Gosh Darn Tired

I have been completely exhausted for the past two days- like can't get out of bed exhausted.

I toss and turn all night and I have nightmares that I can't go to sleep and when I wake, it feels like those nightmares have come true.

I'm so tired.

I have so much to do though.

Two more weeks.

Two weeks and we will hop on a plane and fly so very far away, and far away is where we will stay.

And I am excited and I know this is going to work out, but gosh darn it, I'm just so dang tired.

(How was that for some good old Mormon swears?)

Today I was watching Dylan and Cora for a few hours and I actually fell asleep while we were watching an Iron Man cartoon. They were snuggled up on the couch with me eating M & M's, but I never fall asleep in the middle of the day.

When they left, I went to the couch and fell asleep again.

Matt worked from home and has made two trips to the dump, cleaned up the garage, hit Lowe's and bought a new oven that matches the other appliances and had the old washer and dryer hauled off.

And I slept.

I don't know if I'm coming down with something or it's just my body digging in it's heels resisting change but I'm so pooped.

In other news, even more interesting than the fact that I'm sleepy-- our irises finally started to bloom.

Every other home with irises in the neighborhood has been showing off blooms for a month now and today, after the kids went to school our first flower finally opened.

It's actually good that they were delayed because now there will be a big blooming garden out front that gives us curb appeal and may mask the fact that our hedges are actually weeds we have watered and pruned because we think they are pretty.

Last year we had only purple blooms.

This year, it looks like we will have a glorious rainbow of my favorite flower. Right now we have two white flowers and an amber colored flower, I can see a burgundy color about to burst and more white ones coming through. I am so thrilled about that. I assumed they were all purple when we got a big box of bulbs a couple of years ago from Brian and Paige. Now I see that they gave us bulbs in every color, the other colors just took 2 years to bloom.

It's going to be stunning.

I'm taking bulbs with me to New Jersey, so we can have a little part of Brian and Paige's garden with us on the East Coast.

My flowers burst and bloom and I am going back to bed.

PS

Safe travels to Sarah and family as they close the door on their adventures living back East and return to Utah. The valley welcomes you back home with so much love and joy. Be safe and don't let the kids eat Nerds in the car during the long drive back.

Music To My Ears

Son, I love you so much.

But the cello is not your friend.

I tried to get you to practice.

 I begged, bribed and threatened.

You just couldn't handle how fast the teacher moved and nothing I said or did would convince you to work on it all year.

We met with the teacher and decided the experience was more important than the playing.

You hated playing, but if you showed up every day and didn't have a meltdown, that had to be enough for us.

At the semester you asked to quit.

Your teacher said you needed to stick it out for the full year and for you, success would come in making it through class every day even though it was noisy, sometimes chaotic and every day you would be asked to do something that you didn't like.

Tough for a kid with Asperger's.

Our goals weren't about playing music, they were about navigating the environment.

You had some rough days, but for the most part, you muddled through.

And I love you with all of my heart, sweet Greyson, but I'm glad orchestra is almost over.

I know you won't shed any tears when we turn that four stringed beast back into the rental place.

You never learned to play even one song but you made it through a class that had so many challenges for you and that's huge for you.

That's the win, because Lord knows you can't play for squat, Son.

Some of My Loves

To those of you who think I will be doing a new project in that new house in no time, I can only say that I hope and pray you are all wrong. 

If I start talking about sledgehammers and paint in Jersey- please shoot me in the neck with a tranquilizer until I start talking sense again.

And if those kids of mine wreck anything in the first year, I'm going to sell them on Ebay

I'm hitting the point with this place that I just want to throw everything into boxes, write "MISC" on them and call it finished, but I know that's partly why I have so much junk in the first place, I did that with my last two moves and told myself I'd sort it out when I was in the new place. I never want to sort it out in the new place- ever. 

---

In other news, the O Fam did family pictures this weekend. 

I have to say, my nieces and nephews are absolutely the cutest kids on Earth. 

I know you all think you know some cute kids, but mine are the best. each one has such a unique personality and they are an absolute delight to me. I love everything about these kids and everything they do is adorable to me, because I'm not the one who has to go home and put them to bed after Auntie Christmas has sugared them up and given them money.

When I get the files from Brian, I'll post some with our family in them, but for now, these are my much loved nieces and nephews....

