Oh by gosh by golly. We're homeowners! We closed last week and it feels like a weight is beginning to lift. I'm so grateful we have a few-weeks runway to get our things moved over, and that our rental home is only about two blocks from our new house. It has been fun and easy to grab a carload full of boxes or smaller furniture pieces at a time and run it over. The first item Jared took to our new home was our 15-foot-tall Christmas tree. It is ridiculous and we love it. Brings Christmas cheer to the whole home, which is nice since we likely won't get our "full" Christmas set up this year. We may add stockings to our fireplace mantel (we have a fireplace mantel!) and call it a day. The real movers are coming this Friday to help us with the larger furniture.
We are also enjoying having the space and time to do a bit of room painting during this transition. We will have wallpaper installed in our office and bathroom soon, so we are painting the ceiling and trim in those rooms first. Luckily this is a relatively simple paint project because we don't have to tape much--the wallpaper will go all the way from baseboards to ceiling and cover a multitude of overpainting issues. It feels good to start putting our own touches on what is kind of a soulless builder-grade home. A lovely builder-grade home in a pristine location, but our starting point is a bit bland. By the end of the year we'll have a tree mural and lemony yellow ceiling in our office (more of an art/music room really), and emerald-tone marbled wallpaper enveloping the powder bathroom, so. We're coming on strong with the initial design choices, that's for sure. I'm very excited. It feels like us. It feels like home.
On Saturday we were able to visit my grandma and see Santa! We're glad the BYU game was on in the background and the hot cocoa was free-flowing. Santa had a little wardrobe/sleigh trouble and arrived an hour late. If there's anyone who can get away with showing up an hour late to their own party, it's probably Santa. In a big step up from last year, Jack and Alice BOTH sat on Santa's lap and told him what they wanted for Christmas, even though Alice was "a wittle nervous." Proud of how far these kids have come over the course of this year. And as always, it was wonderful to see my sweet grandmother. And now for some pictures from our week:
Closing week is here! We are *supposed* to close on Thursday. I've learned to expect the unexpected with these things, but Jared is taking that whole day off so we really hope all goes according to plan. After we get our keys we will begin what we are referring to as "the slow move." We don't have to be out of our rental home until the end of the month, so we are going to try and just take our things over a little bit at a time and try to feel really good and unpacked and settled by the end of the year.
This week was Jared's birthday! All he wanted to do on his birthday was "not drive anywhere"--his commute can wear on him so on days when he has work he prefers to stay close to home afterward. When he got home he opened presents from the kids and then we went to walk around our new house, just for fun. In the evening a lot of my family came over for a true game night. I made pumpkin bars (Jared's preferred "cake" situation) and rallied the kids while the other adults were able to sink into a game of Cascadia. Then we sang and had pumpkin bars. My gifts to Jared this year were a big Christmas Tree Train to go around Jared's beloved 15-foot-tall Christmas tree. He's excited to get it set up right after we move in. Then I got him a pretty print of an artwork we saw at the St. George Parade of Homes earlier this year, and I put it in a gorgeous antique pewter frame I thrifted a couple years back. I also found him a creosote candle to remind him of his favorite smell--monsoon season in Arizona.
On Thanksgiving, Jared and the kids went for a bike/scooter ride on the canal trail with my family while I stayed back to take some deep breaths (we now have to keep our house showing-ready at all times for our landlord, which spiked the anxiety during an already very busy week), and to make a pie and some green bean casseroles. I did the pie up right with a pumpkin-cream-cheese filling and homemade butter crust. It was a lot of work, but placed in the pie contest and has been great for pie breakfasts the last few days. Thanksgiving dinner was at my parents' house with lots of loved ones. I wish I had been able to talk to more of my aunts and uncles and cousins. I love coming from a big family with so many loved ones living nearby. It can sometimes feel overwhelming when I'd love to have a conversation with each person and there just isn't the time. This is a good problem to have though. After family gatherings Jared always says, "Laura, you have the coolest family." And I say, "You too." And then our children scream at each other the whole ride homeðŸ«
And now for some pictures from our week! I've been slacking on pictures lately, but I'm a liiiiittle preoccupied at the moment so we're going to let it slide:
Happy Almost-Thanksgiving! Our new home is finished and we will hopefully get to do our official walkthrough later today.
We are busy busy busy, and doing our best to pause and enjoy the season where we can. Alice had a little recital for her neighborhood tots music class on Friday. My parents came to watch and it was just the cutest thing ever. Jared and I then went on a mattress-shopping date. We're hoping to dump our dust-mite-infested memory foam mattress before moving into our fresh home. We bought the cheapest Amazon mattress at the beginning of residency, and while it served us well during that time, it is time we retire it. Even though it's hectic to move during the holiday season, it's nice to be able to make moving-related purchases during Black Friday sales.
Saturday evening we went to the Christmas Tree Lighting at the Traverse Outlets. They flew in an enormous tree from California--I believe it's the largest real Christmas tree in the state of Utah. There was a community singalong and then they lit up the tree. The kids were in awe. We got some hot cocoas and walked around the little elf village near the tree. I think this will be our new kicking-off-the-christmas-season tradition. And now for some pictures:
Time is speeding up! Our home walkthrough is a week from today. When we walk around the house now, it seems to be 100% finished besides some paint touchups, a few exterior tweaks, and I believe they're waiting on a heater or gas thing to be installed. Then the following week will be our closing day, and we can start moving in. It does not feel real. The busiest season of the year is upon us.
