a walk where we live

to celebrate our extra hour of daylight, and the 55 degree weather this evening, we took a walk. i brought along the camera for some more practice, and i think i'm getting better! coop is still pretty reluctant on a leash, but he's getting there. this walk is definitely the first of many. we have a pretty awesome neighborhood, and i'm really taking to the lines of town homes, each with a different wreath on the door. herriman is home.

 

oh, you know. just sporting the men's la sportiva Quantum's. what can i say? they have exceptionally narrow soles, made for skinny feet just like mine! 

 

oh, hey! it's our house! (excuse the empty apple crate. it's waiting for some love)

this house

One day last week, when Devin had an afternoon off, he took it upon himself to rearrange the furniture in our bedroom. He had mentioned wanting to do it the night before, and I gave him a warning that I might not like it. He agreed to move it back if I didn't. When I got home that night, it was still light outside, and there was sunshine covering our entire bed, which was now centered under the large window that faces our tiny backyard. The room seemed so much bigger, and the layout made more sense. So when Sunday came around and we found ourselves bored and a little restless with some time to kill before family dinner, we rearranged the living room. This was a whole lot harder, but we ended up with the same result: the room seemed 10x bigger and 10x cozier at the same time. It's like a whole new house over here! It was awesome! Ever since then, I've felt like even more of a home-body. I love being at home. Cooking, cleaning, relaxing. It's my favorite place to be. I didn't think I'd ever say this, because I've always seen this house as a very temporary place to get us from here to there to wherever we're going next, but Herriman has really become a home for us. The community is very active and friendly, and this little town has a lot more to offer than I thought, I mean, they just opened a Cafe Rio right next to the one and only grocery store down the street, so we're getting somewhere! I haven't taken photos yet of the house, even though we've been here for 6 months now, but I'm making constant adjustments with the decorating. I'll get around to it soon. 

It's a Tuesday, which means Devin is at school for 100 years today, and it's just me, this house and the dog. I did myself a favor today and grabbed a few redbox movies on lunch, you know, the ones that are too girly or weird for Devin to want to watch with me. I will never enjoy his long hours at work and school though.

fog

Utah seems to be having an identity crisis lately. It started with several weeks straight of below freezing temperatures... without any snowfall. Next came a morning of freezing rain. Which I have never seen in Utah in my entire lifetime. It was a rare sight! I had to pull over mid-commute and scrape my windows! And now, the weather has settled with this dense, thick fog that draped the wasatch front last night and has only gotten worse. Devin was fortunate enough to spend this afternoon at the OR show, and I was getting a little sick of laying around the house so I took Cooper on a walk to give him a little exercise.

^ there's a neighborhood back there...

The fog was intense. I got lost twice! After about an hour of walking around, we finally happened upon our own backyard and came back inside. I was still a little stir-crazy and decided our next adventure would be a drive. Living in an unfamiliar city has the perk of fun and aimless drives. I love looking at houses and thought today would be the perfect day to finally find my way to the Up House, which I had been wanting to do since I found out it was in Herriman, and could see it from the [one and only] main road in town. Once I got from our street down into town, I laughed at myself. I could barely see the car in front of me, let alone find a house I had only seen from a distance as I passed by! I made a prompt left turn, right into Mcdonald's for a diet coke and went straight back home. Now cooper and I are back in bed, chugging diet coke for me, sleeping for him (that surgery must have really wiped him out! he's sleeping as much as he did when he was a baby!), and endless episodes of my newest guilty pleasure, Gossip Girl (I know, I'm awful!). Hopefully Devin will be home soon, but in the meantime, Coop and I will just keep our stink faces on.

[adorable hat knitted (is that a word?) for me by my long lost best friend, Kylee's mother. she's got a talent!]

that's all, folks.

don't be surprised by the fact that we're still crazy busy. and by we i mean devin. his busyness makes me feel busy, though. it seems like nothing has slowed down at all since we moved. he's had 2 opening shifts this week (which means he's at the gym by 6am, which means we're both up a little after 4am...) and he's started school. and still working full time. and covering other people's butts when they're whiny and he finally had an evening off (we must've jinxed it.)

luckily, we were able to get out last night and go to dinner. we were both pretty excited when we realized how deserted the gateway is on a wednesday night. and that we can take a quick drive up to SLC any night of the week for dinner. this is a new. and it's great. 

other things... 

>pretty little liars finale? i'm shocked. freakin' Toby. 

>work goes by so fast. still. it's so awesome.

>i finally understand the sonic happy hour hype. thanks to our office manager getting us all lemon berries yesterday. yum.

>everybody needs to stop having babies. at least until i get my puppy. then you can carry on.

>i discovered last night that Herriman has more than 1 main road with business on it. less boonie than i thought. touche. 

>the things i've come to miss most about our old place are target and our yellow bedroom wall.

i kept thinking today was friday. which is the worst. this weekend we don't have many big plans. thanks goodness. we are so excited to go to our new ward on sunday. i can't wait to meet some people! i hope there are other young couples like us without kids. we need Herriman friends! plus devin needs a guy friend that's close by so he can watch all the games (since we're sans cable). 

we've got a pretty giant ikea trip in our future, and once that's done, i'll be able to finish up all the decorating and organizing, and i can finally post pictures of the finished house. in the mean time, i'm putting together the details for our housewarming party, hopefully in the next 2 weeks or so. i'm so excited to have our friends come up and see! i have missed them, our friends. 

5107

we got the house put together for the most part much, much faster than i had anticipated. things have been running smoothly, and we've been doing our best to decorate when we have the time. devin started school today, so we are crazy busy. i woke up feeling absolutely awful, and stayed home from work. it's a good sign that i wish i was at work though, right? i'm feeling better, but i think after how busy we've been, my body just needs the rest!

i wanted to make sure i documented the pictures we've been taking as we go, including the virtually pointless pictures i took on my phone during our very first time walking through the house. it's just a one bedroom, one bathroom townhome - but it's the perfect size for the two of us... with room for a dog, of course.

< the living room, from the front door (huge windows!)

> livingroom/kitchen from the front door

< kitchen

> kitchen from bedroom

< bedroom

> bathroom (so much bigger than our old one - it's heavenly!)

>< the closet, connected to the bathroom.

< backyard area (minus the patio)

> kitchen/living room from the bedroom

< bedroom from the kitchen (the door on the left is the pantry)

> laundry room / pantry from the kitchen

< front door, garage door from the kitchen

> front porch... sorta (see what i mean by virtually pointless?)

>< and from across the street! i never took a shot head on, because there is a tree right in the middle of the front yard!

and photos from the packing process:

the packing took about a week. the unpacking? about two days.

disaster status.

this is blurry, but i was pretty shocked to see just how many vases and jars i had, once i started gathering them all together to be packed! hoarders, anybody?! (this is probably only 2/3 of them!)

it looked so big and empty and uninhabited! especially once we took everything off the walls.

and the unpacking process:

 

our new washer and dryer! total steal from ksl.