyone describes it, but I love a good reset. Yesterday, when tasked to clean out a “drawer” (the definition of “drawer” to include a cupboard or shelf), I cleaned out my medicine cabinet, and then for good measure I took that momentum and cleaned out the linen closet and the cupboard under the sink. Today’s task was to go through the whole house taking notes on everything that needed fixing, then choosing 3-5 in each room to focus on in 2021. Voila! And it totally seems doable. I am feeling the January Cure.

(Will I clean up the confetti mess and take down the Christmas lights by the end of 2021? 😂 I hope so)

Thanks for my kitchen

It’s the little kitchen that could...

We gave this guy a “remodel lite” back in 2012 or so. The crummy old cabinets got a new life with a few coats of paint, and they have hung on admirably (two thumbs up for Benjamin Moore). I still really like the sink fixtures, but they have taken a lot of abuse from four kids and will need replacing soon... also replacing caulk around the sink is a project I’ve been avoiding. The floor and counters need more maintenance than I would like (waxing and oiling, respectively) but when I do put in the work, they shine up nice!

Do I want to remodel it for real? Well... yes. But the lite version has given us an incredible bang for the buck. It’s super functional. All six of us crowded in it throughout the day today, to make Thanksgiving dinner for... the six of us. It was actually really fun. I couldn’t be happier with this little kitchen that could.

Accidental remodel part 2, please send help

Ok, you asked for it! (Well, Susan asked for it.) remember when I claimed that “we don’t even have that much stuff”...?

Here are some “this is such a mess and I can’t call it ‘before’ but I also can’t really call it ‘progress’” pics of the storage room, 

The office, 

The family room, 

what we call the “tile room,” 

and the laundry room.

Wow.

None of it used to look this bad before we had the office flood and all the furniture and other random stuff was displaced. 

Really!

Well, laundry was sometimes on the floor of the tile room. 

Okay, laundry was frequently on the floor of the tile room. 

Accidental remodeling

Well, it's been a circus here what with the accidental basement remodel. I have no complaints at all. I am very glad that this is happening, and I am very grateful that we are in a phase of our life where we can spare the time and the money, and it is worth the time and the money to make the space work better for us since we're at home all the time, and someday, we will really enjoy it! Currently the plans are:

-wait for remediation and re-inspection (if you follow me on IG or talk to me on the phone, you know that the new egress window failed the county inspection, TO NO ONE'S SURPRISE, AHEM)
-wait for 3 other replacement windows (met the new window guy today, he seems good???? I hope????)
-wait for drywall/carpenter to come and do... drywall and carpentry (he has already done some work for us and I was very pleased! yay)
-wait for carpet guy to come put in the carpet. That's the final step and the only step that is covered by our house insurance.

*technically there is one more step, which is enlist a plumber to replace our laundry pump and sink which are ancient and due to die any day. That is almost an afterthought here, but is actually a project I was planning to do right before the pandemic hit, and then canceled because I didn't want people working in my house. Now... people are working in my house anyway. But I stay on a completely separate floor from them while they work... and we couldn't exactly let water keep seeping into our basement... so I feel OK about it.

In between all the waiting, there is a LOT of other stuff that I need to do to prep for each phase of the project. The biggest task will be to handle the storage room, which currently looks like a storage room exploded in it. Because we are (probably) going to be moving a door from one wall to an opposite wall, we are going to have to reconfigure most of the shelving that is already in there. I think in the end it will be better all around. It's just going to take a lot of work. And I think I also need to get rid of a lot of stuff. And the funny part about that is that I REALLY DON'T HAVE THAT MUCH STUFF. I just have a lot of kids, and they outgrow stuff and they also eat stuff. I feel like those two facts about my kids are what keep my storage room humming (and exploding)(not literally either of those things, just metaphorically. If you were worried).

The second biggest task will be to move everything out of the very large bookcases in the office and the family room, so that we can move the very large bookcases, so that drywall can happen in those rooms. This is a very very close second.

The third biggest task will be to move all the furniture out of the family room and office so that carpet can happen in those rooms. This is a very very close third.

