Dinner for Two

Last night was date night. A friend took the kids, and I made a nice little dinner for two. OK so this is our popcorn bowl filled with the salad I made. Even though it is just the two of us I wouldn't want John to go hungry.

Um. . . . yeah. He definitely didn't go hungry, because that was the smaller of the two bowls of salad I made. It was a fantastic salad, recipe courtesy of Pioneer Woman. And we almost finished off the first bowl. Who am I kidding, I almost finished off the first bowl. Even though John liked it, it was a salad therefore John couldn't take seconds.

In case you have been living under a cyber rock and haven't heard of Pioneer Woman's blog you should check it out. But be careful because there is a lot on there and you can easily get sucked in. I posted a direct link to her recipe under my favorite recipes on the side bar.

Is Anyone Missing Some Elmo Underpants?

Last night before I went to bed I went in to check on the kids. Hyrum was wearing warm flannel pajamas and looked a little warm. I decided to take his pants of for him so he wouldn't burn up. I took the pants off only to discover that he was wearing some underwear that I have NEVER seen before.

They're not his. They are not Alan's. They didn't even come from the hand me down box.

Seriously. . .

How does this happen?

All Packed Up and Nowhere to Go

Today is moving day. The day we have been planning for the last month and a half. The day we were supposed to move in to our new home.

Unfortunately we are still here.

The bank had issues.

So now it will probably be another two weeks until we close. I wish I was unpacking. But instead my house is half-way packed and everything I want is in a box (hmmm. . . except for that ice cream. Hmmm . . .)

So we are sitting here in limbo . . . waiting.

For probably another two weeks.

Apparently no one explained summer break to my kids

Today was the last day of school. How do my children celebrate?

By spending all afternoon doing this:

After struggling all year to get Alan to do homework he decides he wants to do it for fun. Seriously. I didn't even suggest the activity. In fact I finally had to tell them to stop doing homework so that we could have dinner. Alan also decided to read 4 books today for the library's summer reading program. It used to be killer to get him to read one a day.

I guess it's only work if someone makes you do it.

The Wall

When we moved into our current home from our last apartment there was a picture I didn't take, but I wish I did. It would been a picture of a pile of sticks next to our front door. Alan was two at the time, and whenever we would take walks he would look for sticks. He would find one early on and then soon he would be carrying one in each hand. When he found a third he would drop one and pick up the next. He always had sticks with him when we got home, but I had made the rule of no sticks in the house, hence the pile by the door. Every day it grew larger. When we left our apartment for the last time, I looked longingly at the pile. Each stick was a special to me. It represented his two year old self. I knew he would grow out of it and the pile would never really return.

I think I skip many of those moments; piles of sticks that look like junk but are in fact part of my children growing up. This time I managed to get a picture of Alan on the wall. It started a couple years ago when I was scared that Alan would fall down and break an arm. But Alan persisted to climb up and sit on the wall. He's gotten to know our neighbors better than we have. And our wonderful neighbors don't mind Alan at all. He always calls out "Hey neighbor!" and they respond in kind. Alan is the social one in our family and is frequently wanting to go see if the neighbors are out. Even when the neighbors aren't home Alan likes his place on the wall. When Alan has a problem with his temper and needs to calm down he knows this is where to go. He climbs up angry and climbs down content. I know there will be walls at our new house but I also know that things won't be the same. I just wanted to remember how things were.

Seven Homes in Eight Years

This summer John and I will celebrate our eighth anniversary and we will move into our seventh home. Considering we've been in our current home for 4 years you can guess we moved a lot in the first few years of marriage. I think every couple is supposed to have stories to tell about their first home. We are certainly no exception. I think our first home is the epitome of starving student housing.

It was affectionately named the Cheese House. I think it was a decent sized house when it was built but to make it more profitable to rent it was turned into 7 apartments. Truthfully we had one of the larger apartments in the house. Anywhere they could squeeze in another apartment they did. Our bedroom used to be the upstairs balcony. How could we tell? Well, the living room window that looked out onto our bedroom was the first clue. No joke. Look.

We also had a patio door with a window that led into our bedroom and lovely shower that you couldn't stand up straight in. But our pride and joy was our refrigerator. The Kelvinator. It helped keep us on budget and on a diet. That blue thing was our freezer. No, we never bought ice cream. There just wasn't room.

OK, truth be told we didn't love the kelvinator. If fact we noticed that one of the other apartments had a normal refrigerator and it was empty and unlocked. We decided that we would switch out the refrigerators in the morning when a friend could come over to help move it. I had some chicken that I had just bought that I put in the empty freezer because there was more room. Of course the next morning when we went to get the fridge we discovered that someone had moved in during the night. Well I couldn't let the chicken go to waste! I knocked on the door met the new neighbors and asked for our chicken back. What would you know, we became great friends. It was even more fun when we ran into them at Stake Conference a few years ago. It turns out we both moved to Arizona.

You can tell from the pictures that the decor was lovely as well. The first time our home teachers ever came over one of them remarked how he could see five different wallpaper patterns from where he sat. I think my brother put it best when he first saw the apartment. John was explaining how he was trying to discretely drill a hole in the bottom of the wall so that he could get the phone line into our bedroom. My brother just looked at him and said "Why don't you just string it through the window? I don't think it will really detract from the decor." We did. And it didn't. By the way, if you ever wanted to see our first home, you can't. It was demolished shortly after we moved out. Big surprise.

Really, it was a great place to start. After this, everyplace was better. Our third apartment we thought was really nice. It had two bedrooms! And it was the first place that could fit more than a loveseat in our living room! It was a little old but really well kept up. We really appreciated the place. I always got really annoyed by the newlyweds who would complain about what a dump the place was. I won't chronicle all of our homes as this post is getting really long, but I'm glad for all of our homes. Really the houses were just wood and brick, but the friendships and memories we've made are really what makes a house a home.