TWO new rooms

I have been meaning to post a few pics of our house for awhile but I've always had a reason to wait. Well, now that we have some furniture and Ben painted the cabinets while I was away, I thought I would start with my favorite two rooms.
Kitchen: I love white cabinets! Ben worked his tail off and painted around the clock to get this all done before we got back from SLC. He did an amazing job and I love them. They really brighten up the kitchen.

BEFORE:

Of course the only photo of the kitchen on my camera was taken soon after we moved in and everything is a mess...oh well. Makes the comparison shot better. :)

AFTER:






Living Room: Remember how I hated the blue? Well it has really grown on me. This house has a million built in shelves and I still need to find stuff to fill them. Planning on photos and cool vintage prints in those frames over the TV...or books when I get the rest of the bins unpacked. Love all the light in this room.

BEFORE: Shot taken from the old owners.


AFTER:


Slaved over these tiles to go over the fireplace...thought it was going to be a really simple, fast project but I had a lot of snafus along the way. The wall over the fireplace is huge and I wanted some sort of art to fill it...but it had to be cheap. They didn't turn out exactly how I wanted and look pretty homemade but I still like them.

First Easter

Had a lovely Easter. Morning started with the girls exploring the loot from the Easter Basket left by Grandma.



Died Easter Eggs.


Let the girls play with, crack, bang, and try to eat the Easter eggs. So cute. Egg salad for lunch.




We took the girls to the mall on Friday to see the Easter Bunny but the line was super long and the prices super ridiculous so we skipped it (with the one caveat that Ben would pose as the Easter Bunny later).
We went to Church and the girls were way tired and cranky. With our daily afternoon nap falling between 1:30-2, one o'clock church is rough. This is a new problem since we moved because our girls are older, much more wiggly, and church is so much later. I want us all to stay the whole three hours but I seriously don't know how to do it. We end up not listening at all, wrestling with them the entire time, and Ben just runs back and forth taking one or the other out in the hall. I finally gave in and let Ben take the girls home to nap and I got to attend Relief Society without a squirming, screaming baby... and it was admittedly wonderful. How do other people do it??
We had a big and delicious Easter dinner with ham, rolls, potatoes, salad, and jello. Took a walk until it started raining. Ate Easter candy watching a very silly William and Kate made for TV movie. Let the countdown begin. We all crawled into bed exhausted and the girls slept a solid 12 hours as an Easter treat. :)

Treasure

Drove back to good ole Colorado with my parents and had a splendid few days with them in town. We did some shopping, got pedicures, ate out, played Canasta, went into Boulder and Denver, bowled at Lucky Strike Lanes and just had a great time. One of my mothers favorite things is posing the girls and their cousins in different places. In flower beds, in the sand, in the leaves, in the snow...always darling and a good laugh because my dad and Ben find it so embarrassing. I have great parents. They spend most their time making fun of each other but they keep things lively and fresh and they love being together and I love being with them.

I cried at the airport dropping them off. Goodbyes are hard-- what's new? We had a wonderful time and I know I will see them again soon but it is still rough...probably more than it should be. Even when I am with my family, I end up spoiling it a little for myself by having too high expectations. I always work things up in my head and put too much pressure on myself to see tons of friends but also squeeze in as many "fun" things with my family as possible. I hate not living close to them so when we are together I just want everything to be perfect. It never works out quite like that. Plans always get spoiled, people have their own agendas, and nobody is as stressed about spending "quality time" together as I am. I find it both frustrating and comforting that things are always exactly the same. I just need to relax and realize that the time spent doesn't have to be anything in particular. A couple months and 500 miles isn't enough to change relationships. I have lived away for 9 months now and I still haven't quite figured out how to be gone and how to visit. I just want it to be easy and natural and not involve so many emotions.

