"Flowers in the Garden"

I've had a rough week. Just the usual ornery week, but still, I felt kinda down.

I've been thinking a lot about this saying I saw the other day. I've been thinking about it because sometimes I think people misunderstand my jokes or sarcasm as being mean. I don't usually have mean jokes, but weeks like this, they just slip out. When I went through infertility, my humor became a little dark and negative. I had a hard time coping, and my new found dark humor helped me out a little. I've been working on that, but every once in a while something will come out and surprise me. Then I feel terrible for days. I never know who to apologize to, because I don't know who heard it or how they took it. It's supposed to be a joke, but some people are much purer than I am (such an admirable quality), and they get offended by such remarks. I hope to have friends who overlook my "broken fence." I'd like to think I have many beautiful flowers in my garden that are noticeable in the front as well as deep in the back of the garden. Who knows?

Along with these feelings, I've decided on a couple of goals for myself. You know the saying, "In order to make a friend, you have to be a friend?" Well, I'm going to do this. Honestly, it's terrifying for me to make new friends, but I really need to. I don't have any real "hang out" friends. The friends I have are lovely, but I don't regularly hang out with anyone. I don't feel comfortable just calling someone up to talk, except for Lance, my mother, and my sister. So, Goal #1 is to make new friends. I need to anyway, since I just barely moved.

Goal #2: Teach my kid(s) (hopefully we can have more kids soon) to be friendly and serve others. How do I do this? Well, start off by teaching them service, by showing them service, and actually going out and serving others. Also, make sure they have opportunities to invite friends over, teach them good manners and how to be nice, and treat them nicely, too.

I hope that by doing these things, I will have a happier life and make a lot of new, lasting friends who want to hang out with me sometimes.

Upstairs

Here are some pictures of the upstairs of our house. Well, upstairs #1. Oh yes, there are two upstairs. This is the main upstairs.

Lydia's room. Yes, we have dormer windows. We LOVE them! And that IS two closets. We don't have a high number of bedrooms, so if we happen to have more than two children, it won't be a problem for them to share a room.

Window seat. Lydia loves to sit up there and cuddle with each of her stuffed animals. She also likes to look out the window and laugh at outside. Ha ha!

Window seat in the playroom. Lydia's room and the playroom are mirror images of each other. Except the playroom is pink. We chose Lydia's room not to be pink because there is a ceiling fan in her room, and not in the playroom.

More of the playroom.

That door with the mirror is a small door. It comes up to my neck. It is a storage closet. We have those in both bedrooms upstairs.

Upstairs bathroom. Don't you love the forest green counter top and linoleum floor? Our house was built in the 90's and it shows. It will be on the remodel list for one day, but not for a while. Also, a nice feature to this bathroom is that there is a linen closet right as you walk in. I love all the storage in this house!

More upstairs bathroom. The sink area and the tub/toilet area are separated. That will come in handy some day.

Tub/shower. Don't you love the forest green stripe? It's definitely a matching bathroom. Ha ha! The toilet is just to the left as you walk through the doorway.

More pictures to come later. I hope you enjoyed the "tour" of the upstairs of my house.

New House

We are all settled in our new house. We love it here! The neighbors/ward members are all really nice. It will take a while for it to really feel like home, but we definitely love it here.

 

  This is our house! Isn't it adorable? It is definitely our dream home.

This is what you will see as you come in the front door. We will eventually have more pictures on the walls, but I need to map all that out first. We have pictures up in lots of places, but we're not even close to finished yet.

This is looking down at the front entryway. This picture doesn't really do it justice. It's pretty grand.

 This is the front living room. This is where we will receive guests and piano students. It is our "clean" room. Lydia likes to go in there to play the piano and climb on the couch, but toys are not allowed there. I like to keep up appearances, even though the rest of the house is messy. Ha ha!

More of the front living room.

 Front living room looking into the entryway.

That's all I'll show for this post. I'll hopefully get more pictures of the rest of the house in other posts, but first I have to set things up and clean. Ha ha!

We love our new home!

First Post of 2014

Wow! Lots to update... I haven't really had time to blog lately. Well, at first, I felt like I was being boring because I didn't have much to blog about, except Lydia. She's always a fun topic, but you readers may be getting a little sick of hearing so many things about her. However, lately, we've been pretty busy.

So, since November, Thanksgiving was great. It was with Lance's family this year. Christmas was a blast. Lydia loved all her presents, and still does. New Year's was fun. It's getting harder and harder to stay up that late. Valentine's Day was celebrated a little late. Lance had a volleyball game. He's started competitive volleyball, and LOVES it.

We have also made a HUGE life changing decision! We are moving!!! For real this time!  We're super excited for this new adventure, and our beautiful new house, but we're sad to leave our friends in this area. We're also bummed to leave our house that we've done so much work on, but for us, the new house is definitely worth it.

We hope to stay in the new house for, well, pretty much, forever. I'm really nervous to make new friends in the new neighborhood and ward, but I'll be brave and branch out, something I'm not really used to doing.

We're pretty busy getting packed up and ready to move. I don't feel like I'm helping too much, because I still have to take care of the little one. She's a lot more fun than packing anyway. Ha ha! Lance has done tons of packing on the weekends. We've taken a bunch of packed boxes to his brother's house for storing until we actually move. I think we've gotten up to 80 boxes already, and we're only about halfway done, if that!

We have our house on the market right now, but don't get your hopes up for buying it, because we just got a really good offer a couple days ago, and we accepted it! We were so happy to get an offer so soon! Our house had been on the market only ten days. Wow!

I decided to have a piano recital for my students before the move. Many of them don't want to travel so far to the new house for lessons, so they will hopefully find another teacher that can teach them closer. The recital was yesterday, and they all did great! I will miss my students. They are all wonderful. As for the students who are still going to take, we're taking a break while I get settled into the new house.

So, the next time you hear from me, I will probably be relocated. I'm so excited, nervous, sad, and stressed, all at the same time! But honestly, I think the excitement is winning.

Here are some recent pictures. Enjoy!

Christmas Village

Valentine's Day picture

All of us crazies

Lydia making her daily (constant) mess

Wish us luck!