It's Aliiiive!

Day 8: Share your dream house.

I spent almost two years living in an apartment before Tim and I got married, and I was ready to get away from the crazy music and the upstairs neighbors' elephant feet. Here I am just over a year out of apartment life and loving our beautiful home. 

Can I just take a minute to tell you how awesome my husband is?! I'm seriously in awe of this man's talents.

He has redone our living room floor completely (redoing subfloor and everything...it was nuts.), 

pulled all the carpet,

redone the trim, 

painted pretty much any and everything that can be painted (some of it more than once!!), 

installed can lights in the living room (huge thanks to my brother-in-law Greg for helping with that one!), 

replaced/installed fans, 

made our lawn look fabulous, 

redone some of the concrete in our driveway, 

removed some of our concrete to repair a crack in our foundation, 

and so many more things that it doesn't seem fair to forget to mention. 

I have very little handy skills -- unless you count fetching tools. 

If that counts as being handy then I am AWESOME at home improvement. 

Tim sacrificed some space from his beautiful lawn for us to embark on a gardening adventure. I was pretty psyched because my thumb has gotten green tinges to it since my first year of teaching when every plant I was given perished under my care. We bought a small variety of seeds, got them going, and planted them in late May after all the frost (finally) stopped. 

Aaaaand most of the seedlings died. I was so bummed! After my state of denial ended, we bought some seedlings and found much, much more success. 

Ladies and gentlemen, I now present you with pictures of our rockin' garden!!! 

(AKA proof that not every living plant dies under my care.)

Celebrity Tomatoes

So many cherry tomatoes!

Cantaloupe is a-growin'.

Peppers

Basil - one of 2 surviving seedlings!

Cilantro's already almost done for the season.

Tim's corn...because why not.

Some sort of onion? It was actually already growing in the yard.

Bonus: our neighbors' grape vine has grown into our yard! 

We'll be rethinking our spacing next year...we have some jungle areas goin' in there! 

 Yup, we call this a success!!! 

Transitioning Home

It's so strange being home knowing that it's not really coming home -- it's a transition away from home...to a new home...even though this will still be home. (If I were Jack Sparrow, I would follow that up with a "Savvy?" because that was just as confusing as half of the things he says.)

[Oh, sidenote. I stand corrected on my last post. I was not 4 when my grandparents moved to Richmond. I was 5 or 6. There. Happy, Dad? "You see sir, I'm doing this for you." ;)]

Don't misinterpret what I'm saying. I love, love, love being here. It's just different this time.

As I sit in my bedroom, my own corner of the world, here in this wonderful home with my family all within an hour of this very spot, I am comfortable. I am happy. And I'm anxious to soak it all in, every last second because I know that soon my corner of the world will

e x p a n d

beyond a bedroom and morph into an apartment, a whole apartment, all my own. And I will be 8 hours from this wonderful home, from my family. And at first I will not be comfortable and I will not always be happy. I will be anxious to soak that all in, too, but I will also be anxious for the comfort and happiness to come along, for it to feel like home there, too.

And it will...it will just take time. That happens with moving anywhere. I felt it with every single dorm room and the house in Texas. In the end it was just as hard to leave as it was to originally fathom that it would feel comforting. I know that when the time comes to move out of that apartment, I'll shed some tears and some smiles as I pack up and think of all the growing up I'll do within those walls, just like I'll be doing as I pack up to move there.

Yeah, life is happening fast. I really and truly believe there could have been no better time for this blogging challenge than here and now. :)

~"You leave home and move on and you do the best you can." ["The House That Built Me" - Miranda Lambert]~

The Past and Future Memories of a House

The peeling paint on the siding and the broken bricks on the sidewalk gently remind me of their 107 years as I soak in the 2-story white wonder, imagining what it looked like when it was young. I slowly walk around, peeking in windows when I can, seeing the shell of what's to come when the work's done.

Another family's story is contained in these walls. Each creak of the floor, each window seat, each fire in the fireplace has been the backdrop of their memories. It has seen a family grown, children grow into adults, children taking care of their parents. It has held birthdays and holidays, hot summer nights and cold snowy days. The yard has been a jungle to explore, a perfect wedding spot, and has kissed many bare feet running through the grass.

The sun makes the violets glow a vibrant purple as it sets. I gather a bouquet from the thicket of flowers, shivering from the cold but glowing with happiness. I turn around and walk back toward the house, smelling the violets and smiling.

This house has known many memories with another family, but memories with our family await it. My nephew will remember this house as Nana and Papa's house, the house he gets to do his growing up in. There is so much exploring awaiting his little feet, and there are so many gatherings that our family will have there as it grows and changes. I realize that someday my kids will think of it as Nana and Papa's house, too. Whoa.

I pause as I put my car in reverse to leave, and I smile at the house one more time. It can't tell me the stories it has already seen, but we can share the stories that will be it's future.

~"A house with a memory; it's more than a house/It was once home to me."[-"A House I Once Knew" - Leo VanMeer]~

Home Again

4 airports in 2 days. 3 different flights. Lessons of trust, patience, kindness tucked away within those moments, the ones that reminded me of my adulthood, of knowledge and confidence I've gained -- even though I can't pinpoint where it came from. I can only conclude that I've picked up bits of both along the way. And I had people reminding me of it, too.

Now I'm searching for words to capture this magic that's these emotions that come with returning to a place that I once knew as a temporary home away from home, passing my familiar landmarks along the way that have become friends along the freeway, seeing what will now be my home away from my home town, which will still be a sanctuary to me, a heart-lifting, rejuvenating place, but of a different kind -- the kind that I will go to for visits, that I will relish every moment in, but that I will be glad to leave for my very own sanctuary that I've put together my own way. A place that will be no less special, but that will have to share some of my sense of "home" with another.

The Midwest grew more beautiful while I was gone.

The moment I could see the North Platte again, I knew that I would always, always be a Midwest girl at heart who would always feel her heart swell with love again at being reunited with this home.

~"Where we love is home,/Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts." [-Homesick in Heaven by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.]~

Cousinfriendsiblings

This was my posse growing up. My cousins and I are more siblings/best friends/arch rivals (depending on the day) than real cousins, and I wouldn't trade what we've got for anything.

I am impatient to see their wonderful faces again and share some crazy times.

I love the holiday season...mostly because of this. :)

~"I know why families were created, with all their imperfections. They humanize you. They are made to make you forget yourself occasionally, so that the beautiful balance of life is not destroyed." [

-Anaïs Nin]~