The Farmington House

Well, I guess it is about time that I show you all the house we are renting. Many have heard my ranting and raving...that is not meaning that all my comments have been great, by the way...so I figured I had better go around the house and take a few snap shots of my temporary casa.

As many of you already know, I LOVE my house in Allen. And yes, we still have the house in Allen. As of right now we have simply leased it versus selling it. And we were very fortunate to get great folks to lease it. They have even planted flowers and trimmed the hedges...which is more than we did in the year we were there!!

Anyway, this house is a little more than 3000 sq. ft., so it is a great size. The first for me is that it is all single story! Not used to being in a sprawling house, but it is working. It has a lot of really cool features to it. The living and formal dining are together in the middle of the house, and the ceiling is covered with wood and Vegas in the typical southwestern style.

The kitchen is a great size, but it was oddly shaped so I ended up putting my kitchen nook table in the middle of the room and it works great since there is no island in the kitchen.

The house is built on a fung sway (I soooo know I spelled that wrong...sorry Shelly!) design. Basically that means we have water (the entryway) and fire (the fireplace) together and then Earth and sky together. What does this mean?? Well, that means that when you walk into the house there is a waterfall and on the opposite side of the waterfall is the gas fireplace. Still trying to get used to the gas only fireplace, especially living with a pyro who is not happy that he can't burn anything!! Then the Earth and sky part is the living room. The ENTIRE house is stained concrete. It is stained the color of the ground, meaning brown, another shade of brown, a rusty color and a bit of green. But it is ALL concrete. There is not a thread of fabric, neither Berber or shag, on the floor anywhere other than the couple of rugs that we brought with us. Needless to say we are looking forward to have some carpet sometime in the future since our feet hurt in the morning and my poor kids fall on a daily basis even when they have shoes on in the house. How tragic! Oh, the sky!! I almost forgot. That is the Vega pattern on the living room ceiling. It looks like a sunburst in the pattern or shape. I must be the fifth element, but I have no idea how I am affecting the other elements in the house!! haahaa!

We spend most of our time in the TV room, which is where we put our tree, TV, and computer. This is the only place we could have put the TV since this is the only room with a jack! Oh, well, it works great and was a wonderful area to put all of our U2 stuff on display.

The really cool area is outside. My pictures do NOT do it justice. The family who owns the house built a GREAT deck on the back of the house. It is about 1600 sq. ft. and looks out at the sunset every night. It is really cool and almost the same size as our first house! : )

Again, so many things about the house are really cool and all of our stuff fit in it wonderfully, BUT the horror of the whole house is the master closet. The pic that I have posted is NOT shrunk in any way. What you see is the entire master closet. I have had master closets in apartments that were larger than this! Urgh!!

Oh, well. It is temporary and my mother's great advice was to "Look at it as an adventure. Think of it as your vacation home." That is what I am doing so far, but just to let you all know, there is an extra room available in this vacation home waiting for visitors!! :)

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving. It is a time to hang with the ones you love and create fun memories. Well, we did! We went off to my haven, that means we left Farmington, and spent several days in the mountains. To our surprise our trip became a winter wonderland!! Our "black Friday" became a very white Friday!

When we arrived, there was not a speck of snow ANYWHERE!! The ski season is looking a bit bleak for the area. But, when we woke up the day after Thansgiving, we had a winter wonderland. It snowed about 12 inches overnight and kept snowing throughout the day. We already had tickets for a cool train ride through the mountains, so we went out on our trip and enjoyed lots of hot, hot, hot, hot chocolate (Imagine the Polar Express song for that one!! Kids sang it the whole time we were on the train!) And the kids had a blast creating their snow angels and throwing snowballs at their parents! Don't we all enjoy that?!

With the new white weather, Bjak had the perfect opportunity to take his new Jeep out to play in the snow. I preferred not to be in the ride for that because I prefer the vehicle to be stopped in wintery weather rather than sliding all over the road! What can I say? Guess I was in Texas too long, because now I am known as "Little Tex!"

My first entry

Here it is. The first entry I have for my new blog to keep everyone up to date and informed. Granted, my life is not near as exciting as the WONDERFUL new changes for my pal Kelli. And I don't have near the work drama that my best buddy Miss Amanda has...I know that is hard to believe, but it is true. Life here is just steadily going by without too many complaints. I just miss so many people in Allen and the DFW area and feel like I took for granted how well I had it in my other home.

It isn't the same, but we are making our way. The nice part is that Bjak has been great about making sure that I get out when the time comes or my fuse is getting a wee bit too close to the dynomite! The saving grace has been our continued trips up to Colorado. Granted there is absolutely NO snow there right now...we are hoping for a storm that is set to come in this week for our turkey trip...but we have had a great time going up for swimming in the lodge, a few fishing outtings, and trips to see the train. All in all that has been the best part of the move!

The kids have adapted VERY well to their surroundings. Joshua is doing so much better in school and has even started spending more and more time in a general ed class. Riley has taken to school like a duck to water. She loves to read now, and has already read over 20 books on her own in the last week and a half! That's my girl!!

Bjak has everything under the sun on his plate. He is working with his dad as well as working on a residential development, a medical billing company, and an open MRI company! He is a busy bee!

School here for me has been an experience. I mean that in the most generic of terms. It is just not the same. Hopefully, I will adjust, but I pray that I never conform to the norm at the school. If I do, someone slap me because that would mean I transformed into the yellow overhead teacher!! Yikes!