Listen, I know these tasks seem silly compared to the whirlwind that is going on in the streets and the courtrooms and the legislative halls and the hospitals and the Zoom rooms of every country in the world. I know there are real problems out there and I am trying in my own various ways to contribute to the solutions. But it also gives me confidence and satisfaction to conquer this little corner. I remember my Hindu friend who showed me her prayer room and explained her rituals of working on specific manual tasks while meditating (sounds counter-intuitive at first but it grows on you!). Sometimes I find myself in an almost meditative state while working on novel manual tasks--although the everyday stuff, I don't get quite as lost in. How else do you explain how sparkling clean my above-ground pool is--vacuuming that thing puts me in The Zone, I think I've mentioned that we call it my fifth child--while my kitchen floor is constantly sticky with who knows what?

So again: I'm NOT complaining (except about the terrible egress window contractor. I will complain about him until I'm dead). Just laying it out for the record and for my own organizational purposes. These are going to be my "weekly pandemic goals" for the rest of the summer, probably. I guess my kids are old enough now to be enlisted into these tasks too. Whew, this is going to be fun! Project Accidental Basement Remodel, we're not giving up on you!

Saturday night’s alright for flooding

So... all previously empty space in the family room is currently filled with the furniture from the office.

That’s because the office...

...flooded a wee bit last night. It was my fault. I’m mad at myself about it. Nothing else I can do now though, other than try not to forget about the sprinkler when I am watering plants, and also call a bunch of contractors tomorrow to see what we need to do next about the floor and the wall and the window well.

Nothing got ruined except the carpet (which needed to be replaced anyway, but I had figured we’d wait to do that until we sold this place eventually) which I am very grateful for. Phew. What a mess though.

Thanks for my house.

8, almost 9 years of crazy have been going on in this tiny house now, and I can’t imagine that, in its 40-something years of existing, the house has ever been more full of happy times. Sometimes I think we’ll have to move soon before the house bursts at the seams (most of its inhabitants keep growing)—other times I think it couldn’t be more perfect. I’m very thankful for this solid little house, for its warmth, its light, its proximity to everything we need, its friendly neighbors, and most of all of course for the love in it!

Yard times come again no more

Ta da! I'm back!

It has been a busy spring. I like busy, though. I've been working in the yard a lot over the last few weeks, which is funny, because it's been soooo hot outside. But I just got the itch, and when the itch strikes, you scratch it! "Act immediately on whatever housewifely impulse comes your way" has stuck in my head ever since I first read it about 10 years ago, and under the umbrella of "housewifely" I put a lot of things that I only really do when I feel like it (so when I feel like it I'd better do it) including yardwork and budgeting.

I believe the quote is from Peg Bracken's I Hate to Housekeep Book from the 1960s, which was quoted in Caitlin Flanagan's To Hell with All That. Why I remember these details but couldn't tell you on a daily basis where to find my wallet, keys, or cell phone, I'll never know.

Anyway, so every year around this time I do get the urge to do yardwork. Me and a million other people, if I'm judging by the lines at Home Depot, which I am. Part of the reason is that I get some birthday money from my parents and in-laws and I like to spend it on the yard. This year I transplanted a bunch of stuff including a tree (two weeks since I moved it, and it's not dead yet!), got rid of some hostas (so many hostas), and bought a few new plants and some pavers.

I am also trying to decide what color vinyl trim and gutters to put on the house. Four years ago I made the mistake of doing all the vinyl window trim in bright white, which is way too stark with the brick. I wish someone had told me that, since obviously I didn't see it for myself until it was too late. Live and learn. So now I'm trying to decide whether to go all in with the white, or to do a contrasting darker color or a dirty off-white that will look better with the brick.

This is the stuff of which boring posts are made (the boringest), but today I prefer to write about this over the other things I'm thinking about which are refugee children in Aleppo, wounded children in Gaza, or children in this house who make me scream into my pillow. I think I'm pretty much finished with the yard stuff for the year, although I want to plant a Japanese maple tree in the backyard, but as Matt pointed out we've had two maples die back there and whatever fungus killed them is probably still lurking. Boo to that, because Japanese maples are so lovely and relatively inexpensive. I may give it a try anyway. Or I may not.

