Making a House a Home, Again

I feel like a military family. Like we are always moving. I think we may have finally found our forever home. I won't bore you with the details, but it was an insane, unexpected turn of events. It happened very quickly and my husband is now on top of the world.

All of which is good. 

He LOVES the house. We finally have enough room to have all our family over and not feel like we are on top of each other.

We have a family room and a living room. We have a game room - in process. We have a two car garage and a real fireplace.  We have a legit dining room. Not a living room we turned into a dining room. Not a heated breezeway that we put our china cabinet in. Not a bedroom that we opted to use instead of jamming into a tiny kitchen. A real life dining room. All so good. We have a 2nd FULL bathroom, which we have never had before. We have an amazing fenced in yard and entire neighborhood of truly amazing people. The kids LOVE this house, even though they are still sharing rooms. I have my own office, in the most amazing of purples.

But I am not feeling like I am at home, yet.

I don't completely relax when I come home. My shoes are not unpacked, yet. I know - first world problem for sure. My closet still has the clothes just tossed in there. I hate the color of my bedroom - but he liked it, so we had to give it a try. I HATE IT. Dungeony and dreary and belch. So, now I have to find a day to paint. The carpeting was horribly stained and needs to come out - in the living room/dining room and game room carpeting smells like you would not believe. I know these are all minor. I will get my hardwood and laminate. I know  that. But I am letting all of these things get in the way of making this a home for us.

I just need to let me self relax and accept it as home. I will get my bathroom unpacked, some day. I will find my shoes and organize my closet, over Christmas break. I will have the rest of my life to make it my own. I will. I started with our menu board. It is my mark on this kitchen. It ties our family to this house and forces us to stop unpacking and running around so we can eat together.

I hoped that the Halloween decorations would pull me in. They definitely pulled the neighbors in, all so very nice. But I felt like I was decorating a store front. 

I wish I had the answer. Maybe the Christmas trees going up will light up my heart. Maybe it will just take time. Maybe it is just that all of the work obligations I have found myself carrying around are just not allowing me to love it like the rest of the crew. Maybe it is just some combination thereof.

Anyway, after all my grumping, here's my favorite room of the house. I can't wait to have a fire in it. I can't wait to get the tree up in here.  I can't wait to enjoy it.

I need to take a new picture without the 2nd TV in there and with all the turn of the
century canvases up!

All a Matter of...

Perspective...

Time...

Motivation...

We always place things into a box that makes whatever it is feel like everything will be okay. We remind ourselves that there is always someone else who is worse off than we are. We remind ourselves that there are families that would love to have the ability to struggle with their kids over getting their rooms clean. We consider the fact that there are people literally starving, while we are complaining that there is "nothing" in the house.

I find myself doing a lot of that lately. Mostly for good cause. I need to remind myself of how good I actually have it. I need to remind myself that work is what makes it amazing. I will be missing the chaos of 4 kids going in 4 different directions sooner than I think. A year ago, I wasn't sure I would be around to complain about everything.

And I remind myself of that, daily. Sometimes hourly. 

I am still here. Exhausted. Frustrated. Loved. Here.

But I also remind myself that it is okay to be human. I don't always have to wear my Superwoman UnderRoos. Especially at work,  I really need to learn that it is okay to ask people to help you carry the load. I need to remember that I don't need to make change happen all by myself. There are a ton of people who can help make that happen. I don't have to save the world single-handedly. There are a ton of super heroes just waiting for me not to be a control freak. If I fail, I just head back to the drawing board to analyze what worked and what didn't. And from there, you build your next game plan. From there, you come back stronger.

I failed this weekend. My on-line format for my classes was going through a major update and I could not get it to play nicely until Monday morning - 2nd hour. I did not get any of the grading done that I wanted to. As a teacher I failed. I didn't understand that their update meant such a headache for me. I figured two hours of no access, in the dark of night and then all would be well with the morning light. I know better than that. It was so not the case and I failed. And yet, my classroom is still standing and my kids were still goofy. Life went on, even with my imperfection. AMAZING.

There were two TVs because we can't find the
base for the one on the stand. Sigh.
It is in a box.

But, I did get the common areas of the house unpacked and my walls are no longer bare. My lovely FF is currently working on my office (He is that amazing) AND we all got the Halloween decorations up, The kids had so much fun with that. We are taking this big (to us) house and trying turn it into our home. And that is all that matters. 

We got the curtains hung this weekend because I felt like singing
"I'll Be Watching You" in a minor key every time I walked
past the window during the dark of night.

The meetings that seem to control my day, will still be there. But my kids will not. They will move on to their lives, separate from our home. 

