A Tale of Three Houses

We are coming to the close of 2011.

For our family it will put to rest a year of transition, change and uncertainty. After nearly 20 months of anticipating, preparing for and executing two moves, we have finally settled into a new routine in Kansas.

Before we close the year, however, I would like to take a minute or twenty to take a look back at where we have been:

House 1: Our dear Arkansas.
I won't lie, I really and truly DID NOT want to move to Arkansas.  But we grew to love it and consider it home.

Our first home: 515 Ane Ave.

I'm pretty sure that you are supposed to pronounce that with a long "A" sound, but I never could bring myself to do it. It reminded me too much of a body part I won't discuss at this time. I leave it to you. 


We lived in this house for almost 9 years. We had 3 children here. We built that stellar retaining wall and planted that tree in the front yard after the ice storm assassinated our Ornamental Pear.

We built vegetable gardens and planted all sorts of crazy stuff.

We bought that oak tree for 5 bucks at Walmart and planted it in the back yard and someday it is gonna be crazy huge. It was already starting to block the sun from my veggies.

We built that playhouse and restained it every other year.

We mowed and pruned and chopped down that ridiculous Pampas grass every year. We cooked marshmallows in our fire pit we built with rocks from the field behind our house. 

We loved our neighbors and always looked forward to 4th of July bike parades and pick-up baseball games...

And homemade water parks....

We were so sad when we found out that we were were going to be moving to Kansas. We loved our life and we had been so happy in our house. It was hard to imagine living anywhere else. 

But we started fixing up the little things that needed attention and scrubbed the house top to bottom. (Literally)

And we put it up for sale.

And we waited.

And waited and waited....

Then we finally left, and moved to Kansas. Our little house would have to sit empty until we found a buyer. 

                             

We found a place on 158th St to rent for 9 months while we got settled and familiarized ourselves with Olathe and gave the house time to sell...surely 9 months would be ample time...right? HA!

House #2: The rental:

There were some things about this house that drove me crazy.

The living room was a color that would give you a migraine. But we took care of that within a couple of weeks.

It took about two months to stop finding ALOT of black labrador dog hair in my vacuum filter....yuck.

The neighbor's sister/brother/football buddy was constantly parked right in front of the house and it was a small miracle that I never hit one of those vehicles in a moment of forgetfulness when I was backing out of the driveway.

I will not miss you, people who parked in front of our house. You annoyed me.

The shower in the master bathroom was.....*shudder*. It needed a flame thrower.

In general, I struggled with the knowledge that we were living in a home that wasn't our own. I felt the threat of losing our deposit due to a scratch on a wall or a stain on the carpet constantly hanging over my head.

But there were things that we loved about living there....

We brought home our newest daughter:

It had a very toasty fireplace.  It burned REAL wood. FANCY!

It had a sub basement which made us feel better every time we heard the tornado sirens start blaring. 

We built our first ever trampoline. 

We made good use of our close proximity to the Indian Creek Trail.

In the end, anywhere these guys are....I'm setting up camp.

As our 9 months came to a close, we were in the process of selling to our Arkansas home and then everything fell through. We panicked. We realized we had to put it back on the market and so we drove down to Arkansas to spiff the place up and get it ready to show again. 

We found....

 Our yard had turned into the Amazon.

But after two days labor and help from friends and family, we left it like this:  

We put it back on the market, dropped the price, and started praying. 

Within a couple weeks, we had a new buyer and by the time we hit our one year anniversary in Kansas, we had closed on our new home in Olathe. 

Only now it looks like this:

We are in the same school, same ward, and we still see the friends and neighbors we met in our house on 158th St.

We have enough room to grow and a big back yard in case we find an oak tree on sale for 5 bucks. 

This spring we are going to put in some vegetable gardens and probably some raspberries and concord grapes. I have big plans.

The neighborhood is safe and the neighbors are intense kickball players. They put down permanent bases in the cul-de-sac. Intense.

Halloween is magical.  Somebody gave me a cup of hot apple cider to sip on as we trick or treated. A first for me.

Putting up Christmas lights is scary. 

But it's totally worth it. 

We are home again.