Nathan said "Take my picture. Like this."

Anything for you, Sweet Boy.

Lilly is hilarious and she knows it.

Rocco wasn't feeling good and he was such a trooper with the pictures. 

When they were done he squealed with happiness to be free. 

His tender heart is such a joy, he is such a wonderful boy.

Abs is the big girl of the group and she takes such delight in playing with her cousins.

She tells jokes and reminds us all that she thinks we are silly and she likes it.

She is such a good natured girl.

Darling Maddie was blessed on Sunday. 

She's looks more like her Mommy to me, and I could kiss her little feet until they turn into prunes. 

Maddie's feet, not Marshell's. 

I guess that's a weird thing to say either way.

Enough with the paparazzi.

James rolls his tongue. 

So cute.

He is just this bright eyed sweetheart who is always watching his sister spin about the room as if she were his favorite show. 

Caz is such a sweet and loving little guy. 

He looks at you with his intense and beautiful eyes and if you act really silly to try and get him to laugh, he looks at you like "Auntie, Please.  You'd better bring your A game with me. I KNOW funny."

Unless it's Romy- and just the sight of her tend to make him laugh.

She has that effect on people.

Begging For It

I am really careful about locking the house and car.

I know too many crazy people who don't have good boundaries, and even though Utah is the promised land and all, it's better to be smart about things like this. I think a person is practically begging to be robbed if they leave the house or car unlocked, no matter how friendly and safe the neighborhood is.

So last night I guess we were in a begging mood.

 Look ma, no stereo!

We just forgot. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've left the car unlocked since 1995 when our car was stolen the night before Zane's baby blessing. We went out to go to church and there was glass everywhere and no car. 

They found it a week later, a few miles from the house full of sunflower seeds and out of gas, but otherwise, just fine.

The thieves who stole my radio also stole Matt's and the ipod he was given by his company a few years ago.

He called Apple to have them brick it, but he's pretty bummed out. 

It's a good thing Father's Day is just a month away. 

Oh well, you live and learn. In a month, the Tahoe will be Matt's car until Zane gets his license. I'm going to get a new car once we move, something smaller with good gas mileage. 

 I'm leaning towards a Ford Focus,  but we'll see what I actually enjoy driving once we get out there. 

The Focus will parallel park for you and that beats me learning how to do it myself any day.

Matt is going to sell the Jeep. 

We love the Jeep, but it's not practical once we're out there and even though we are moving to a happy little suburb, there is no reason to beg a thief to take another car stereo from us as it sits in the park and ride all day.

In other news, wee are still plugging away to get the house ready. 

We were crazy to think we'd be ready by May 1st.

The new carpets look so fantastic. 

Yeah, I'm leaving the window area pink. Someone is probably gong to repaint the whole place anyway, it's the only color in the whole house except for the green bathrooms. 

Zane and Grey's rooms with the super stylish headboards/ grime shields made from laminate flooring.

You have no idea how much I am looking forward to the NJ house- everything is new and I even love the paint colors. We need a shed, but that's a Matt/Tuffshed project, not a Chris project.  There are no projects in the new house, once the unpacking is done and some new furniture has been purchased, the house is DONE.

I want to remember the positives in how selling this house goes, not just how dang tired we were and how we did the touch up paint in the upstairs bedrooms with the exact right color, but a different sheen. 

Oops.

Provo

One of the places I will miss when we move is Provo, Utah.

We don't get out there very often, but it is a really special town. It's the home of Matt's Alma mater, Brigham Young University. It has a really nice vibe to it, since so many of the families there are young students who still  know how to be cool.

When I leave the house in my Toms and Buddy Holly glasses, it's just a sad thing.

 Don't even get me started on how stupid I look in an infinity scarf.

BYU Rugby was playing UCLA yesterday, so Matt, Parker, Zane and Dad O. went to the game. 

Our Cougars crushed them.

(swiped from their website)

I took the rest of the kids out to run some errands and there were some stores I wanted to hit out there. 

One of those stores was Blickenstaff's.

Blickenstaff's is a toy store that has an old fashioned candy counter and new 'vintage' toys. They let kids play and try things out there and the staff rivaled those at Disneyland in terms of their friendliness. It's a great place and the kids had a blast running around and forgetting for awhile that they are all teenagers or almost teenagers. For an hour, they were all little again.

