A few of my favorite things

I love my house. I don't think I've ever told the long story of how we got here. We lived in Provo, a college town (home of Brigham Young University, and neighboring Orem—it's pointless for the two cities to be two cities because they seamlessly blend into one—is home to Utah Valley University) for most of our married life. I went to BYU, Blaine went to UVU (which was a community college then, UVCC) and worked as a designer at the [Stephen R.] Covey Leadership Center. Briefly just after Christian was born we lived in SLC in my parents' basement when we were flirting with architecture rather than graphic design as his career path, but that lasted only a year. Covey Leadership let him telecommute the whole time, and it was a piece of cake to move back to Provo when he decided architecture wasn't his cup of tea. We bought our first tiny little house in Provo when I was pregnant with Libby.

But we wanted space, a soccer field of grass and trees to climb. When Covey Leadership Center merged with Franklin Day Planners and became Franklin Covey, they moved to SLC and we didn't want to relocate. Blaine became a contract designer for them, self-employed for the first time, and we had a lot more freedom to choose where we'd live. We took little day trips to small towns all over Utah. And when we came to Fairview, we knew we'd found the place. The first thing we did was buy an acre of pastureland between two houses. It seemed perfect! And then we alienated all our future neighbors by planning to build a geodesic dome. The guy who sold us the land was always friendly and nice to us, but the rest of the immediate vicinity was pretty hostile. We scaled back and decided to build a regular house, but we kept getting blocked here with our soil perc test or there with our building permit. It was like the hardest thing ever for us to build on that lot.

So one day I thought, okay, I'm going to drive around and see what's available. I loaded the four kids in the minivan, infant Jackson promptly fell asleep, and we drove up and down the streets. We pulled up in front of this house, for sale by owner, and I thought it was adorable from the outside.

When we got back to the rental where we were living at the time (long before I had a cell phone you see, but if I'd only known the owners were just across the street) we made an appointment for the evening to come look at it when Blaine was done with work. Every wall was a dingy gray-white, the walls were heavily textured with plaster, the carpets were all in colors I hated and some, upstairs, were so shaggy and long they needed to be mowed rather than vacuumed. The bathrooms were awkward in layout, and the kitchen was big but dark, dark, dark. I was just completely overwhelmed, thinking there was way too much to do to make it livable. I crossed it off my mental list.

And then I looked over at Blaine and he mouthed, "I LOVE THIS HOUSE." And wee Emma and Christian, who were then only about 6 and 4 years old, came in and said, "MOMMY MOMMY WE CLIMBED THE TREE OUTSIDE ALL BY OURSELVES IT IS JUST RIGHT FOR US! AND DID YOU SEE ALL THAT GRASS!"

So I had to walk through the house again with different eyes, eyes of a mom of a future big brood (I knew I wasn't done and that I wanted more kids). And it changed everything I saw and everything I thought. We made an offer the next day, and put our impossible acre of pastureland up for sale. It sold quickly, and here we are.

The hideous window treatments came down the day we moved in, but we lived for many years with the dingy gray-white walls and horrid carpets. In fact upstairs is still all shag, and still needs a good mowing. But I don't even see it anymore. Piece by piece we're remaking this house and the parts we've done look amazing to me. I have overwhelming happiness when I walk into one of my bathrooms and know that I did all that tape and mud, I sanded and painted those walls, I laid that tile. I'm still tickled every shade of pink about the kitchen facelift, every time I walk in there. I have lots left to do before the entire house is done to my specifications, but I'm enjoying the ride.

I love my yard. It took me a long time to get aboard that train. Watering the lawn is a huge deal, and I remember many an early morning with a hugely pregnant belly dragging the hoses around and shedding tears, thinking to myself, "Wasn't this B's job? Didn't I tell him, when we moved here, he was in charge of watering?" And I did only a halfway job and the lawn was tan with tinges of green. And at his busiest he didn't have time to mow and none of the kids were heavy enough to weigh down the seat on the riding mower so I had to do it, wah. Hours and hours on that mower to mow my green-tinged tan lawn. But a few years have changed everything. Kids are big and doing outside chores like champs. I've got watering down to a science, Christian can also do it, and I'm teaching all the kids how to help with it, it isn't such a chore anymore. And the lawn is so pretty! There are strips that are still sort of rough and ripped up from the sewer hook up four years ago. That's a scar that's taking a while to heal. But mostly the grass has filled back in and it's green and beautiful and Christian mowed it yesterday and as I was setting up my sprinklers this morning at 6:30 I actually, weirdly, thought there was nothing I'd rather be doing. The sky was so pale blue right then, pre-sunrise, and the air was just barely cool, and it smelled a bit like rain. And mostly I was struck with wonder and glee that this piece of land, this little bit of house, is mine, inside and out. I've earned it. I adore it.

I wrote a while back (maybe mostly on Facebook?) that I was redoing the laundry room. I still need pulls for the cupboard doors, but I'll show you what it was then, and what it is now.
BEFORE


AFTER

And that is why I love my little corner of the earth.

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Now playing: Simon & Garfunkel - Homeward Bound