We had a very tiny screened in porch in the house I grew up in. VERY TINY. On that porch there was a gurney.

What? You didn’t have gurneys in your home? You much not have had a Dad who was a biomedical engineer at a hospital then. Because he had access to the best “trash” piles ever. We had 3 old-school, all mechanical, gurneys in our home. One was on the porch.

And we’re back to the porch.

We would sit out there (on the gurney) during storms when we were growing up. It was such a good thing to be kinda in a storm but perfectly safe the entire time. When we first saw the screened in porch on this house? We fell in love with the porch. Mostly because it’s just awesome. Huge and awesome. Beat up, needs some repairs…BUT AWESOME.

Wes and I sat out there yesterday and watched the storms roll in. Now…we didn’t have a gurney to lounge on…but other than that? It felt just like hanging out on the porch in Knoxville. It was such a peaceful space in time. Watching the leaves blow, discussing that many of them looked they came from the sky because the wind blew them so high before letting go. It was very fun. And very awesome.

It also made me very glad we found a house with old trees around it. There are dozens of new neighborhoods popping up around here. They plow down all of the trees and build every house on an empty plot. Then they come in and plant a baby tree or two somewhere on the property. No shade. No leaves. The new houses are very tempting, and we talked about focusing on some of those type of neighborhoods. However, we needed a certain size home, and the new version of that home would be more expensive. Basically we would have to trade space, for youth. We didn’t think it was worth the trade-off. Especially if part of the “youth” meant no trees.

Yesterday…when we were watching the wind bring in the storms that would have us hearing 5+ tornado sirens yesterday afternoon? I was still very glad we opted for the trees and even more happy that we had a porch to watch them sway from.

We both really liked the idea of a wooded back yard. There are so many cookie-cutter neighborhoods being built here, with tiny young trees, a yard with REAL trees and REAL shade appealed to us. Unfortunately, the area around the play structure was a little too wooded and there was poison ivy everywhere. Also – behind the play structure there’s a drop into a gully. This kept me from really wanting the kids to play out there alone, for fear they’d wander into dangerous territory. Between all of this and the dogs, we decided to call in landscapers to help us out. They fenced in a decent size around the play area, cleared out all of the treacherous undergrowth, and this weekend? We could play.

The problem is – the house had gone a whole year without anyone even living in it. Then the several months we have lived in it, but avoided the backyard. This meant the slide on the play structure? DISGUSTING.

Even after using a stick to remove the pounds of debris at the bottom, Nikki was still hesitant to go down it. So, I taught her a trick I’ve used on all three of my kids when they were in diapers: HUMAN SPONGE. Kids wearing diapers are the PERFECT sponge for wet slides. Their ass soaks up the moisture and they don’t feel it a bit. In other words, we sent Wes down a few times until he could clean it up for us.

After a few scrubs with a toddler butt, the slide was good to go. The kids played out there for a good chunk of Saturday and Sunday. I sat on the porch watching them a bit thinking this is what we were waiting for. We knew the yard had potential, and it was nice to finally see it enjoyed without fear of poison ivy or falls into deadly gullies. The mosquitoes are still a pain in the ass out there – but all in all? Not a problem.

Of course, you can’t be the kind of person that always dresses their kid in nice clothes if you want to use the Toddler Ass/Sponge technique for slide cleaning. Because this is the result.

Will they come clean? Eh. Who knows. Even if they don’t he’ll still wear them. He’s not old enough to care if it looks like he pooped his pants and summer’s almost over anyway. It will be pants time soon and it won’t even matter anymore.

Now…who’s nominating me for Mom of the Year again? I can’t remember.

This house? Who can grown OUT of THIS house? It’s almost three times the size of the house I grew up in!

Turns out…they had eight kids. EIGHT. And oddly? Something about that made me love the house more. I think of all of the joyful chaos three kids brings into my life and I think that these walls held almost three times that. I look at the chunks out of the kitchen cabinets and I wonder how many trucks rolling across the kitchen floor made those? I look at dents in drywall and imagine some sort of wrestling match or tickle torture session. I fall back on that fact a lot when we’re talking wear and tear on this home: Well, there were eight kids living here. It explains stains on the carpet and loose handrails on the stairs. It probably explains why we got the house for $60/sq ft – because how can you afford the time or the cost of making a house perfect that has contained EIGHT WILD ANIMALS. You can’t. And I see the signs and I smile.