After we left, we played outside with some of the toys I picked up and ate sweets. Sour Laffy Taffy pops, because we forget that we've only spent about 20 grand in braces already when faced with taffy.

When the game was over, we met Matt on campus.

I wanted to go to the bookstore and load up on shirts before we moved. I always like to wear BYU gear when we travel because no matter where you go, someone will always recognize that big blue Y and talk to you. 

We walked to the bookstore with the kids while  Matt and I both talked about our memories of time spent there. 

I use to spend every summer there for a week going to EFY with my cousin, Tanya.

 It's such a great school and the grounds are absolutely gorgeous this time of year. 

We almost forgot that we are old and square as we held hands and walked across campus...with our seven children. 

 I will miss Provo.

 I will miss looking up at the mountain and having that sense of excitement and pride as you see the big Y. I will have to let go of that hope that one of our kids will attend with in state tuition prices. While Matt and I had very different experiences with BYU, we will continue to always- ALWAYS be cougar fans.

This Place

It's only Wednesday?

I think, for the next few weeks that Plant A Radish will be brought to you by a crazy woman. There will be rambling, there will be naughty words, there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Hopefully, I can keep the bad words to a minimum.

I am all over the place right now.

Today, I am all over THIS place:

That's my front room after we took out carpets everywhere and moved everything out of the way so the installers could do that thing they do.

Quite a difference from the picture I posted before.

Maybe if I climb back into bed and watch Mad Men all day, the cleaning faeries will come and sort through it all and pack it up for me.

Hey, it's worth a try.....

Home

Once upon a time we bought a giant yellow and brown barn.

It was dirty, it was drafty and it was UGLY.

It had a swamp cooler that tripped the breaker every 20 minutes, lavender walls and red carpets.

It smelled like cooking grease and pets.

The bathroom fixtures all leaked through to the floors below. 

There was gum on the walls and spiders everywhere.

But we were determined to fix it up and make it a home.

We got rid of the swamp cooler and put in central air and two new furnaces.

 We replaced the leaky roof, we took out all of the floors and washed and painted everywhere. 

(Thank you, Brian and Dad for all of your help with those projects)

We got new doors and added I made cute shutters. 

The greenery out front is filling in more now that the sun has been shining. 

No more smells, no more spiders.

We turned this ugly barn into a real home. 

(Thanks, Lins, for the flowers.)

I use to have nightmares that we didn't live here anymore. I'd wake up and hope and pray that we would never have to leave this house. I knew that if  Matt ever did get transferred, that I would be devastated.

So many hours were put into this house and more than that- so many hours in this house were put into building our family, creating our memories as the newly formed Olson Bunch.

This house is a part of us.

And now we are getting it ready to sell it.

At first, I cried and cried. 

How can I leave this area, these wonderful friends and this house?

The Spirit hugged my heart and said "Because they will always be with you."

Life is eternal.

If you choose it, love can last forever. It doesn't ever die. 

Relationships may end and hearts may break, but the things that bring you joy can always be a part of your life. 

My memories in this house will always be a part of my life. 

We always joke that this is the house the Vodka built because the builders installed windows and doors backwards, nothing is square and every project we started unearthed some of the shoddiest carpentry we could even imagine. 

This may be the house the vodka built, but love created this home.

I know it is silly, but I hope the next family who moves in here adds their own love to it. 

This house shines when there is love within it's walls.

I will miss this house, but I'm not devastated. 

It's just a house. 

Love makes a house a home.

We can carry that love wherever we go and every memory, every friend and neighbor will be coming with us.

I pack them closest to my heart and will keep them with me always.

I will go to this new place and even though I am nervous, even though I am scared, I know I am not alone. 

I have these people, this family and these cherished memories with me.

I have my Father in Heaven, here beside me, always as long as I chose to abide with him.

I know the Lord is leading us East and even though I don't know all of the solutions to all of the problems, I trust that he will take care of us and wherever we go, it will be home.

In the meantime, I will turn my heart to Ruth, of the Bible.

Ruth 1: 16   

Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:

The Tri State area will feel just as much like home as Taylorsville, Utah in time. 

The Lord is with us always.

We are always Home.