Da house

OK, I think I share too much. 

But in my defense, this is all I wanted to see when my friends moved away last year. I wanted to see their new houses and be able to picture where they were living. And not one of them posted even just a pic of the front of their house! I felt detached. 

So Rach and I promised each other we would do posts of our homes so we know exactly where the other is living!

{Hopefully this will help all burglars know exactly where they are going when they break into my house now! :)}

(One thing I've found missing from our house that is on the front of most everyone else's.... decorative lizards. Bronze ones, silver ones, brightly shining green ones. It's a shame we are without. I told Trav I won't be happy 'til we get one... or three.)

It's a fairly simple floor plan, but one thing that bugs me when I see pics of homes, is I don't understand the layout. I just see pics of individual rooms and don't get how they connect. Soooo, once again I took way too many in hopes of that not happening.

Here is the view of the front door and entry way.

I love the big coat closet on the left.

 Turning toward the left side of the house.....

.... entry way to the boys' rooms and bathroom.

 View standing at the front door. You can see into Collin's room on the left.

 Collin's room...

 The bathroom between the boys' rooms.

 Love the big closet in both bathrooms.

 Weston's room at the front of the house....

 Back to the living room...

 I love the big windows that show the whole backyard. Great for keeping an eye on the boys.

Don't be jealous!!

 Straight across from where I would be standing is the door to the master bedroom, bath and closet.

 View into the laundry room with garage door...

 View looking out from closet...

Door on left takes you into the kitchen, door on right goes to bathroom.

 The master bath is kind of ridiculous. 

There is so much room, it starts to feel like wasted space. I do love the closet. I wish there was a door on the toilet that is behind the shower. The shower has two shower heads which, lets be honest, is kind of cool, but it means the shower itself could stand to be a smidge bigger.

 Now for the mish mash room. Again, it's so big that it's kind of annoying. I'd much rather have had a four bedroom house instead of such a large master bed and bath. Therefore, our room wears many hats... the sewing room, exercise space, office and master bedroom. 

We have such awesome bedroom furniture. I was using a cardboard box as a night stand, until I remembered the plastic drawers. Pretty sure it's what I used as a night stand in the dorms too. Classy.

 The backyard. 

Love.

 The back wall is a little shorter than the side walls. For the view???

 This is the view from over the right wall. 

Both pictures show pretty well what Farmington looks like. Lots of desert, shrubs... oh yeah, and oil rigs. There is one pumping 5 houses away from us. BIG oil and mining town.

All in all, I really like our house. 

The kitchen has tons of cupboard space and drawers. There is a big pantry and then extra pantry space in a closet in the laundry room. All the rooms have big closets. We live on a really quiet, nice street. We are two streets away from the church building and the Montessori preschool that Collin will go to in the fall. There is a park within walking distance. Taking the backroads, you can get to Sam's club in about 4 min. And from there you have all of Main St. with Wal-Mart, Target, the mall, bank, etc. really close. Trav's office takes less than 10 min. to get to.  

The things I was REALLY excited about...

* A washer and dryer on the main floor!!! No more 4 flights of stairs carrying loads of laundry back and forth. (We'll see if my luscious behind pays the price.)

*A flat topped stove!!! Just a wipe on ONE surface and it's clean. No more 4 wire burners, burner covers and then the whole surface underneath that has to be cleaned every time you cook. I could about die from the beauty of it.

*A fenced in backyard. Have a mentioned this before? :) Changed my life.

* An ATTACHED garage. What were those east coasters thinking putting them behind the house?

*No more squeaky floors!!! I know this sounds weird, but you have no idea how annoying it is to squeak every time you take a step in your house. Plus the doors squeaked. I was always spraying WD40. And forget about quietly sneaking away from a sleeping baby. 

*A disposal! I was so excited about this, but since we lived 4 years without one, I have to remind myself to use it. More often than not, I still throw food in the garbage.

Things that were weird to get used to...

*Only one floor. I like it, but even though it's almost comparable in size to our last house at 2,440 sq. ft., it feels smaller.

*High ceilings! I didn't realize how enclosed our last house felt compared to this one. It kind of made our old one feel like a doll house.

*No more screen doors. Love this. It was so annoying having to open two doors every time you went in or out of your house. It's still a weird feeling to open the door and realize you're done... no screen to push, but sooo nice when your arms are full of groceries.

*Sleeping on the opposite side of the house from my kids. I don't really like this, but since we learned we can still hear them if they cry out, it's not too big a deal. 


*Going from owning a home to renting one. I found myself hesitant to even hang a picture and put a hole in the wall? Were we allotted only a certain number of holes? :) 
It is nice that if something breaks, you just call the management company. 
However I feel myself not wanting to put a lot of effort towards decorating... like buying curtains or drapes. I think the living room and bedrooms would look waaaay nicer with curtains, but I don't want to spend money on nice curtains that might not work in our next house.

Things I don't like...

*Swamp coolers!! What the bad words! We are in NEW MEXICO people! How does this place not have central air? Even our house in NY did. And with a swamp cooler, you have to leave a window or door cracked open. Since most of our windows don't have screens, we always have our back sliding door cracked open. Hello crickets and bugs. 

BIG step back. 

*Community mailboxes. Allllll the way down the street. In the opposite direction we usually drive. So weird. I understand them for apartments or condos, but this is a normal neighborhood! When did mailmen get so lazy?

*The rent! I won't say how much, but it is RIDICULOUS. And apparently that's just how it goes in Farmington. The price to rent out here is weirdly high. I know, you're going, "In Farmington? Who wants to live there?" 

Exactly. 

It must have something to do with the oil and mining. All I know is, its stinks.