Like all of the goodies the landscapers dug up in our flowerbeds this week. All of the things left behind to become a type of Playschool Compost.

This? Is a Pokemon ball. It brought me total flashbacks from E’s youth.

I mean – this is all stuff they gave up on. With 8 kids – how can you keep track of missing shoes or toys? Seeing these things makes me wonder if any of our missing items from the old house could be found under the dirt somewhere in our yard.

When we met the couple at closing, the wife was pregnant. (NUMBER NINE.) She was about the size of my pinky finger and gorgeous. Kinda made me hate her a little. But I looked at her and the most surprising feeling crossed my mind: Jealousy. Not because she was so tiny even pregnant with her ninth kid. Not because she dressed nice and knew how to put on makeup. No, I was jealous because of her eight nine kids. Not that I’ve ever wanted that many kids, it’s a thought that has never crossed my mind, but I imagine the joy and fun and vitality one child brought into my life for 10 years, and now I have that times three. So, looking at that Mom-to-be-again, I kinda wish I had it times eight nine.

I know the reality is with 8 times the joyful chaos, comes 8 times the PAINFUL chaos. If someone offered me a family of 8 kids today? I’d punch them in the face and run in the opposite direction as fast as my feet could carry me. But it’s still fun to think about. Never a dull or lonely moment. I feel the energy in this house sometimes, when it’s quiet. Like the wall are bursting with the laughs and screams of the family before. It’s a neat feeling and I hope that as the years go on, the walls continue to hold the joys of our family.

But maybe the house will let us keep our shoes.

Between the new house and the old house I’ve painted somewhere between 1200 and 1500 square feet of rooms this summer. I’ve gone through over 20 gallons of paint and endless rollers and sheets of plastic. I’ve used an entire tube of caulk and installed 2 light fixtures and 1 sink faucet/drain. And as of yesterday? I’m done. I finished everything in the new house pre-move and I finished everything in the old house in time for the photographers to come take pictures yesterday morning. As of right now, any big home improvement projects I choose to do? I do because I want to. Not because we have to do it either A) Before we move in or B) Before we sell the house. And let me tell you one thing: If I never have to paint another wall again? I’ll die a happy woman.

Of course…we still haven’t even begun to tackle the wallpaper removal and subsequent painting in the upstairs hallway of our new house. But that can be done whenever I finally feel like it. It’s just a hall. And right now? I don’t feel like it. Today – for the first day in months – I’m just going to do what I feel like doing. I’ll take E and Nikki to school and maybe Wes and I will finally run over to Hobby Lobby for some of the things we’ve been wanting to grab for craft activities. Maybe I’ll look at fabric for my kitchen chairs I’m going to brave upholstering. (BECAUSE I WANT TO – Not because I have to.) Or maybe I’ll sit on my ass all morning and watch episodes of Dora. IT DOESN’T MATTER.

This summer has nearly broken me. There have been days when I’m so sick of it all, and everything that I had to do, that I’ve been teetering on the verge of tears for the entire 24 hours. Putting on my sunglasses so I can sob while I drive and no one notice. Sleepless nights as I struggle with the overwhelming anxiety and groggy days as I deal with exhaustion from those sleepless nights. Part of me looks at this summer and is terribly proud of all I did. Part of me is pissed off for wasting it. Although I tried my best to force myself to put down the paintbrushes and have fun with the kids periodically – I probably didn’t do that often enough. Am I glad we did it? Yes. I’m so happy in our new home and it would have been impossible prepping the old house for sale while still living in it. But does that change the fact that the summer kicked my ass? No. I’m just glad I have a house I love to be lazy in today – should the urge hit me.

The urge hits Lil’ Girl daily.

I mentioned back when we were trying to prep our house for market, that we were taking down personal photos and I was finally framing some of my “real” photography. Of course, we gave up on trying to prep the house while still in it, but I was determined to hang some of the framed photography in our new home as well. As most of you have probably experienced, however, it’s difficult to decide where to hang photos in a new home. There are different rooms and walls and colors and it takes awhile to decide what should go where. I finally finished the sitting room last week, it is the first room to be completely done. This means it is the first room that has stuff on the walls.

