Look! It's Our House!

Gosh, I love it.  We are really feeling settled here in the house as our first month here draws to a close.

I think the girls are settled and feel stable again, which is quite a relief.  Moving (and moving twice in 3 months, no less) is kind of disruptive when you are a small child, it turns out. Who could have guessed?  Ironically, Grace has recently developed a fixation on apartments.  I am amused by this because I remember doing the same thing as a child; I loved the idea of the stairs and living up high and being all squashed up with other people's homes. (Heck, we would have loved a condo/townhouse thing NOW because we don't like yardwork and we are ideologically in favor of denser housing, but neither Dallas nor Salt Lake City has many with 3 bedrooms.)  There is a specific apartment building that we pass on the way to and from Grace's preschool that has particularly captured her imagination.  When we drive past it, she declares that she will live there when she grows up.  She says she will live on the top floor and she will invite me over for dinner and she will make me chicken nuggets and cupcakes.  I can't wait.

I have finally been motivated to get some pictures taken of the house for our adoption paperwork.  We are starting up that process again here in Utah with a new agency, which is exciting.  (To recap, we have always been interested in adoption and planned to adopt; we started the process with an agency in Texas and got started on the homestudy but then decided to move away from Dallas so put the process on hold until after we were settled.)  We are pursuing the same kind of adoption as before, a domestic newborn adoption. We are saying we are open to any race so we will probably be matched with an African-American child.  I think we've found the right agency for us and we are filling out paperwork and we have the first homestudy visit scheduled (a social worker! coming to our house! to see if we are fit parents!), so things are moving forward.  We'll see how it all shakes out.  Anyway, I like these exterior shots but I am still working on the interior ones; I need to switch out a lens or something.  Soon you will see the paint colors and pretty hardwood floors and my new dining room chairs that I just love and the shiny kitchen.

One fun thing I've done in my shiny new soon-to-be-photographed kitchen is turn this:



into this:



And oh, how delicious it is. I did applesauce this harvest season too, which is also quite lovely.  Rob says we need to buy some kind of wagon before the farmers market starts up again next year because he is tired of trying to carry these awkward, big boxes of produce home.  Home preserving is so rewarding; I really like it.  It also always makes me think of my friend Emily, who partnered with me in my first-ever canning experience back when we lived in the same neighborhood in Connecticut.  Having a little cabinet filled with glowing golden jars is such a homey, wonderful feeling as autumn winds down, especially since yesterday we woke up to this:



YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!