Clean and Mean

It's better to be happy and messy than to be clean and mean, unless you are trying to sell your house, I guess.
Where there are small children, a house can never be completely clean all at once. Entropy is the rule. Sparkling bathrooms have to be smeared. Gleaming mirrors must be smudged. Beds beg to be jumped on. Crumbs need to be scattered. Stickiness must be spread throughout the kitchen. Freshly folded towels cry out, "Unfold us and trample us onto the crumby, sticky kitchen floor!" Then the phone rings. "Can we come look at your house in 10 minutes?"
Where's the balance between keeping your house ready to show, and being able to live in your own house? What level of cleanliness can I reasonably expect from myself and my children. I feel like all I ever do is clean and tell my kids, "No, you can't do that because it will make a mess." My stomach twists into a knot every time the phone rings.
Maybe I should just relax and let people see our house how it really is, instead of trying to pretend we don't live here. Maybe we should just go live with Grandma until the house sells.

We ain't met yet but I'm willin' to bet, you're the house for me

There are pictures to go with this post, but I need to ramble first...

Those who are familiar with "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," will remember the song Adam Pontipee sings as he goes around town looking for a wife. Well, this week I can identify with him, because I've been going around town looking for a house.

"Pretty and trim, but kind of small. Heavenly yard, but ugh, that house! Gotta be right to be the place for me."

There are plenty of houses in the valley that would do the trick for us, but we're kind of hard to please, because we'd like a bigger lot to go with it. We'd like to have room for a big garden and several fruit trees, room to keep chickens, room for the kids to run around, room for Nathan to tinker, and room to escape the claustrophobia of life without neighbors breathing down our necks. (I love living around people, but I don't like having to listen to their music all the time, and I don't like having five different families able to see into our yard at all times.) If we really want that, we're probably going to have to go south, but David doesn't want a long commute everyday. Decisions, decisions...

Yesterday was a turning point for us. I had been house hunting for most of the week, and was beginning to realize that we couldn't have a nice house with a big lot, close to work, for the budget that we have. (Unless the Lord decides to grant us a miracle, which I am not ruling out.)

We drove down to Springville and Spanish Fork, where lots of big, inexpensive houses on big lots are going up. As we looked at all these fancy new houses on fancy streets with fancy cars and toys, and kids in fancy clothes playing outside, we realized what was most important to us, and the deciding factor among all the other criteria we've set.

What we are really looking for is the right environment to raise our kids. David can live with a slightly longer drive to work. I can be happy with an older house that doesn't have a beautiful, modern kitchen. For heaven's sake, we can even remodel if we need to!

David often says that the best thing that ever happened to him as a kid, was moving away from all the "stuff" and living a simpler life. Spending more time with family, learning to work hard, and finding joy in things that money can't buy. THAT is what we want for our kids.

That being said, I also want our kids to look forward to coming home from school everyday, and their friends to enjoy being with us, so the house needs to be decent.

Anyway, we won't be buying anything until we can sell our house, so it may be a while. In the meantime, here are some of my favorite pictures from our week of house hunting:

Love this yard! 2/3 acre, fruit trees, gardens, sheds, llamas in the lot behind. BUT, the house that comes with it needs A LOT of work!

You always hear that bathrooms can be a selling point. You never know what you will find when you look in a bathroom.

What a great laundry room! You can't see it, but there are also shelves and counters.

Another great bathroom.

We'd have to get a moving truck to move all the junk out from the previous occupants.

Am I in a time warp?

This looks exactly like the kitchen I had when I was a little girl.

This is how Nathan felt after a week of house hunting. He got to go with me so that we wouldn't wear out our welcome with the wonderful people who watch our kids.

Busy-ness

Here are some of the highlights from the past few weeks:

• We visited David's parents in Sandpoint for "spring" break. It snowed almost every day, but we still had fun. Our visit included a close encounter with a moose in the driveway.
• David submitted a rough draft of his dissertation to his doctoral committee.
• I found several more gray hairs. Yikes!
• Christian said his first word. (No-no-no-no-no-no-no.) He also learned to crawl, and increased his number of teeth to four.
• We decided to try to sell our house, and have begun fixing it up. We'd like to find a house in the area with more storage, and with space for a workshop for Nathan. (His projects have started taking over our laundry room, garage, back patio, and are creeping into the rest of the house.)

