The Untitled Title Page

So if you don’t want to count the last super brief blog post that I put up, we haven’t blogged in over 3 months.  If you are a generous soul, it’s only been 2.  Either way, Facebook and Twitter are where the action happens, so here’s a quick synopsis of the past 2 months (maybe in chronological order, but my brain is always jumping around, so probably not)…

We bought a house out here in AZ, in Phoenix proper, but still a far ways away from the airport (also in Phoenix) or downtown. 

That means we were finally able to unpack/put together all (yes, ALL) of the furniture we bought from our buddy Scott Parkin over 2 years ago (before we moved to WA).  If anybody needs furniture, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with him.  We actually forgot what our sofa and love seat for the living room looked like (only ever saw it in color swatches that we picked).

The house is nice, a flipper (failed) to flip and we bought it from him at a loss.  We also bought a cool fridge (open box baby!) that can fit a small adult inside and a washer/dryer (open box baby!) that plays a song when it’s done (because you need music to let you know it’s time to switch the load).

We became Redfin Phoenix’s first customers.  I secretly found some pages on their site that they didn’t lock down sufficiently, posted something (I do not know what led me to do that) and we became friends with the market manager here.

I forgot (no I didn’t) how awesome it is to move.  By awesome I mean not awesome.  It’s a lot of work, especially in a billion degrees.  Also, make sure the day you move in, your neighbor, who keeps bees (yes, bees) does not decide to stir them up in preparation for moving them to a more permanent location, thereby upsetting them greatly and causing them to attack anything that moves.  Bee stings are no fun, especially when they are angry and attacking (yes, they would attack, even taunt us).  Neither are 5 stings (ask Ken – father-in-law).  But receiving huge jugs of the localest honey you could imagine is not too shabby.

We have two HUGE (when I say huge, I mean H-U-G-E) cactii that we’re slowly getting used to.  They’re kind of like totem poles.

Also, make sure that your AC doesn’t break, especially in the summer.  Or you won’t be able to go to that portion of the house at all.  Fans do not help.

Our ward at church is enormous.  A little too big.  They are going to do a split soon.  If you don’t show up 15 minutes early, you have 0% chance of a cushion.  30 minutes early probably gives you a 25% chance.

Also, the announced, but yet officially locationed (I think I just made up that word) Phoenix Arizona Temple will be built on the lot next door to our meeting house.  That makes it less than 10 minutes from our house.  We found this out our first day at church.  That’s pretty cool.

I had a birthday, so I’m a year older.  We went to the outlet mall and I found a dark grey suit (I’ve been looking for one for a while) and ate Bobby Q’s BBQ for dinner.  I took the day off work, I told people if they called me for work-related matters I would bring them a very bad present.

Luckily, nobody called.

My mom came out to help with unpacking and getting the house settled.  We had 10 bags of lawn waste from one of the projects we did.  I need to pour concrete over the whole yard.

Morgan likes Shirley Temple, in particular Heidi, in particular the “little wooden shoes” song from that movie.

Morgan now runs around the house and we play chase.  She usually falls down laughing.

She also likes to play hide-and-seek in our closet underneath the stairs.  Emily wants to turn it into a playroom.

She can also signal to us whether she went pee or poo in her diaper by either tapping on the front or the back.  Pretty clever, I think.

It’s hot.  REALLY hot.  You don’t go outside hot.  It makes the inside pretty hot too.  But you can’t go inside from the inside.

Tiersha and Josh came to AZ and were able to spend a couple of hours visiting us.  It was nice to see them.  Tiersha did well there.

We have one less car.  Emily gave her car to her sister, Sarah…which means she just turned 16.  If people see a person other than Emily driving the car in and around Ladera Ranch, don’t be alarmed.  Or maybe be alarmed, she is 16 afterall.

Toby is doing fantastic.  He’s still crazy though, don’t worry.

Twinkie is also doing great, and loves taking baths.

Morgan still loves Toby and Twinkie the most.  We as parents follow closely behind.

Did I mention Morgan loves to run around now?  She’s an extremely happy baby.

We haven’t taken a ton of pictures.  We never got aorund to it. 

I’m sure I’m leaving something out, but I’ll end it for now…

Now we have.  :)

Things are busy.

Morgan is great.

I still want/need a vacation.

Emily is still busy with projects.

We still like to eat food.  A lot.

Toby is still crazy.

Twinkie is still ruling the roost.

They are both Morgan’s favorites.

Lot’s going on.

I find myself intrigued by people who live differently than the mainstream in various ways, and it certainly has affected the way that we live. The internet is really such a good resource for things like that, opening my eyes to ideas I never would have thought of or never would have realized people do. This could cover a very large range of topics here but I’ll try to keep it brief.

Really the crux is living intentionally, and choosing to live a certain way rather than just doing what is normally done because you don’t bother to decide for yourself what you want. (How very Thoreau-like, isn’t it?)

The sort of ‘natural living’ concept is awfully broad and full of individual interpretations, but I’d say we try to be somewhere in there. I’m still figuring out where I think we should be and how we should do things, and of course as life changes the choices we make change too. I’ve learned to set very little in stone, because what works at one time may not work at another, and we learn new things and try new things it all changes.

