Before we go…

Rose and I are heading out on a little girl-excursion for the next two weeks. Jeff and Jay are going to have male bonding at home while the womenfolk go a-visiting. We’re going to see my dear friend in Nebraska and my sister in Missouri. Wahooo! Needless to say, there probably won’t be any blog posts for the next 2 weeks-gasp! That’s a long time for me. Here are a few last pictures before we go:

Rose loves to copy Jay. One day last week, Jay was crying and wiping his tears away with Yellow (his beloved blanket). He decided that some of his “kids” (stuffed animals) would make him feel better, so he dropped Yellow and ran upstairs to get them. When he was gone, Rose picked up yellow, squinched up her face in the funniest little pucker, and started to fake-cry/moan, rubbing her eyes with Yellow, just like Jay. When she looked up and saw me watching her, she stopped moaning, grinned her famous Rose-grin, and said “Hi.” I was laughing for a solid 10 minutes after that. Rose, my little mockingjay.

Rose will keep hair clips in longer if I’m wearing one too. She likes to be “diddy” (pretty).

As for Jay, he is getting so grown up and responsible. He helped teach our FHE lesson about Joseph Smith this week with some pictures he got from Nursery on Sunday. He hasn’t worn a diaper to bed in almost 2 months. He LOVES his new freedom to go outside and play in the back yard whenever he wants. He usually gets dressed on his own these days. This morning he ran out and said “Look, I’m dressed! I’m a handsome boy.” I had to let him wear his carefully chosen stripes and plaid outfit after that. Luckily we didn’t have to go anywhere today.

And now I’m off to see these awesome people:

Laurs (aka Lauren, my old college roomie) and her daughter Emma (Rose’s future best friend).

My sister Em and her boys.

Look out, Midwest, here we come!

Cracked up

On Saturday, we began the process of transforming our dry, cracked yard into an oasis of greenery. An amazing number of cracks showed themselves.

This one was my favorite. I’ve never laughed so hard while weeding. Every time I turned around, I saw this amusing vision.

Jay found a piece of cracked sprinkler pipe to peew with.

Jeff tapped into his testosterone reserves and removed half of the concrete sidewalk with his bare hands. He heaved up a heavy rectangle and then dropped/jumped on it till it cracked into pieces. Then he carried the smaller pieces to the heap. I had to help him break two pieces, and they were the heaviest thing I’ve ever lifted (not that I’ve ever been known for my arm muscles).

Dusting off his hands by the heap of cracked paving stones he moved. My contribution is that small wilted pile of weeds. I weeded the pool circle. The phrase “noxious weeds” kept running through my head while I pulled. I had gloves on, but some of the prickles still stabbed me. Desert weeds are evil! DEEP roots, SHARP leaves, and THORNS.

That’s my family! Booty crack baby, pipe-peewing Jay, and goofy Husband. Love them.

My legs got rather dusty while I weeded.

Dust flew into Rose’s snot. Like she was gushing mud instead of the normal stuff. Eew.

Before/after pictures (ten points if you can tell the difference):

Jeff trimmed that tree, mowed the grass, and took out part of the paved walkway. I weeded those deep-rooted, thorny things out of the dirt-sand area.

I wonder what we’ll be doing on Saturdays for the next few years…
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PS: Don’t worry, I won’t post a boring yard-work post every time we move a stone—this was just our first work day. So it deserved to be documented.

No grass, no furniture, no problem

…or should I say no pants, no cup, no problem? hee hee, now on to the actual Post:

SPACE! We have lots of it now. And we’ve been playing-a-plenty in it. Our old ittyb-bitty livingspace was crammed with furniture. We could barely fit in there with all our couches. But when you triple the square footage, once-enormous couches shrink exponentially. If that’s mathematically possible, it happens with couches and big rooms.

We’re at that move-in stage where we aren’t quite all the way unpacked but we’re unpacked enough for daily living, so we can put off the rest of the organization until we have that perfect bookshelf or until we have more time, money, etc. The excuses NOT to do are the only thing as long as the TO-do list. But who said we have to do everything right away? For now, I’m perfectly content to bask in the big empty space and dream about the possibilities. Who cares if it echoes when we laugh?

One afternoon while Rose was asleep, we unwrinkled a long piece of packing paper that came in an Amazon box and drew a town on it.

It had roads and train tracks, houses and stores, a swimming pool and a park, a river with bridges, a school, a library, and a post office.

Oh, and don’t forget the Mercado, just like the one we always go to in town. It was fun to draw, and Jay really likes driving his cars all around the bumpy paper. Annnnd we’ve left this giant 10-foot piece of paper laying on the floor all week. It fits easily. Who needs furniture?

Our ramshackle yard came with a mega sandbox. As I’ve mentioned before, there used to be an above-ground pool over there, and I guess they leveled the ground with gray rocky sand. Jay and Rose love going out to play in it. Who needs grass?

Jay has started getting freckles this year! I am in love with his little sprinkling of sun-kisses, and I make sure to kiss them as often as I can to keep up with Mr. Sun. Aren’t you impressed that he held still long enough for this picture to be in focus? I was. And aren’t his long-lashed, gray-green-blue eyes good-lookin’?

It’s nice to have rooms big enough for me to sit and take pictures of Jay and Rose playing together. Action shots need space. I was always too close to the action to get more than an ear or an elbow in our old apartment.

This morning it was tackle time:

I love this picture, even though Rose is distressed. It’s such a perfect Jay-Rose interaction.