My crush on Christian continues...

A moment of sunshine on the farm.

Christian spent much of his time in Sandpoint on the bottom shelf of the coffee table.

I accidentally put this picture in twice, and couldn't figure out how to erase it. Enjoy seeing more of the sweetest boy ever. The Lord must have sent him to our family with the mission of making me want more kids. He will probably succeed.

We took a walk at a bird sanctuary in Bonners Ferry. It was windy and freezing cold, so we decided to turned back and enjoy the scenery from the car. We saw a golden eagle perched next to the road. We also got to see a bald eagle and its mate trade off covering their nest.

My mom took the kids and me to visit the new Deseret Bookstore in downtown Salt Lake.

We rode TRAX down there. It was the kids' first time riding public transportation.

For someone who does not like seatbelts, Clara sure was scared on the train without one. She looked like this for the entire ride.

A grimace of determination.

Christian has mastered crawling and is no longer content to stay on all-fours.

Two fleece blanket worms.

Lesson Learned

1 gray house
1 unattended can of white paint with paintbrush
1 unattended helper, age 3
10 seconds of "help"
1 hour of elbow grease for mom (thank goodness it came off!)
2 wiser parents

Happy Birthday, Dad

I am so blessed to have such a wonderful father.

He has always been so good to my mom.

He set a great example for my brothers of how they should treat their future wives.

I grew up hoping I would find a husband who had those same qualities.

He has always been someone I could turn to for advice and comfort.
He always inspires me with confidence that I can do great things.
He is a peacemaker, a problem-solver, a helping hand, and a good listener.



His example continues to bless me and my siblings, and now blesses our children.
Thank you, Dad!

The race against time begins...

Can David finish his dissertation before August?

That's the big question here. Graduate school has been part of our life for nearly 6 years. Classes and comprehensive exams are done, research is done, qualifying paper and prospectus are done. "All" he has left to do is to finish his dissertation. He is really ready to be done with it.

Now he has another motivation to finish as soon as possible:

Last week, David was offered a principal job at Scera Park Elementary in Orem! We're really excited. The school is just three miles from our house. Nathan will be going to kindergarten there. Anyway, David is really hoping things move quickly with his dissertation this spring and summer so he can get it out of his hair before he loses it all, (his hair, I mean), AND before this new job starts.

Here's some of the other news from our neck of the woods:

Nathan has started being genuinely helpful around the house. He can feed a crying baby, set the table, wash a few dishes, make sandwiches for anyone who wants one, and help his younger siblings when I am not available. I can't even express how nice it is to have him cheerfully go around being helpful for an hour, rather than pestering the other kids during that time.

Grandma Manwill gave Nathan two little wooden model kits to build a bulldozer and a ship. I was intending to help him put them together, but he couldn't wait. Next thing I knew he had pulled out the instructions and partially assembled the bulldozer himself. He also did most of the ship unassisted. He was impatient for the glue to dry, so he pulled out the blowdryer to speed up the process.

If we end up moving to a bigger house, we're looking for one with space for a workshop. Nathan has turned our laundry room into a workshop, but we're running out of space for things like, well, laundry.

Christian REALLLLLY wants to crawl.


This picture is to prove that Clara is slowly emerging from her "raggamuffin" phase. She has actually been allowing me to brush her hair every morning. Sometimes she even lets me put something in it. It helps that I made her morning snack contingent on having her hair done.

Goliath the Snowman

It snowed 4-5 inches last Friday morning and luckily daddy had school off that day. We decided to build a Goliath snowman. Once he was built, we made snowballs and tried to hit him. While we did hit him, we were not successful in knocking him down. The warm weather later in the day managed to do that. It's getting harder and harder to pull the kids around the yard on the sled. It's almost impossible to pull both of them at the same time. Either they're getting bigger or daddy is getting older and fatter, or both. We love the snow, but we are also super excited for spring!