I was reading about this family that lived without electricity for over two years and all the things they learned to do without. They now do have it, but grow most of their own food, trade services with neighbors to get things they need, etc. Like I said, I find this sort of thing intriguing. I don’t think I’ll ever be at that point, but some of those principles I think are very admirable and I like to incorporate them somewhat.

Reading about Waldorf philosphies and the idea of having natural materials (wood, cotton, silk) in toys for children really resonates with me. I cook a lot of food from scratch, though that varies with how much I feel like I can handle at any given time. It’s just a process, and it’s interesting to me how when I read about things some of it just feels right. I suspect this interest somewhere deep in me to do things a little out of the mainstream comes from my grammom through my mom, both of whom have their own cool things they do out of the mainstream. (My grammom, for example, does woodworking and has an awesome wood stove to heat her house, which she designed and built. And the idea of cloth diapering came from my mom, who did it in varying degrees with all of us.)

Anyway, all that said, we’re not really ready to go too far out of ‘normal’. When we moved we didn’t get cable as an experiment, and we do sometimes miss it. So we’ll see on that one. And I may try to eschew TV and such (my feelings on media could be a very long post that no one wants to read, and I don’t want to be so opinionated on that anyway), but then the phone or internet (well, internet on the phone) is omnipresent. And, honestly, I like nice things. I think the people who live in old farmhouses are cool, but I could never do it. I like clean and the conveniences of the modern world. Like washing machines. So am I contradictory? Probably. Who isn’t? But maybe it’s a matter of incorporating principles more than adopting full lifestyle changes? I don’t know. We’re working on it. And someday, maybe, we’ll arrive where we want to be. But of course like many things the point (the growth, the aim) is in the journey, not the destination.

Well, hello world. I’m all about blogging when I feel like it. I wish I did do more because I love going back and reading it, but I have very little computer time (almost everything I do is from my phone, including this post), so I don’t beat myself up over it. That said, quick update:

-Phoenix is good. Getting hot very quickly. I might die. Also we need to get our grill set up because having the oven on is already getting quite uncomfortable. (It’s only May 6th. Yikes.) However, we do like it here, and it was the right decision for us. Life is good.
-We spend all our free time dealing with house related things. Whenever we do move we’re not sure what we’ll do in our free time. Hehe. Hopefully we’ll have good things to announce on that front soon.
-Morgan is a blast. She’s also getting at least seven teeth right now (no joke–eyeteeth and first molars), so some days are not as easy. Poor kid. Toby is still her favorite member of the family.
-Probably as an internal defense mechanism against stress over the aforementioned house hunting stuff, I’m filled with ridiculous crafting energy again. Anyone else get that feeling? It’s also that my mind has to be constantly planning something, and right now it has settled itself on quilts and fabric. It’s the funding that’s stopping me right now. Oh, and time. So in my head I plot and calculate and dream that someday I’ll have an unlimited supply of lovely fabric. And time, again. Hehe.
-Anyone else’s brain work like that? Planning constantly? In my head I often am mulling over multiple things to work on. With each house we’ve considered I lay awake at night thinking of furniture arrangement. I plan logistics of things a lot, meal plans and shopping lists in my head, and then sometimes crafting. I get in these modes where it’s on my brain constantly. What’s up with that? I do that with a lot of things. I’ll get stuck on some topic to read about and devour it and store it in my head for possible someday use. Huh.

Okay, that’s all for now.

For some reason I was trying to remember what street a store in Orem (Utah) was off of and I started flashing back to so many things at BYU and in Provo. I was picturing campus itself and places I liked there. Of course everything so often does look better in hindsight, but I find myself figuratively kicking myself for not having enjoyed it more at the time. BYU campus really is very nice. And there’s a Jamba Juice in the student center! How much better does it get? Hehe. Smoothie locations aside, there were a lot of really wonderful things around me, and I just didn’t appreciate it as much as I wish I would have. I think I spent a lot of emotional energy on being single or silly friend drama or whining about the fact that I was stuck in Provo–which now doesn’t seem so bad. Now, we also had some ridiculous fun and of course that’s what I remember most (Phase 10, watching Pride and Prejudice, the dollar theater, football games, or a million other things). I’m just saying that I don’t remember stopping in the moment to really soak it all in.

I look back at the time before Morgan was born a little that way too. We were so free to do whatever we wanted and vacations were really vacations. But of course I spent emotional energy wanting a baby or wanting more purpose…blah blah blah. Again, I just wish I would have appreciated how great it was while I was there.

I love the age Morgan is at. I’ve tried very hard to take mental pictures and cement them in my memory as she’s grown up. Many center around nursing, incidentally, because those are the hardest to get an actual picture of–like the way she likes to have her foot in the air by my face or the sideways look and huge grin she often gives me. Right now I’m just loving seeing her learn and explore and be so incredibly happy and silly. I have wished repeatedly over the last few weeks that I could freeze time right here. At the same time I’m wishing I would have appreciated the time more when she was younger rather than stressing out, so it’s the same story there as with everything else!

Every phase, either of a baby growing up or our own stages of life, has its plusses and minuses. There are always challenges, but there are always things to appreciate, too.

Somehow it’s so hard to really stop and appreciate life in the moment when it’s happening. We can be happy, certainly, but some of that clarity seems to only come later. I hope I can stop and soak in a little more wonderfulness while I’m in it, and then enjoy it again a few years from now when I’ll probably be having this same conversation with myself.