I’m very proud of this room as I chose everything from the paint color to the furniture myself. I decided where to put the old furniture and those are my books on that bookshelf you can’t see because it’s by the only light in the room. This is essentially my room and I could not be more proud to finally have some of my photography on the walls. It’s hard to tell because it’s hard to get good lighting in that room, but there are 5 photos of mine framed on the walls. I chose the more girly photos for this room because MrZ wants me to put some in the “Man Room” too. I sit in one of these chairs every day, and just look around.

Now all I need is a reason to invite people over to sit in the room with me. Or do you think people would accept an invitation to simply Sit? I think if they were going to accept an invitation to sit in any room? It would be this one.

LilZ has had one of his childhood friends in town visiting for two weeks now. She visits every summer and it’s like getting the Gang Back Together. Assuming, of course, that I’m part of that gang and they’re not typical teenagers wishing I’d quit annoying them with the walks down memory lane already! It’s been a great two weeks and as always – we’re sad to see our adopted daughter go. But the best part of this visit? Forgetting she was here.

Wait. That didn’t sound how I wanted it to sound.

Part of why we wanted/needed a bigger house was that every time LilZ had friends over, especially to stay the night, I panicked about waking the kids. They shared one room and it shared a wall with his room. But I also would get annoyed with them waking me as my room was within shouting distance of his and right off the kitchen. This visit? Didn’t even hear them at night. As a matter of fact, several nights in the last two weeks we had 2-3 extra teenagers staying the night and I still never heard them. No small kids were woken up. No parents were grumpy with the noise. All around this 2-week visit has confirmed that this house is perfect.

Except for the fact that it hates me.

There’s the spider bites, of course, which are still horribly irritating. Then there’s the stumble I took down the back stairs one night while holding Wes. This weekend there was a stumble down the front steps which sliced off part of my heel and caused Wes and Nikki to both cry as they watched me bandage it. I’ve scraped my bumper by running into a wall I didn’t know was there and my battery in my car died (like died and had to be replaced) the first week. THIS HOUSE HATES ME. But you know what? It has to deal with it because I LOVE IT. So, it better quit trying to kill me and just learn to love me already.

Two Christmases ago (Or was it three?) I was at Pier One shopping and found these chimes that I thought these would be perfect for my sister-in-law. And because I tend to really dig her style, I bought a set for myself as well. Even though I had NO idea where to put them. Everytime I went to her house and saw them by her window I would think Hmm…I don’t know if I have as good of a place for mine. And they never got hung. Partly because I couldn’t really decide on a good place for them in our old home, partly because I wasn’t sure about putting things in the ceiling of a house we were going to sell soon. This stopped me from doing a lot of things…knowing we would be selling the house soon. So the chimes stayed in the original box in my bedroom.

I knew as soon as we decided what room would be what, where my chimes would go. There are two living areas in this new house, the bigger room we’re calling the Man Room. That’s where the big TV is going and the surround sound and MrZ is in charge of finding couches for that room. The smaller of the two rooms I’m calling the Sitting Room and it’s mine. There is a small TV because it’s the common area downstairs and allows the kids to be near me when I’m cooking. But the TV is very well camouflaged and not at all what you notice when you walk into the room. I still haven’t hung pictures on the walls yet, but my chimes? Went up yesterday.

The walls are cream, although they look a tad yellow in that photo above. I’ve been adding pops of color in several places. (Here is a picture I took with my cell phone the other day.) The chimes? Perfect. Even better? I was also able to hang another set that my mother-in-law brought back from a cruise a few years ago. I’d take a picture of those but there’s still boxes of stuff in that area of the room. So…two chimes I’ve been holding on for two years finally hung up in their perfect spots. It’s the little moments like this that really make this feel like a Forever Home. Seeing things finally up and around that have been wrapped up for years. I walk by them both and just feel so peaceful. I didn’t realize how little we were letting the old house be home until we unleashed in this house. We were holding ourselves back so much knowing the house would be sold in a few years. Now? Not any more.

