We love it here!

Since our move, we've gotten a lot of enjoyment from the new house and our surroundings.

We've discovered a lot about our new home.  Like fun tree climbing adventures (discovered - and then thankfully forgotten - for a few years, we hope).

And all the wildlife around here.  Baby birds, bunnies that visit our yard every day - and even the not so welcome visitors!

Speaking of yards.  Ours is so big, we had to get a new toy for daddy (and mommy)...

 One for the kids too.

We added to the wildlife for a short time when we fostered some baby chickens.  They underwent some serious physical tests while in our care.  Hey, it's a tough world for a chickens out there!  Speed, endurance, agility and dunk-ability were among many of their challenges.  One might have even taken a ride in the dogs mouth one day.  

Sydney truly loves those chickens (even named them after her favorite Houston babysitters), asks about them often and visits them in their permanent home on occasion to see them grow.  She's anxious for them to start laying eggs.

Fletcher, on the other hand, is most likely the direct contributing factor if they never lay eggs.  Yes.  In case you're wondering.  He's naked.  A lot.  Even in chicken coops.

And in the oppressive Louisiana heat, we've enjoyed friends with pools.

 And friends with boats.

 And learned to cool off any way we possibly can.

 It's been fun but exhausting!

The House

Phew, it's taken a long time for me to take pics of the house!  I'm telling ya, I've been so off my game since we moved it isn't even funny.  We've actually painted whole rooms before I thought to take pics for before/after.  And I almost didn't take these.  It's a project house... lots of landscaping work to do, dishes soaking in the kitchen, half painted walls.  But oh well.  Gotta start somewhere right?  I either did it now or it would have probably been another 3 months.

So here's the new house.  Quite near the top of our priority list when looking for a home this time was a big yard.  And boy did we get it!  We love all the space in both the front and back of the house.

Privacy isn't bad either.

The kids also really love the massive, long and flat driveway to ride their bikes on.

This has become one of my favorite spots... especially in the afternoon - with an east facing front door, it's a nice cool place to relax and watch the kids play in that massive front yard.  Never mind the dying roses and massive weeds in the background.  Project #476.

Inside is also lovely, but not without a lot of projects.  It's not an old home but we just have a different vision for some of the finishes than the original owners.  I've barely gotten started but it's already been overwhelming at times.  You can see here in the breakfast room my crazy rainbow of paint color samples on the wall.  We chose none of them.  I think I need professional help.  For the house too.

Dining Room with the most unappetizing color on the walls - and ceiling - ever!  This picture doesn't do the mustard yellow/baby poo color justice.  Painting is underway there currently.

I really love this dedicated laundry room with tons of storage (another wall not pictured here is floor to ceiling cabinets and shelves).  The new washer and dryer didn't hurt either... who would have ever thought I could actually enjoy doing laundry!

Here is the kitchen - AFTER painting had begun (walls were same brown as breakfast room) but BEFORE it was finished.  

My biggest design decision/challenge so far has been whether or not to change the color of the trim.  It's currently a creamy off-white color which looks yellow and dingy at times.  Especially when you put nice fresh paint right up next to those cabinets and trim.  

I prefer a more classic white.  But there is a lot of trim.  And cabinets.  And built-ins.  Everywhere I look I see trim and am mentally exhausted just thinking about how much work it will all be.  But almost every other design decision in the house is affected by the trim so we need to decide.  As of this writing, I think we're going white.  But that could change again before the end of the day.

This is the only "before" picture I have of the hall/guest bathroom.  Oops.  It was red, red, red.  I have seen beautiful red rooms before, but this wasn't one of them.  It had to go.  By the way, have you ever seen 4 light switches for a hall bathroom before?  This owner/builder had a real passion for light switches but that's a topic for another day.

Here is the "after" - sort of.  The light fixture was originally hung way too low causing the mirror to cut off the head of anyone over 5' 5".  It is currently being re-hung and drywall patched.  But the awful burn-your-eyes red is gone!!!

And THIS is the entrance to our neighborhood.  Hello peace and tranquility!  So beautiful.

Massive Fraher Update

This may go down as my most boring post ever, but it needs to be done.  A massive update from the Fraher's...

So it's been a while.  We've been busy.  But the main reason for my lack of posting is that I've been a bit paralyzed so to speak.  You see, just days after we moved from Houston to Louisiana, the hard drive on my computer failed.  It was a fairly quick fix, but then the most unspeakable thing of all happened... my photos weren't being recovered from my back-ups like they should.  Can you imagine? Heart in throat!    I do the right thing - I back up nightly.  But even that wasn't enough.  This has been so painful, I cannot begin to imagine what this must be like when people experience fires or devastating floods and lose everything.  Perspective.  It's a good thing.

