Spring

It's spring in Texas.  It comes earlier here than it does in Utah which I love! 

When I woke up this morning it was 49 degrees and right now it's 68.  (I know that because I have three weather apps on my phone!)  

65 degrees, cloudless blue skies, amazing!!

The streets here are lined with gorgeous blossoming trees that are all spectacular this time of year.
 

Bradford Pear

Redbud

and my favorite...Pink Magnolia

Kids are outside playing.  There is a picnic going on in my backyard.  The garage is begging to be cleaned out.  And I'm stuck inside with a cold, so it's all going to have to wait for a couple of days...but hooray for SPRING!  


...oh, I forgot my other favorite thing about SPRING in Dallas...

baby bunnies!!!  They're everywhere here...and they make me totally happy.

The Mendon House

Why is it that you never really appreciate a thing until after it's gone?  OK, I did actually appreciate this particular thing quite a lot while I was there, but I'm definitely missing it right now.  

Yesterday we got a phone call from someone inquiring about our house in Utah.  Which is really not a big deal.  It's a phone call and a question...not an offer or a contract.  But after having great renters in it for the last 7 months and no potential buyers, I had sort of gotten used to the idea that we were going to be able to keep it.  That's still the plan...at least until we have something more definite than a phone call.  With four kids, one of them is bound to migrate back to Utah at some point, right?  And we still have family there...I'm not sure what that means, other than that it may not be completely out of the question that we would have a need to live in Utah again at some point...many many many years from now...when I've forgotten how much I hate the snow.  (I'm pretty sure snow is like pregnancy and childbirth...eventually you forget.  That's why there's a spring, right?)

um...it might take a lot of springs to make me forget this...

We moved into this house on May Day 2006 after an incredibly LONG 2 1/2 years in my in-laws' basement.  This is what it looked like when we bought it...

Front

 

Back

Backyard

Over the 4+ years that we lived there, we made a few changes to the outside...

Front

Back

Backyard

south side of house

I can take NO CREDIT for any of the outside transformation.  The only thing I ever did outside was pull an occasional weed and mow the lawn.  

Oh, and I planted all the annuals down the sidewalk...and in the pots.

But all the heavy lifting, moving of mountains, and landscaping was done by my incredible husband who had a vision for this house that none of the rest of us ever had.
  
He had a very detailed ten year plan...

Patio (Year One)

Fire Pit (Year Two)

Garden (Year Three)

Chicken Coop (Year 4)
this eventually had a hinged door that the kids could lift up and reach into the nesting boxes to get the eggs...at the high point of our chicken-ing, we were getting 3 eggs a day

the roost and the window so they had something to do during those long winter months...it faced south, just like my favorite window where I would also perch during the long winter months

We made some pretty major changes to the inside, too...I had a little more input there.  But again, the heavy lifting and major work was all my husband's responsibility.  He constructs.  I beautify and organize.
  
Kitchen BEFORE:

Kitchen AFTER:

Living Room BEFORE:

Living Room AFTER:

I have so many fond memories of this house.  Family parties, ward parties, Christmas dinners, game nights, sleep overs on the trampoline, playdates, watching fireworks from the front lawn, amazing neighbors.  Canning and freezing more zucchini, tomatoes, apples and plums than anyone could use in a lifetime. Chickens, turkeys, deer.  Treacherous icicles that we all thought might kill us as we walked down the sidewalk.  Creaky stairs, turquoise carpet, the crumbling sound of lathe and plaster every time we put a nail in a wall.  

I've been attached to all the houses we've lived in, but for some reason, this one is by far, my favorite.  Maybe because it was the one we left most recently.
...or because we put so much personal work into it.
...or because of the legacy that it came with.  The house originally belonged to the Sorensen family and I'm quite sure that a few of them lingered in the house with us.  I always felt the most wonderful presence there.  I hope they were happy with the way we took care of their home.  I definitely felt the weight of that responsibility.  Someday, I'd love to be able to finish what we started. 

The house was built in 1916.  I always wanted to have a big 100th birthday party for it.  Maybe in 5 years, we can go back there and do that...or maybe we'll just have a private Dallas event to commemorate the day.  

Things I loved about this house:


Pumpkins from OUR GARDEN lining the sidewalk in the fall.

The huge pine tree that hung over the sidewalk.

Having dinner on the patio in the summer and fall.

Wild turkeys in the winter.

The view from my fluffy chair in the south facing window.

The tree swing.

The built-in china cabinet.

The sound of the sprinklers in the mornings.

Who knows what will happen with this phone call.  Maybe nothing...but I'm happy to have had the inspiration to reminisce a little about a place that I love.  
  

Great Books

I'm not a consistently avid reader.  I LOVE books, though, so when I read, I do it like everything else in my life...I dive in, don't look back, and typically don't come up for air until the last page.   I'm an impatient reader.  I have on occasion skimmed through the details just to get to the good parts.  And with one book, I actually read the last chapter first because I couldn't stand it.  (It's a good thing I can't do that in real life, or I would miss a lot of great details!)  Sometimes, like with this current binge, I barely put one book down before starting another one.  