WE'LL JUST HAVE TO WAIT AND SEE!

Thanks for my house

My house is relatively small to hold 6 people. It has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. No yard to speak of, no garage. Our bikes live in a tent outside. The living room is big enough for 2 couches and a piano and maybe some people. The dining table and chairs are from a thrift store. The kitchen and bathrooms we remodeled ourselves on a mega-budget. The carpet needs replacing. The walls need re-painting.

So why is it the coziest and dearest house I can imagine? Well, besides the people in it... the bedrooms fit two to a room quite nicely. The backyard is... well it’s always nice to have a project, right! The 8-year-old couches still bounce back when my kids jump on them. Someone plays the piano every day (usually while someone else is jumping on the couches). I’d say we’re getting the best possible cost per use on our “temporary” dining set. In the kitchen and bathroom, Matt laid the tiles and installed the fixtures, I painted the cabinets and the walls. My dad put in the countertops. The carpet gets new spills and stains every day. So do the walls.

The kids’ school is across the street. Matt’s work is down the street. We take our bikes out regularly. The neighborhood is full of kids similarly crammed into townhouses and eager to roam the cul-de-sacs together. We brought home two new babies to this house (having first brought two old babies to it in 2010) and helped most of them learn to eat, sleep, walk, talk, read, all here in this house. It’s warm in the winter and cool in the summer. It’s rarely quiet. It’s rarely clean.

In Pride and Prejudice (the movie of course. Sorry, I never could get thru the book or the miniseries) Charlotte says to her best friend, “Oh Lizzie it’s such a pleasure to run my own home.” I couldn’t agree more!

Late-night floors

I've made the mistake of staying up past midnight every night this week. Matt and I got sucked into Stranger Things on Netflix (so good, so creepy, I highly recommend). Of course then every day this week, I've been exhausted from my 6 hours of sleep (I need 8) and have taken a nap. Anyway, we finished Stranger Things last night, so no need to stay up past midnight tonight, but I still took a nap today, and we have a budding ant problem, thanks to this cute baby I have, who drops food everywhere including down the vents. 

SO, I stayed up late washing and waxing my kitchen floor with Veronica Mars reruns playing in the background. A good waxed kitchen floor is one of those things that no one, and I do mean no one, in this house appreciates besides me. And it's a bit of a pain. So I don't do it as often as I wish I did. But when I do, I glory in it. Look how shiny!

Desks

Sometime in the past year or so--when Theo started having regular homework--I changed one of his closets (he has 2 decent-sized ones) into a desk. 

When Ida started kindergarten I figured she could use one too. She only has one little closet (her room is tiny), but I think this is a better use of space for her than hanging up dresses. She loves to hoard magazines and papers and random stuff and this way it all has a home. With a door that closes.

Also sometime in the past year I got more organized about toys. (Matt calls it "more controlling"... potato, potahto) Anyway both closets have a high shelf where I put a good chunk of their toys. They can rotate toys out any time they want but they have to put something else up there if they get something down. 

It's especially helpful when they have friends over, because it reminds everyone not to dump everything out at once. Something about visiting someone else's house seems to make all kids (including my own) dump everything out at once. Novelty, I guess.

I have no control over when this baby is coming or what kind of baby it's going to be (fussy, sleepy etc.) or how my older kids are going to handle the change. Pretty sure that's what all my random nesting projects are really addressing....

Thanks for my home.

It's almost the end of November and I can't believe I've wasted thankful posts on things like yogurt and granola and old mix tapes. Although I am thankful for those things too. But I just had to cram so many things into this post because I used up other ones on frivolous things. Oh well!

We had some dinner guests a few weeks ago and one of them said "I love your house!" and Theo said, "It's really small." I don't know why that made me laugh so hard, but it did. Well, our house is really small. And we love it.