I don't want to blog about this stupid topic ever again. Get over it, right? Honestly, I've gotten better and hardly worry about it anymore. But every time I'm with my family it all comes rushing back. I spend a day racked with anxiety beforehand trying to figure out how to squeeze everything in, stress while I'm with them, and when its over spend another day contemplating where I really want to live. It's these days that I feel like I'm just biding my time until I go to Salt Lake again...like that is the life that counts and Colorado is just filling the gaps in between. Sometimes I feel like the relationships and experiences we have with my parents and my siblings weigh more than the ones we have alone with just us and our girls. I don't think I ever really grew up-- that I ever let go of being a kid and defining myself and my life by my childhood family. I wonder if my family is just unusually close or if am I just unusually attached and kinda nuts? Why does this seem so much harder for me than it does for everyone else?

I'm learning lessons here. I'm not saying that I've been wrong to put so much importance and value on these people because they will always be a huge part of me and a huge part of my life...but these thoughts shouldn't occupy so much of my time and shouldn't give me so much heartache and anxiety. It's not healthy. Thank you to my husband for talking me through this AGAIN. How I wish my brain and my emotions functioned more like his...

I need to be better at being my own person. I need to be enough to stand alone and be fully invested in my own little family and my own little life. I can love Colorado without it having to compete. I love our house and our neighbors and our friends and our ward. I love the weather. I love all the fun things we do together. I love the horses and the cows at the side of the road. I love the parks. But most of all I love my little family. They are my treasure. Their lives and hearts revolve around me just as much as mine revolves around them. Colorado is where we are for now and this is where I'll be happy. It doesn't need to be complicated. I can have both places and all the relationships but this is where our life is. This is home...and it counts.

Salt Lake

We were supposed to head home from Salt Lake today but the beloved family pooch Dottie is a bit under the weather so it sounds like we may be delaying our drive until tomorrow. We had a busy week. Lots and lots of fun and chaotic time spent with the cousins and also saw many dear friends. Yesterday my parents and I went down to Provo for the Carl Bloch exhibit and it was incredible. It runs through May 7th and I would highly recommend it. The artwork is amazing and after you can stroll the campus with the trees all in blossom and stop in the Cougareat for a delicious lunch. Perfection. Rosie and Evie absolutely agree that just like Disneyland, BYU is the happiest place on earth. O Rise and Shout the (future) Cougars are out...

Take me back...

Oh how I love Conference Weekend. It's so lazy and lovely and comes at the perfect times right at the start of Spring and Fall. My mom and I wish it came around 4 times a year rather than just 2.
We played at one of my moms groups on Friday during the day and then went to a park that night and ate sandwiches by a lake. We stretched out on a blanket and I pretended I was at the beach. bliss. Saturday morning we reminisced about how it used to be close to impossible to get out of bed on time for Saturday morning session starting at 10AM! Now the day starts at six thirty and we had time to watch an entire movie while eating breakfast before nine. Then we all laid on the floor and listened to daddy play twinkle twinkle and Somewhere Over the Rainbow on his guitar. The girls were mesmerized. In between sessions we ran to Home Depot and picked out hardware for our kitchen cabinets that Benny is going to paint while I'm in SLC next week. (super excited...for Salt Lake and the cabinets!). That evening we went out to dinner together at Old Chicago and then I met up with a bunch of ladies at another park and hung out during priesthood session. It was 81 degrees that day and cooled off to the perfect temperature. Sunday was another great day. We watched both sessions and then had some friends over for dinner. I went to bed that night with a journal full of notes, feeling so happy and inspired and ready to take on the week with lots of new goals.
Monday through Wednesday went pretty good and I tackled every day and got a lot done. Now it's Thursday and I'm feeling less than inspired. It's just one of those days that I'm having a hard time getting going which normally would be ok but not when there is so much to do. I've been wandering around doing less important things like refolding dishtowels in the dishtowel drawer (and blogging) to avoid the real chores. I need to get my house cleaned and all of our stuff packed up for our trip to Salt Lake and that is going to require the laundry to be done which I'm just not in the mood for. I'm so excited for the trip because it feels way overdo but I can't get motivated to get us ready. And I have two tiny girls that crawl after me crying when I try to leave the room to get stuff done which is pretty cute but definitely slowly me down. So why bother?? I hate leaving those perfect weekends and entering the reality of the week. I need to go reread some of my notes.

Take me back to Conference Weekend.