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Ours is the house on the left

We're home.  Home is a good place.

I'll post photos and info of the final part of our month away when I get a chance (leaving Bear Lake, fun times with Jared's family while I presented at BYU Idaho's Education week for three days, my birthday while we were up there).  But for now, I want so share some observations on coming home.

This is a good house.  It spoke to me the minute we first walked through with our realtor and it continues to speak to me.  We finally named this house.  The kids decided on "Ida Mimzy."  Ida is my great grandmother's name, was one of the top names the year this house was build (1896), and the kids and I recently read the book Ida B together and we all loved it.  Liza and the twins loved the movie, The Last Mimzy (personally, I thought it was a little dumb - but the twins were enamored with the robot rabbit idea) and all the kids really liked how Mimzy sounded with Ida.  So Ida Mimzy it is.

We love this good old Ida with her beautiful original windows with wavy glass and stained glass, her grand old carved staircase and steep stairs that keep you in shape, her inlaid wood floors, her beautiful paint colors, her cool rock basement, her great front porch, her floorplan that works so well for our family (other than the kitchen that'll always be a bit too small - but it keeps us humble).

And we love Ida all the more now that a great family is moving into the twin house next door that's been vacant forever.  That long-forlorn house is now bustling with activity as the new family work on a hundred projects to prepare to move in.  They have a girl close to Liza's age and a boy a little younger than the twins.  The kids are in heaven with their new neighbors who they click with very nicely.  After a month of cousin time, they were glad to see that the party didn't have to end.  Between the new neighbors and all our old neighborhood friends who seem to have missed us a lot, good old Ida has been full to the brim with happy kids ever since we got home.

But in some ways, the party does need to end.  There's so much unpacking and dusting and yard work and laundry involved in settling back into our home.  Plus there are 100's of non-urgent emails I didn't get to while traveling that have now become somewhat urgent and stacks of mail to sort through and deal with.  And then there are the major Power of Moms projects that got pushed off and now need to be done, there are houseguests to be hosted tonight, and I need to present at a conference tomorrow.  But by Friday, things should be somewhat caught-up and there won't be much on our schedule until school starts August 15th.

After going on my run this morning (I've had terrible tendonitis and a couple melt-downs over feeling old and in pain as I faced dwindling time to prepare for this mega-race on August 20th - but today's run felt pretty good and the swelling and pain is down quite a bit - yeah!), I sat down to chip away at my stacks of projects and emails while Isaac and Ashton worked on mowing the lawn.  Isaac, as usual, was chipper about the whole deal.  He missed mowing the lawn.  He missed working and found every opportunity to help with fixing the boat or taking care of weeds or whatever needed to be done at Bear Lake.  Ashton, on the other hand, didn't miss working one bit while we were away and became extra-adept at "not hearing" things he was asked to do while we were travelling.  He looked like death warmed over when I told him he needed to rake all the lawn clippings after Isaac mowed.  But after little pep talk from me about how work is part of life and work is necessary and how most kids in the world work like 10 hours a day and play and relax about one hour a day and he works like one hour a day and plays and relaxes about 10 hours a day, he did shape up.  He's out there raking now.  I'd better go check on him.

You know, life is hard if you don't like work.  One of my goals for this year is going to be helping Ashton learn to like work better - or at least learn to grin and bear it and get it knocked out and done.

It'll be a bit of an adjustment to get back into regular jobs and routines and get ready for school.  But after a month of routine-less good times (with plenty of work thrown in somewhat haphazardly as the kids worked on summer deals), it's good to get back to being a little more organized.  It's great to be sleeping in our own beds.  It's heaven to be able to unpack and put things in their places.  It's lovely to be able to sleep in separate rooms rather than the whole family in one room.  It's nice to be able to cook for and clean up after just 7 people instead of 40.

Home is a good place.

And Ogden is a good place.  We walked downtown last night to enjoy a quite impressive international festival in honor of the Archery World Cup which is held here in Ogden.  They had lots of great food booths and we got to see dance and instrumental groups from all over the world perform in full costume plus the kids had fun getting autographs from all the top archers in the world.  Ogden is constantly offering us pleasant surprises.