Then we started playing a peek-a-boo-chase-you game in my closet…

  

That grin! LOVE it.

I can hardly believe the JOY that those pictures captured. Yay! After all the excitement was over, Jay watched Sesame Street in the basement and Rose asked [commanded] me to put on her hat and then she went off the grid. It got really quiet in this big echo-y house…

…can you spot a Rose?

It was only noon, but she was all tuckered out, hat and all.

And while I was typing this, Jay just fell asleep too.

I think I may just go cut myself a big warm blondie and snuggle up with a good, old-fashioned book. Pride and Prejudice sounds about right.

Preoccupied

It’s been a LONG week! Moving is no picnic, but unpacking and organizing is even trickier, especially with two little “helpers” and all their “helping.” I have been so preoccupied with getting everything put away that I have been forgetting to do normal things. Por ejemplo, one day I actually forgot to eat lunch. That is unheard of for me—usually I let my stomach reign supreme.

All ready for church. They’re holding hands. Melt.

I seem to remember promising a few juicy moving stories. I don’t know how juicy they are, so I’ll intersperse them with some pictures of our house so far. I took the pictures tonight, so they’re as recent as possible—with all this organization, it seems like this place looks different every other hour. I doubt I’ll be able to resist captioning the pictures, so good luck following the stories and the captions, my friends!

Love doesn’t quite cover it.

Thursday, the day after we moved, I woke up to a mountain of boxes and Jeff was gone to work. I did not know where to start. Overwhelming! Actually I did know where to start—with my hair. My short hair forces me to mousse out the sleep swirls every morning. If my hair is still bedhead-y, I just don’t feel ready to face the day. Weird, but that’s how I feel.

Thursday morning I decided to do my hair before tackling the boxes. That was my starting point. Problem: we still had no running water at that point, and our only water was in old grape juice bottles (in other words, it had traces of not-hair-friendly fruit juice in it).

The giant pantry.

SO I kind of started whimpering. I searched and searched for the box that had a certain spray bottle of plain tap water in it, with no luck. It was nowhere to be found. Whimper whimper. Whimper. Finally I discovered another tiny squirt bottle with water in it and managed to get my hair damp enough to fix its morning time woes. I salvaged my mood and got to work.

We played frisbee in the family room tonight after Jay and Rose went to bed (we didn’t want to set a bad example or anything…)

Somewhere in the midst of all that my sweet friend/visiting teacher, Janay called and asked to watch my kids so I could get some unpacking done. She is eight months pregnant and she has 3 girls ages 9, 7, and 4, and she homeschools them. But she happily took Jay for eight whole hours while I worked at home. Rose would’ve gone too, but she decided to stay home and take 5 or 6 hours’ worth of naps to sleep off the move. When Janay brought Jay back, she also brought a plate of fresh cookies! As if eight hours, an eight month fetus, her own 3 kids, and one pee pee accident with Jay weren’t enough. She’s the best. And so were those cookies! I have vowed to be a nicer person.

  

A linen closet and my very own craft closet! Boring pictures, but any seasoned apartment-dweller knows how precious a good closet is.

Thanks to all that help, I got most of the upstairs organized on Thursday, with a little help from Taylor Swift. I was kind of in a chicky mood, and her songs are each like a mini-chick-flick. So I tuned into Grooveshark.com and organized my new kitchen to Love Story (or stories, that is).

The kids’ bathroom

Thursday afternoon, the plumber came and figured out our water issue—nothing extreme, just an extra hidden valve. And now we have our very own washer and dryer set up. HEAVEN. Will I ever groan about laundry again? I HOPE NOT!

Jay and Rose are still adjusting to our new space. As I predicted, Jay’s potty prowess has been challenged by this change. But he’s getting better. He has been waking up a little scared each night, and we’ve had to go remind him that we’re in our new house now. Rose is still just tired from the messed-up sleep non-schedule that she endured this week. But they love all the ROOM we have here. As for me, I am still amazed that we actually get to live in this big lovely house all by ourselves. I also love having a whole playroom to leave toys scattered around.

Every day we get a few more things where we want them, and this place is starting to feel more and more homey. Jeff and I both already feel the weight of home ownership responsibility: when we heard a strange clicking sound while laying in bed the first night here, Jeff and I both jumped up to investigate (it was just the sprinklers in the field behind us). I actually care about every problem and I want to learn how to fix them, instead of learning how to live with them like you do when you’re a tenant.

My future favorite room. Once we get some decent bookshelves up, this room will be heaven: the best couch, a fireplace, and books all in one room? Yes, please!

Friday (June 1st) was Jeff’s birthday. The big 30! I was so tired from the move that all I managed to do for him was text him Happy Birthday at school, make his requested birthday pizza dinner and give him his present. Then the fam came over for birthday brownies. After they left, Jeff gave ME a massage (he said he loves me so much that it’s a birthday present to him if he gets to massage me! How do I deserve this man again?) and we watched BBC’s Sherlock Holmes. Happy 30th to my husband!

My first home “repair” was in the pantry. The bottom shelf was about 2 inches too low for my big 5-gallon bucket of flour to fit underneath. So I got out the screwdriver, unscrewed everything, and raised the shelf. I even used a level. I felt pretty handy.

Now that the worst of the move is over, I’m looking forward to getting back to our normal daily routine this week. Like running and reading dozens of stories and playing outside and going for walks. And basking in our very own, very big space.

I may also write a sonnet to our central air conditioning if there’s time.

And last but not least, the view from our front windows.

Sigh.