In other news from this week, asthma stuff! I know this isn't relevant to most people's lives so feel free to scroll to pictures if asthma isn't, like, a thing you're curious about haha. When I was a young teenager, I was diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma. Fortunately, asthma didn't come up all that often for me over the next 15 years unless I had been doing intense sprinting, which I found pretty easy to stay away from. I had an inhaler, but only used it maybe a handful of times over the course of a decade.
Not long after having baby Jack I started waking up gasping for air and coughing in the middle of the night. It happened more often over the next few years, but I didn't know it was asthma for a long time. I had seen my mom have occasional cough attacks like this, and in college sometimes I'd have a cough attack in big lecture halls too (spoiler alert: dusty lecture halls). For some reason I never connected the coughing with asthma and would tell Jared I just had a "small diaphragm" lol. Because this was happening more frequently after I had Jack, I really just believed this was a weird change my body naturally went through after being pregnant.
When we moved to Utah the nighttime cough stopped for a full month, until Jared and Savvy and all our belongings moved back in with us at our rental house. I was able to deduce that I was probably having a reaction to either our bed/bedding, or maybe our dog. Pretty soon after this we were couch shopping and found ourselves in the corner of a furniture store next to dozens of dusty fabric samples. The asthma immediately flared up as I thumbed through the fabric samples, in an extreme way that had me kind of scared. This was an aha moment for me that perhaps dust was the trigger. I researched and read that you have to wash your sheets in hot water to kill off the dust mites. I began washing our linen sheets weekly in hot water instead of monthly in cold water, and this definitely reduced the nighttime cough attacks.
Fast forward to this spring/summer/fall. I was still having the nighttime cough (though less often since switching to hot water for our sheets), and I would wake up in the morning with awful allergies. I have seasonal allergies, so this wasn't a surprise, but when autumn came and allergy season was over, I was still having intense allergies every morning. At this point I knew I must be allergic to something in our house—probably our dog or our mattress. I sealed up our mattress in a hypoallergenic zip-cover and later did the same for my pillow. Ding! That did the trick, and for the first time in YEARS, I haven't had asthma/allergy issues at all since. Absolutely wild how easy that solution was and how long it took me to pinpoint the issue. I researched memory foam allergies and learned that my issue isn't with memory foam itself, but with the way it holds onto dust/dust mites. Now I can trace my allergy-induced asthma issues back not to being pregnant, but to buying our memory foam mattress a few months after Jack was born. I am shook that I didn't realize how closely allergies and asthma are related til this year. I for sure should have seen a doctor about these things years ago, but I had very intense pregnancy/newborn years with our kids and there were bigger fish to fry.
So anyway, that's a very long story that probably won't help anyone else in their own life, unless you happen to have an undiagnosed dust mite allergy and a mysterious nighttime cough. It feels hopeful to be figuring out how all my health puzzle pieces fit together. I have an appointment with an asthma/allergist next month to test if I have issues with any other household allergens, and to find out what seasonal allergens are giving me issues so we don't plant a grass I'm allergic to at our next house. And then we will dump our memory foam mattress and get something more hypoallergenic going into our next house as well.
Ok, I'm done boring the people with my allergy/asthma epic. Onto pictures from our week! My brother's family came to visit from Idaho and we had the best weekend.
Time is becoming an increasingly precious commodity the closer we get to moving. There are so many decisions and details and logistics to tie up before we move (not to mention the packing--the packing!), and that's all on top of the busyness of everyday life with young kids, and the upcoming holiday season. It's a lot. So! We will get right to the pictures this week:
^^Quick overnighter to Park City! Jared had a medical conference from Friday to Saturday there, and his work paid for a hotel room for us. It's a toss-up as to whether it was worth it to go up with the kids. Jared was in classes the whole time, so this dinner was about the only time we had together. By the time we got back from dinner it was too late to go to the hotel swimming pool, and Jared was exhausted so he went right to bed. The hotel room was really neat, with a loft and fireplace, so me and the kids holed up and played Mario Kart until check-out on Saturday morning. 
November! We are T-minus one month til moving day. I am busy busy busy with all the logistics, and also some design details that need to get taken care of before we're all moved in. For example, one or two of our rooms will need to have drapes ordered quickly. We also ordered a rug for our family room, because it will be going under all of our heaviest furniture pieces and so it will be nice to have that down before we move all the furniture in. This means I have been deciding color palettes for those rooms, and honing in on a general design direction. I'm finding the balance between taking things slowly and knowing most of these decisions aren't urgent, but also enjoying the creative outlet.
It has been a busy weekend with Halloween festivities. To have a slower moment, Jared and I are enjoying watching part of a movie together after the kids fall asleep while we work on packing/moving details in the background. This week we started The Hunger Games, thinking it might be a good Halloween-week watch. We're really enjoying it! I think we've only ever seen the movies in theaters, so it's been a while. They're really well done.
On Wednesday I enjoyed a wonderful girls lunch with my mother and grandmother, celebrating my Grandma Roper's 98th birthday. We had afternoon tea at The Taste in Provo. They bring a drink menu with options like sipping cocoa and specialty sodas. My grandmother and I ordered a mint cocoa (her) and an almond cocoa (me), and my mom get their delicious frozen hot chocolate. Next they bring out a big three-tiered tray filled with a variety of creative finger sandwiches (the classic cucumber sandwich was our favorite), homemade scones with fresh butter and jam, and an assortment of dessert pastries. We didn't make it to the third tier because we were so full. The food was excellent and the company was even better. I'm so grateful that we were able to move to Utah (a year ago this week!) so we can make more memories like these.