I could probably think of more for each category, but that covers the big stuff. 

OK, Rach... your turn! :)

Greer

 The Evans family all met in Greer to spend the week together at the Driggs' cabin.

Seeing as Trav had been working 2 days, we decided it was a bit premature to ask for any time off. :)

So we drove over after he got off work Friday night. It took about 4 1/2 hours to get there and after the whiny kids fell asleep and the crazy dust storm was behind us, it was pretty smooth sailing. 

The boys all seemed to have air soft or bb guns permanently attached to their hands. (Can't say it didn't make me a little nervous).

Weston was no exception.

His face is the picture of consternation. Man he was squeezing that handle so hard, trying to get a shot off!

 Going for a ride on the roller coaster/ kid eliminator.

Collin and Adele were cute playing together.

 Weston and Orson were good pals.

 Seeing Weston in these shoes and shirt reminded us of another son from the last time we came to this cabin...

 The "triplets". 

Weston and Secily were born a day apart. I think Orson was a few months later.

 Sunday was Father's Day. 

Dad and son eating their pancake breakfast.

Saturday night was kind of a bummer because the power was out all night. We tried to visit by I-phone light, but it just wasn't cutting it.

Sunday afternoon we played "Olympic Games" including races, Minute to Win it, etc. My favorite was watching the adults try to shake ping pong balls out of tissue boxes tied to their behinds! Paula had some groovy moves! :)

We left Sunday around 5pm, but not before taking a picture!!

Thanks Wayne and Paula for a fun weekend. Wish we could have stayed longer. 

Farmington...

We made it to Farmington about 6pm that night. 

{And it was no small miracle that our car made it all the way across the country and back some. Answer to prayer... truly.}

The realty office had closed, so they hid the key for us near the front door. 

I never thought I'd live in a house like this. 

Adobe/flat room/ Santa Fe-ish was never my idea of a pretty home.

But whattya gonna do when you live in New Mexico???

The housing situation was actually really sparse. We were just grateful for Megan (our friend from dental school that lives here now) for helping us find a place to rent. She was a huge help! 

Actually, lets just list everything the Shaheen's did for us...

They had us over for dinner our first night.

Bron helped Trav unload the ENTIRE truck after dinner.

Megan picked up the boys in the morning and watched them ALL DAY while we unpacked boxes and moved furniture around.

She brought us dinner our second night..... oh and our third night.

They invited us to hang out with their friends Saturday which was fun to get out of the house and meet some new people.

It was all so incredibly nice. We were so tired of fast food and her meals are amazing. And there is nothing that's a bigger help than having your kids watched while you unpack. I was so, so, so grateful. What amazing friends. We're not worthy! :)

(More pics to come of the inside.)

Well, this past month has been kind of a blur, now that I think about it.

It took almost two weeks to completely unpack, organize, decorate and feel settled. 

We didn't have hot water for the first week, which was awful. Warming water on the stove and filling the bath tub is for the birds! I tried a cold shower and just couldn't do it. I mean seriously, could there be anything worse?! 

It was almost 3 weeks before we had internet or cable. (First time in 6 years of marriage that we have cable. I'm not sure how I feel about this... but we almost had no choice. It was either cable or 2-3 channels.)

And it was almost a month before Trav's license was active so he could start work. (Come to find out it was active a week earlier, but was mailed to our Buffalo address even though we had changed it with them! Grrr.)

In the meantime, it was fun to have Trav around. 

That first week I think everyone must have been either really tired, or really neglected...

Without internet, Trav's I-phone was a hot commodity. If it got really quiet and we couldn't find Collin, all we had to do was go looking in some closets....

(I-phone in hand)

I thought I threw out a bunch before we moved, but then I found myself going through everything again and throwing out new batches of stuff. For example, why had I held on to so many CD cases for so long? They had to go. Just thought I'd take a picture of all my country loves. Oh Jorge!

Apparently Farmington has more parks per capita than any other city in the country... something like 56 parks. 

So, as you can imagine, we spent some time at the park!

And some time in the backyard.

My BIGGEST need in our next house was a fenced in backyard! It has been all sorts of wonderful. I can just shoo those kids outside and they can play without fear of getting loose. 

Collin still asks for Gavin all the time, but he was been really open to making new friends. 

He has a great time with Lilly. (Not technically a "new" friend, but kinda new to him.)

There is a Children's Museum downtown that is free that the boys like. It's on the smaller side of {quaint}, but it's something to do.

 Everyone sings Durango, Colorado's praises, so we headed there one day for an outing. It's about an hour north. They had an awesome aquatics center. It was cheap and very kid oriented and the boys had a ball. 

Trav also had a ball on their diving boards. Apparently in Arizona you can't do any sort of fun dives/flips unless you're on a diving team. Well this place didn't seem to have any rules... or at least any enforcers. He put on quite the show!

 Weston was being so funny. He'd stretch out on his stomach with hands on the ground and just float with the water line hitting just under his nose. Like an alligator. He'd stay like that forever. 

 There was a fun, big, twisty slide that I had to bribe Collin with a sucker to go on. But once he tried it, he was hooked. We had to have taken him down it at least 20 times. 

It was such a fun day as a family! And to top it off we found some yummy Mexican food at a place called Zia Taqueria. Collin was introduced to horchata and now he's an addict. He always asks for "milk with cinnamon and sugar". 

I have to say, we loved Durango! It's a really pretty, well kept town. Can't wait to go back!

June 14, 2012.

 The day the grind started!

I posted this pic on FB and I thought his mom's comment was funny.

"Yay! He is finally gainfully employed! It's good to get another bum off the streets. I'm happy this day finally came for you!"

So. are. we. :)