I'm thankful for our house, and everything in it, and the people in it, and the people who come visit it, and the people who come fix things in it, and I'm thankful for the neighborhood, and I'm thankful for the friends we've met at the park and the school and the preschool and the ward and the stake. I'm thankful for our neighbors--a nice man with a huge dog, and a family with three children the same ages as ours. I'm thankful that the metro is within walking distance, thankful for great running routes and trails nearby, and thankful that Matt's office is now only a mile from our front door. I'm thankful that Hannah and Robbie and Rhoda live 20 minutes away. I'm thankful that we brought Lars home from the hospital to this house, his first home. (The fact that we had brought Theo and Ida home to our old apartment was the only reason we were sad about moving to our current house.) I'm thankful for a basement with room for storing food and tools, playing games, hosting overnight visitors, and watching TV. I'm thankful for an affordable mortgage. I'm thankful that Trader Joe's, Wegmans, Ikea, Costco, and Target are all just a few miles away. I'm thankful for the big side "yard" that doesn't technically belong to us, but we've adopted it since no one else uses it. I'm thankful for my tiny vegetable garden I planted there last summer. I'm thankful for the school, which is right across the street, and the teachers and counselors and administrators who have been so helpful with Theo.

I'm not particularly thankful for the things I hate about the house (like the stuck back door, or the terrible windows) but then again maybe I am, sort of--at least the door can lock, and the windows block out most of the cold. I'm thankful for all the skills Matt and I have learned about home maintenance and improvement since moving here. I'm thankful we had enough space to seat 10 adults and 3 kids (and a newborn baby) around our table yesterday for dinner. Someday I hope we move away from this house and much closer to our families. But until that happens (if it does) I am so thankful to call our little house home.

Secret garden

In my whole life I've never gardened anything, really. I've planted the occasional flowers and bushes which came in pots from a nursery. Weeding was one of my (dreaded) chores as a kid but I don't really remember what I actually weeded. The past few years I have wanted to try a vegetable garden but just never have. This year, I decided was my year to try. I bought seeds in February. I planted them in tiny cups in March.  I asked Matt to build a box for me in April, which he did (thanks Matt!). I became confused at this point and borrowed a book on gardening from my friend Holly (thanks Holly!) and asked for advice from my friend Alisha (thanks Alisha!). I moved the plants outside in May. They grew. If they all die before I eat anything other than kale and basil I will still consider it a resounding success. Because the seeds! The tiny cups! The box! The middle of June and nothing is dead yet!

Everyone told me about squash but I didn't quite grasp it. Also tomatoes. Going to deal with those soon though. And keep watering and grabbing little leaves to wash in my sink and make my kids eat with me. At least I can tell which ones the weeds are now. I think.

Clearly sometimes it's the little things, that are actually the big things. Also sorry about the mysterious green stripe at the bottom of the photo. I guess it didn't finish loading.

Kitchen

Ta da...

This will be a quick tour since my kitchen is teeny. 

 

My kitchen is always this clean by the way. Especially at the end of the day. And I never ever ever leave dirty dishes in the sink for so long that the kitchen starts to smell like a trash can. And I always wipe up crumbs as soon as they spill...

So anyway, there's our mini-reno on a budget. It only took 2 1/2 years. During that time my plans went from "gutting it all" to the much more realistic "facelift." I don't have many "before" pictures but there are a few here. There are a lot of little things left to do still, like painting the ceiling and baseboards and pantry door, and replacing the ancient, threadbare, hot-pink rag rug. The only big thing that's left to do other than install a light above the sink is replace the sliding door which is barely hanging on. And while we're at it, replace all the windows in the house. Maybe that will happen before we move out. Maybe? 

When we bought the house everything in the kitchen was bisque. The floors, walls, cabinets, and appliances were ALL bisque. In resisting the bisque, I may have gone a little overboard on the colorful side. Maybe you know that I first painted the cabinets a darker grayish green, then repainted them aqua a year later. Then just yesterday I admitted to Matt that if I could go back in time I would have actually done white. Will I ever learn? He responded that he never ever wants to talk or think about the kitchen cabinets ever again.

