we bought the farm

well, really we just bought a house, but it might as well have been a farm.

my mom says my grandpa has a saying that goes something like, "you just

tied your fanny to a tree."  i don't even know what context that comes from,

but i'm pretty sure it applies to our situation.

we've been married almost 5 1/2 years, and in that time we've lived in an apartment

where we didn't once turn on the heat all winter (little did we know that we were

probably only saving like $12 a month, but we were broker than joke and just living

on love), lived in a mortuary for 2 1/2 years...a mortuary.  where i had to do very

little, but richard had to retrieve the deceased at all hours of the night to pay our rent.

as much as we complain about that period of time, we have such great memories of

living so close to our best friends, and again, living on love.  most recently we lived

in a basement apartment (right across the street from the mortuary) under some other

good friends.  every once in awhile we'd talk about buying a house, but then a great

trip would present itself, or we enjoyed not having the responsibility of owning a home.

this summer, we finally decided to face our commitment issues and start looking.

after a couple of failed short sale attempts, we found the perfect house.  richard knew it

was perfect long before i did, but eventually i came around.  once i did, this is how

it all played out:

we worked with our amazing realtor, joel carson, to make it ours.

this is us at closing.  he was the greatest and we'd recommend him to

anyone.  plus, he has a pig for a pet, so that's like 50 bonus points.

after closing we went to order our carpet.  then we went to lunch, and the

whole thing started to sink in a bit.  at this point i thought richard might throw up.

but my enthusiasm rubbed off just enough to keep it down.

the next night, after we'd gotten the keys, we went to the house to open

the couple of house-warming gifts we'd gotten from richard's co-workers

and joel.

that weekend we cleaned like we've never cleaned before.  we had some

amazing friends show up to help. and my dad deserves a medal of honor for

all that he did for us that weekend.  my energy was about spent until jenkins

and myself started pumping the jams whilst cleaning away.  snow white was

right, whistling/singing and dancing while you work is just the ticket to getting

the job done without wanting to kill someone.

i didn't take one picture of moving day.  that's how busy we were.  but

eventually we got all of our stuff into our new place.  since the carpet wasn't going

to be installed for another week we had to pile (yes, pile) everything we owned in

our front room.

it felt a little like we were squatters or something, but it didn't last long.

this is the carpet that was on our stairs.

big surprise that we didn't want to keep it.  richard and scott

ripped it out before the carpeters came, so we didn't have to

pay for them to do it.

we eventually got organized enough to have a few visitors.  scott and megan

jaunted the rest of the way up on their trip to happy valley to check out our new

digs.  kaycee and the rest of the anderson crew popped in for a little visit, too.

once the carpet was in we could move everything in the front room to its

rightful place in the house, and there was finally room for our charlie brown

christmas tree.  i wouldn't say it was like pulling teeth to get richard's help with

the tree, but something close to that would be accurate.

there are so many things we love about our place:

its in ogden (5 1/2 years ago that wouldn't have been true)

its brick

the yard isn't too big or too small

the ward is amazing

covered parking...lots of it

minor fix-ups required (for richard)

that richard wants to do the minor fix-ups (for rachel)

there's plenty of room to invite people over

that we can't touch the ceilings without stretching

storage space...we've never seen so many closets!

among other things...

i can confidently say that richard's favorite thing about our house is that he

has his own band room.  a room that is strictly designated for his instruments

(which are all under same roof he is for the first time in about 7 years) and

rocking out.  they jammed on christmas eve, and the day after christmas, too.

i think we can expect plenty more of this.

some things we won't miss:

the tile downstairs.  its now covered by the cushiest carpet our money

could buy.

scraping ice from our windshields.  already, on more than one morning as

i've driven to the gym, i've snickered at the suckers who have ice frozen to

their windows.  never. again.

i don't think i'd trade our time spent living in our other apartments, because

we really have so many awesome memories from each one.  i'm so grateful for

all of the places we've called home, and especially for this new one.