Home. Hopefully they will always see this house as home. Hopefully the teenagers will keep wanting to hang out here. Hopefully this will be filled with the chaos of toddlers again, someday. Home is where the heart is. Boxes and meetings, they are part of life. They keep the lights on and the comforts going. Those are just the details.  The big picture includes Ghosts in the Graveyard and giggles at the table. The big picture is what we make it and what we remember.

It is all a matter of making it memorable.  They won't remember the boxes that seemed to stay piled up forever, they will remember the movies and the giggles and the running around. Memories.

Memories make the home, not the zip code.

Dreams take Work

Anything worth having is worth working for. Right? No matter the fatigue factor or the exhaustion. No matter the stress or the time. If it is worth it.

As we move AGAIN and into our final, forever home, I am reminding myself of this. It is FINALLY in the neighborhood we have been looking at for YEARS. It is FINALLY large enough for our big family. It was totally unexpected, totally not where we were going with things, but totally PERFECT for us. And so it is worth it.

I am hoping to make our 2600 sq. ft. storage unit look like a home soon. I found my makeup this morning - first world issue for sure. But that allowed some comfort. I don't know where my comforter and sheets are, but I will find them before the cold sets in. There is an extra refrigerator in the middle of my kitchen, as we work to make room for one down in the game room that is currently full of boxes. I am hoping to make that space become usable soon. I am hoping to find stuff soon.

I am hoping to be able to wash clothes soon. We just bought an AMAZING new washer dryer set. LOVELY. 9.0 cu. ft. gas dryer...in my all electric house. Sigh...so we ran to Sears...and bought a new electric dryer for my all electric house...because that expensive new dryer is cheaper than busting up the concrete slab that the laundry room sits on to make that happen. SO...if you need a gas dryer - that I would never have gotten rid of...hit me up.

I am hoping to be able to enjoy life, most of all. I am reminding myself, that this time of work and stress and headaches, will be worth it when my whole family can sit at the same table, in the same room for Thanksgiving. It will be worth it when there is space for my kids to come home with their families and spend the night. It will be worth when I am the grandma and I can steal all of my grandkids for the weekend and they can all stay with me.

It is so worth it.

Sleep can wait. Grey's can wait. Grading can...oh wait. Sigh, still need to do that. I love this house. Now, I need to find it beneath all the boxes and tubs.  It is there, our home, somewhere. I'll do a tour for you soon. Who knows, maybe, I'll give you the box tour tonight. ;)

Happy Wednesday!

Sisyphus

The windows can finally be opened - our highs will only be in the high 80s, which amazingly will probably feel a bit chilly.  The house has been cleaned - nearly from top to bottom.  I just need to dig out my dining room table of miscellaneous clutter. My house has been dusted, vacuumed, windows cleaned, beds made (all by 11am) and yet I am still a bit grumpy. It could be that O refused to get dressed because there was no skirt put out.  Or maybe because B vacuumed up one of the dogs tails - you know the k9 who I JUST got over his fear of the vacuum cleaner - after nearly FOUR years.  Maybe it was that N sprayed his brother in the face with Windex.  Perhaps it just the fact that it has been in the triple digits and I have had to deal with crabby, hot kids alone.  Or just being in the middle of a 48 and the hard part of that has come 12 hours earlier than usual.  I don't know.  Probably a combination of all of the above.


Personally, I am sick of cleaning.  This is the first summer all 4 kids have been home all summer. They used to go to a summer camp J started at his school at least a few days a week.  I never seem to get that break.  Some days I feel like Sisyphus - making it to the peak of the mountain after all that stress and strain just to watch it roll back and start all over again.  I never seem to get ahead, I always seem to be cleaning an area I just cleaned, straightened or scrubbed an hour earlier.  I have kept up with laundry, but it never ends.  I just don't think the world really wants 4 naked muppets running around, nor do they want N to NOT change his clothes so that I don't have to do laundry.


So, today, I am playing supervisor, foreman if you will.  My kids are working their way out of purgatory.  The girls are jumping in the bouncy house because they got their room done.  My boys are cleaning the glass in the photo frame divider and the glass in the end tables.


Me, I am working on making this house our home.  I am doing no more cleaning, instead I am focusing on the little details - my switch plates.  I have friends and family that our quite a distance away I would like to get pictures of the finished product to them. I'll start with the little things today, because I can.  I know it sounds silly, but it is cheap and easy an therapeutic. All while I eat junk food and watch The Kennedys mini-series I recorded the other day.  

Foyer

My Kitchen

Here's what is already done...

Dining Room

For my bedroom - my favorite

The Girl's Room

Works in progress - the 2 on the left are for the stairwell
and the one on the right is to dress up my bathroom.