While I was en route to Vegas last weekend, I started this book...

I borrowed it from The Cruise Director who recently had to read two Holocaust related books for her history class.  It was compelling, tragic, and inspiring all at the same time.  Even though it was an account of the author's experience during the Holocaust, she is mostly optimistic and hopeful throughout the entire book.  I loved it.  It was impossible to put down, and the minute I finished the last page, I ran to The Cruise Director's room and rummaged through her stuff to find the other book...

...and then when I was rearranging book shelf items the other night, I found this one...

...and then I received the book I ordered earlier this week from Amazon...

So that's three books that I currently have going all at the same time.  It's not my preferred way to read, but I've done it before.  

In college, it was Jane Austen.  I read Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion.  (To this day, P&P is the one and only book I can read over and over again and love it as if it's the first time I've read it.) 
 
In 2006, I went on a Jodi Picoult binge after discovering Vanishing Acts.  After finishing it in 2 days, I followed with My Sister's Keeper, Salem Falls, The Pact and my favorite...Plain Truth.  It was a Jodi Picoult summer for me.

Then there was the Twilight series...I think that was the first complete series that I actually BOUGHT within a week of their release dates.  I'm a library girl.  There are very few books that I commit to purchase before I've actually read them.  (And I ended up selling them all on eBay afterward because they weren't the kinds of books I wanted my impressionable teenage girls discovering in their own home!)  I don't like to read a series one at a time like that.  My preference would be to read them all in one sitting...or at least over the course of a few weeks.  (I'm not very patient, so waiting a year for the next book to be released is next to impossible!  Breaking Dawn was the book that I read the end of first because I couldn't wait.  And that one was SO unbearably long, can you really blame me?)

Other memorable books...

Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
all those Marguerite Henry horse books
all the Little House on the Prairie books


Caine River by Lalita Tademy
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
Scarlett by Alexandra Ripley 
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
1776 by David McCullough 
everything by Nicholas Sparks!!

Believing Christ by Stephen Robinson
The Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis 
To Draw Closer to God by Henry B Eyring (life changing!)
Because He First Loved Us by Henry B Eyring

OK...this is starting to become an impossible task...like that Music Post I wrote awhile ago.   There's no possible way to include every book that has touched my heart over the last 40 years.   I am grateful to be delving into books again, though.  It's been a bit of a drought for awhile.  I look forward to the next few weeks of enlightenment.

FOOD

It's been one of those Total FOOD Saturdays for me.  They don't happen often, thank goodness, but today was definitely one of those days.  I think it's because tomorrow is Fast Sunday.  Something innate in me wants to stock up on food in preparation for the 24 hours of deprivation ahead.  (I've never been good at this day.)


Instead of starting the day with my usual banana, broccoli, berry shake...
BREAKFAST = cereal with chocolate chips in it.  It's granola-y and I had it with Light Vanilla Soy Milk.  
But somehow, when breakfast includes chocolate chips, the whole day is sort of tainted.  


I spent the rest of the day driving kids from store to birthday party to Tae Kwon Do to more stores, then back to the house to pick up one quick thing for a playdate...then to the playdate and then to one more store because someone was out of cupcake scented hand sanitizer...



LUNCH = Wendy's french fries and only the small size (the kids also had Frostys, but I at least had the sense to opt out of that)

SONIC HAPPY HOUR = I came SOOO close...like head spinning close...to giving in and just having a DIET DP with extra ice.  But I didn't.  I had the cherry limeade instead...which I probably shouldn't have had, but did I mention it was one of those days???

DINNER = nachos from Taco Bell (also the small ones)

and if I had ended it there, the day would have been less than stellar, but not a complete and total loss of all control...

POST DINNER = Fire Roasted Artichoke, Crab Wontons, and 1/2 Crab Cake from Cheesecake Factory. (We live WAY too close to that place!!)  And no, I definitely DID NOT eat all of that by myself!

nope, not finished yet...
then the doorbell rang...the Girl Scouts came back with the cookies that I ordered FOREVER ago!!  
(I don't love the part where they make you order them 3 months in advance and then dream about them every day until they arrive.  But the anticipation probably makes them taste better...)

They always go way too quickly, so this year, The Cruise Director talked me into buying 7 boxes!!  (seriously??)  I've already put 3 of them in the freezer so that in mid-July when we're driving to Utah, we can bring a box in the car with us.  And then in September when the kids are all back in school, I can have another Food Chaos Day and eat an entire box all by myself!!  And next February when we're snowed in again we can have them with hot chocolate.  YUM!  Chances are slim that they'll last that long...there are 6 of us and someone is bound to find them before July...but I can hope, right??

DESSERT = one Samoa (yep, just one!)

So now that I've indulged completely, I'm going to enjoy the bliss that was today, and look forward to Monday morning when my regularly scheduled eating resumes...