And to prove it? I’m finger-painting the kitchen cabinets tomorrow.

That sound you just heard was my husband screaming, “Noooooo!” because that’s been his biggest fear in this house – that unleashing that side of me would make me do something crazy. And while I’m definitely capable of crazy, I’ll just keep it to chimes in my sitting room.

The dining room is the first room of the house I don’t mind calling DONE. There will eventually be things on the walls, but that will take awhile to decide on. There will be a few more pieces added to the china cabinet and probably something to the top of it. But for the most part? DONE. And I could not be more in love with it. From the table, which was my first real furniture purchase to the china cabinet which was Donnie’s doing. He saw a dresser in the same style a few weeks ago and fell in love, but it wouldn’t have matched our bedroom. The next week? The cabinet showed up in the furniture store we’ve bought almost everything else from. I brought him a picture, we both agreed it would match the table perfectly, and we brought it home this week. I have bought a few expensive dishes from stores like Pier One and Anthropologie (just a few, wish I could afford more) and of course – I found some treasures at TJMaxx. I’d like to add a few cups in eventually, but for the most part? Perfect. In every way. I want to make out with this room and have little rustic/contemporary babies with it. We eat dinner in here every night. We will have family dinner in here most Sundays. This room will be used more than most dining rooms, so I couldn’t be more pleased we found the perfect pieces to put in it.

So, I’m at Panera just to relieve the anxiety that is building up from not blogging. I was thinking how I didn’t want to show you pictures of the house until it was “done” – then I realized it will never be done. So, here are just some pictures of random things I want to tell you about. YAY! Random!

My new fridge with my old personality finally put on it. The house didn’t have a fridge and the one at our old house is staying with the house, so we bought a new one last week. It didn’t feel right until I put my stuff on it. I still have a few postcards I haven’t found yet, but for the most part? It’s my fridge.

Our aprons. Mine and Nikki’s were gifts and came from Anthropologie. I got Wes’s from Etsy.

We set aside money for furniture when we started shopping for houses because we knew we’d need some if we found the size house we wanted, and we haven’t bought hardly any real furniture as adults. This was our first purchase and still our favorite. It’s from a new little import furniture store in town called Nadeau. It’s brilliant and we’ve bought several other pieces there – all reasonably priced. I may or may not have kissed this table several times.

Dad’s Shelf. I put all of his books I salvaged for sentimental reasons (he had hundreds of books) and several of the miscellaneous items that were special to me for a variety of reasons.

The built-ins in the “Man Room” – which will be the room Donnie watches football. He’s going to finally get a sound system that he’s been wanting for years but our old house had a too-small living room for such a thing. This one is huge. I took charge of putting the books in the built-ins and made sure to keep it as masculine as possible. In other words – the Twilight books? In the “Girl Room” downstairs. Next to my hot-pink hardback copy of Alice in Wonderland.

NikkiZ in her Big Girl bed. LilZ got a new bed and this is his old one. She is not transitioning as well as I’d hoped but she loves it – nonetheless. I painted this room and Wes’s – but I painted them last so they look much better than LilZ’s and the playroom. I learned a lot in the two weeks I spent painting. NikkiZ really wanted a pink room but I couldn’t do it. There is already more pink in our lives than I can stomach on most days…lavender was our compromise.

Was she happy to have pictures of her family in her room? No. Was she happy when this one finally found it’s way out of a box? Of Course.

I bought these little butterflies on clearance at Hobby Lobby over a year ago. I told NikkiZ we had to leave the in the packaging because they’d be for her own room when we finally bought a new house. It was very cathartic to finally hang them up. She wishes they were pink.

We are going to have an upstairs “office” area for the kids to use. This is it. Since we only have one desk, it looks a little pitiful right now. But since Comcast hasn’t turned on our internet yet? We see no reason to stress about it.

Wes’s room. (I painted it!) He was already transitioning sleeping in the trundle at the old house, but then his sister was in the top part. He’s actually transitioned quite well but I think that has more to do with him being exhausted at the end of the day and less to do with anything on my part. When we feel comfortable that he won’t roll out of the bed, we’ll push the trundle back under the real bed, but until then? He’s sleeping ground level.

