Growing up, we always had to take a family picture on Easter. Always. It was usually a disaster. Someone usually ended up storming inside the house in tears. Today, we joke about it.
Luckily, my little family isn’t to that stage yet. I can remain hopeful that it won’t happen…cough.
(from an unusual dogwood in the front yard that gets green leaves before it blooms)
One of the benefits of a bigger yard is a swingset! I’ve been working on getting it presentable. It still needs work, but in general, the area is now much better. While pulling up poison ivy, I told Sam not to touch anything. “Why?” is the first thing that comes out of her mouth. I told her that these were mean plants. Since then, she likes to talk about mean plants. The girls are loving their new swings!
Samantha has a new friend named Jennifer. Jennifer is real, unlike Sicka, Goodoo and Funny.
Jennifer bought our old house.
Jennifer came over to the house before we moved out to get a tour. Weird, right? She was a first-time home buyer, but even still, she wanted to walk around and look at things like speakers, ethernet plugs and sprinkler system valve boxes. Oh, and how do you turn on the fireplace? Try that random switch right by the fireplace. Anyway, Samantha was at home and met Jennifer and all of Jennifer’s entourage. Again, weird, right?
Sam didn’t walk around with me while I showed Jennifer the very normal things about our house. I don’t recall what she did during that time, but it wasn’t hanging around Jennifer.
When we first moved over to the new house, Samantha was very excited about her new room and new closet. The new backyard, the new bath tub, the new driveway. It was all very exciting. However, in the time since, she has started talking increasingly about Jennifer and the old house. She pretend calls Jennifer on the phone and says things like “I want to come over but my mommy won’t let me.” Which is of course true. Today, during her pretend call, she told Jennifer that she loved her.
Her brain is doing some weird stuff to make sense of the move.
We are slowly emerging from our land of boxes. We still have plenty to go, but I do feel like most everything we use/need daily is unboxed. We are tackling some projects here and there. This house is almost 31 years old, whereas our last house was new, so it’s definitely a different world over here. For a while, everything we touched inside seemed to fall apart. That was a bit discouraging. Last weekend, we worked outside, and everything we touched outside seemed to fall apart too. I actually leaned up against a tree at one point and it fell over. A Tree! Anyway, we still have a long, long way to go to make it feel our own, but it’s growing on me.
Samantha loves it! She has so much space in her room (and oh, what a fun closet) and the backyard is endless enjoyment. She has already fallen down the stairs once. Maybe we’ve gotten that out of the way. She makes “chocolate milk” outside which consists of lots and lots of dirt thrown into water. She picks up big sticks and bangs around with them. She finds giant leaves, and they really are big!
I see signs of spring and I’m loving being in the trees!