I am happy with the aqua and am done painting, at least until we sell the house someday (I don't see aqua cabinets as being a major selling point). I guess there's a reason white is classic though. I always wanted my kitchen to look like Miss Daisy's from Driving Miss Daisy. So maybe someday I'll have vintage white appliances, white and glass cabinets, and marble floors. Maybe?

Anyway, for now I am enjoying the Julia Child look with the aqua cabinets and pegboard wall. 

(Smithsonian kitchen image from Google, I can't find the original source! It was San Antonio something??)

Maybe channeling her kitchen decor will motivate me to become a better cook.

Maybe?

We'll be together, with a roof right over our heads

Baby Ida is killing me here with her cereal at the table...I remember when we moved was when she stopped using a high chair, at the ripe old age of 18 months. Thus began the many, many dinnertimes of telling her that if she got up "one more time" we would put her dishes in the sink and she'd be all done.

Matt and I bought our house just about 2 years ago. We closed and moved in the first week of April but the last 2 weeks in March was when we did a lot of the initial paperwork, notified our landlord, started organizing and tossing stuff, etc. etc....so exciting. I was also wearing an orthopedic sandal at the time, side note. I look back at pictures of that time and just laugh and almost feel giddy at how much I love life and how funny it is in retrospect.

In 2 years we have done a fair amount to the house and well, it has done a fair amount to us. (I'm talking to you, HVAC and water heater.) The biggest and most exciting change was bringing home a brand-new baby--everything else sort of pales in comparison. We haven't done anything gigantic but lots of cosmetic changes. Matt installed a lot of baseboards. The two of us with some help from Phil have painted every room except the main floor bathroom. I'm a little surprised to say that I already need to repaint 2 walls which have seen a ton of abuse from us. And spackle 2 that have about 30 nail holes in them. (not surprised at that part.) Matt has done lots of repairs on various appliances and other things that aren't visible but are still major. He has hung several doors, installed a backsplash, replaced almost every light fixture and of course the kitchen counter and sink with big help from my dad. We have gratefully accepted a lot of help from our parents who are all willing to roll up their sleeves and dig in to big and small projects.

I'm hoping 2012 sees a few more doors hung, a remodeled bathroom, a new kitchen floor, a new banister on the basement stairs, and shrubs in the front yard. And a lot of painting projects which I just need to buckle down and do: our new kitchen table; the kitchen cabinets (I am repainting them. Are you shocked? No?); all the doors. Also I really hope I figure out a nice way to ask our neighbor to ease off on using his front porch as an ashtray. Funny that 2 years have passed and we have still never mentioned it. I guess after the first few months I mostly forgot about it but occasionally I think about it and think, "What the heck? That is so weird." We have good neighbors though. I love our neighborhood. I love our house. I loved our apartment but I love our house more. I love to see and hear my kids run back and forth through the rooms, up and down the stairs, in and out the front and back doors; ride their bikes up and down the sidewalk; make a huge mess in the sandbox; "paint" the siding with water; and attempt tossing Frisbees in the side yard.

The past two years haven't been all painting and orthopedic shoes and giddiness. Matt got laid off and we got to know what it was like to eat lots of canned foods. Thank you, food storage. There was plenty of barfing--only from Theo and me since Ida and Matt for some reason NEVER vomit. Ida has never vomited in her life. Weird? (The food storage and the vomiting were not connected--I don't think.) There was LOTS of crying, pretty much just from me and the kids. At the end of the first year in our house, Matt and I both got new jobs at about the same time. Matt's, which he is very good at and which he really enjoys, is an hour's drive away. In the year since then we have discussed more than once the very realistic possibility that we could sell or rent out our house sooner than we planned in order to be closer to his work. That's not my favorite plan given the aforementioned love for our house and 'hood but it is a possibility and I am always up for an adventure.

For now, since that's all either of us can speak for, we are here. We are loving the home we have made and loving the people in it more than ever.