MrZ’s old abacus and Wes’s piggy bank. They look cute on display. When the kids shared a room nothing was displayed except for a few figurines of NikkiZ’s on a shelf on the wall. I’m looking forward to setting things out in their rooms now.

We scored this table on Craig’s List. I’ll be reupholstering it eventually, but it’s perfect for the kitchen. And since it’s used I have no concerns with it getting destroyed. Love this find.

I’m very weird about coffee. I have to have it every morning but only my coffee in my house. Take the same brand, same coffee maker, same sweetener and same creamer and put it somewhere else? And I’ll swear to you it tastes funny. This coffee tasted perfect the first morning. That’s how I knew we were home.

Well…the coffee and the monster pile of recycling. That is when it truly felt like home. And for the record – the beer bottles? Not all ours. We had our first family dinner at our house on Sunday. Most of those are from other people. I SWEAR. The diet cokes, however? ALL ME, BABY.

Hopefully we’ll have internet again soon. I’ve missed you all and truly hated doing the whole “Mark All As Read” thing in my feed reader this morning. But several hundred entries? In the 20 minutes I’d have internet? No. Can. Do. Gotta blog instead.

And watch the new full-lenght Harry Potter trailer a million times too – of course.

I know people who love the whole, Upgrade-The-House-And-Sell lifestyle. They make a small bit of money off of it every 4+ years or so and upgrade each move. I think this is insane. Not only do I find the prospect of settling into a new house scary, but I always find leaving the old one depressing. I get very attached to my domiciles. I spent all day yesterday working at the new home and waiting for the cable guy. I came home for just long enough to give the kids baths and put them to bed. Then I went back to the new house for more painting. When I got home around 10:30pm last night I said, “Ah. Home Sweet Home.” And then got very sad because after Saturday? This will no longer be where I rest my head.

The new house is great, of course, but it will be awhile before it feels like home. It’s bigger, so it’s a bit scary, and it’s older, so it’s still a bit scary. I tend to be scared of new places anyway – add extra places for monsters to hide bugs to live – and I’m a total mess.

So – basically? I’m a scaredy-cat agoraphobic. This is why I have no social life.

I’m finishing up NikkiZ’s room and starting on AndyZ’s room and hopefully will be done with all pre-move painting by Thursday. Which is when we have the carpets cleaned, (8 kids + 1 dog living there before us – we can’t afford to replace it so we’re cleaning the hell out of it and thanking the gods that most of the common areas have hardwoods.) the cable turned on (HOPEFULLY!) and the roofers begin. We rent a truck on Saturday and move whatever big furniture won’t fit in my minivan. (Which – surprisingly – holds a LOT of stuff.) I haven’t boxed anything up yet because I’ve been painting so the moving day ought to be AWESOME.

Either way – I see the finish line. I see the finish-line of another race, anyway. Because once we’re living in the new house, we begin the process of making it home. Making it so I don’t jump at every strange sound and where I feel that since of relief when I pull into that driveway – instead of the other one. And maybe – JUST MAYBE – I’ll have other things to talk about once again.

A Few Miscellaneous Follow-Ups:

• You’re right! Hardwoods are much easier to deal with than carpet. The copious amounts of painting have yielded a few paint-on-the-floor incidents (Not just from me! From the professionals too!) which are easy-as-pie to clean up on the hardwoods. (Once you let it dry, of course. Peels right off!)
• Still haven’t committed to new dishes. Everytime I think I’ve made up my mind with brand/color/scheme – I get gun shy and worry about the commitment. I may end up putting this decision off for awhile.
• We are going to take down the wallpaper after many of your horror stories…but…we have since discovered that wallpaper may have been painting over in at least one of our rooms. And we wouldn’t have noticed if we hadn’t replaced toilets or taken down smoke detectors. (To Replace! Don’t Panic!) So, I’m having mixed feelings about the issue. There is one room they did some sort of spackled/texture treatment to that we think resulted from the destruction of removing wallpaper – so obviously that room was bad. But there are two others we think were painted over and we didn’t notice. See? Mixed feelings. Either way – since it’s a hall we’re working we have the luxury of time so we’ll take it down, one inch at a time if necessary.