Long story short, before the hard drive failure was visible to me, it was messing with some of my files - specifically photos.  After two long months of trial and error with some amazing people at Apple, everything has been recovered... up to February of this year.  And that's as good as it's going to get.  I'm still not sure I've completely accepted that.  Better than nothing, right?  But I can't help but focus on all the images that are lost.  Easter.  Bluebonnets.  Thank goodness for this blog but I don't post everything.  And even those images are significantly reduced for web usage so I can't ever print them.  I've been completely heartbroken and paralyzed to move forward.  I've been afraid to download pictures or delete anything from my camera until this issue was completely resolved.  And, oddly, it's like I've been afraid to even take pictures.  I've found myself leaving the big camera behind in favor of the iPhone more and more.  Nothing fancy there, but at least I'll capture the memory in print.  Anyway, I've been a bit of a head case about it.

Moving on.

Other than this little incident, we've been crazy busy the past 60 days.  We moved into a new house in Madisonville, Louisiana, have hosted four sets of house guests and took four trips - one overseas to Paris for the French Open WITHOUT the kids!  The move was the hardest ever.  I don't want to do this again for a long, long, time.  For real this time.  The kids were troopers, but they're still kids.  Ages 2 and 3.  They don't make for an easy move day.  Rude, pushy movers don't either.  

Then there was getting back into a routine and back to work.  Except I didn't have childcare for the first month we were here.  I was dealing with all the things that go with moving (daily service appointments, "where is (insert name of any number of critical items that you cannot find for days after a move)??", kids going through their own transition into a new home, trying to work during random nap times, fitting in some sort of fun daily outing so we didn't all kill each other and other regular routine type things like breakfast and dinner, that don't feel so routine in a new house.  Plus, I threw a two-day work trip into the mix.  And add a puppy.

[deep breath].  

I am guilty of driving around the neighborhood so the kids could watch a movie in the backseat (and maybe fall asleep) while I participated in a conference call.  I'm guilty of taking them to daycare at the gym, not so I could work out, but just to take a breather.  I'm guilty of feeding them chicken nuggets more days in a row than I care to admit (or count).  I'm guilty of bribing them with suckers just to get through a grocery store outing.  Let me just pause right there and say... at this age (2 and 3), there is absolutely nothing "fun" about taking both kids to the grocery store or Target or Lowe's or the bank or the post office or any other number of errands required in the average week.  I don't have enough eyes and arms to keep them contained, out of danger and avoid permanent damage or messy accidents in our path.  And the creative side of my brain was completely spent avoiding 2 year old tantrums and 3 year old negotiations.

[deep breath].  And.  I.  Only.  Have.  TWO!  [insert enormous feelings of overwhelming and inadequacy].

Oh, and did I mention that our new wonderful (no sarcasm there, it really is amazing) house has a nice big UNFENCED yard.  Love it.  But not with a two year old who has learned to unlock doors and wander off.  Seriously - we have almost 1.5 acres and it's not enough space for him???  We've found Fletcher in our neighbor's garage and across the street playing with another neighbor's dog plus numerous visits to wet, muddy low-lying areas (we're in LA after all).  So early one morning when I heard the door slam, I leapt out of bed and was surprised to discover Fletcher standing in the living room.  Hmmm.  Odd.  Maybe he was just playing with the door.  I moved on.  Later that day, I received a nice email from my concerned neighbor down the street who had seen Fletcher at the END OF OUR DRIVEWAY around 6am.  They were going to escort him home but he ran back to the house on his own.  Uh, Locksmith, please.

I have always been well aware of (and often times in awe of) the difficulty of being a stay-at-home mom.  This first month in our new house with the kids every day was a good reminder I didn't need.  I was juggling too much and not doing any of it well.  I was underwater.  

Finally at the beginning of June, Pat and I left the kids with his sister's family and took a trip - just the two of us - to Paris for the French Open.  It had been his Christmas present from me.  The timing of our move threatened it from happening this year but thanks to incredible (and well connected) friends and a super supportive family, we made it.  It was the trip of a lifetime and the refresher I needed.  Plus, it also turned out to be an excellent time of bonding for our kids and their Aunt/Uncle/Cousins that they don't get to see nearly often enough.  Win-win for everyone! 

When we returned, the kids started summer camp and life has begun to regain some order again.  We just returned from our last trip (family reunion in Arkansas) for a little while - at least three weeks anyway - so it's catching up time!  More posts coming VERY soon I promise, with lovely pics to boot.  

So there you have it.  It's not exciting, it's not pretty.  It doesn't have any pictures.  But it's real and it's where we are right now.  The blog was well named.