Moving

Jared and I were married in Utah, where all my family lives.
One month into our married life, J surprised me by pretty much telling me I was moving to Ohio. I was like, what the hell Jared???

His Dad had just moved to Dayton, Ohio from Los Angeles and wanted Jared to live by him.

I resisted for months, but once Jared gets an idea in his head, resistance is futile.
So we packed up our crappy one room apartment, left my entire family, drove to Dayton, and moved into his Dad's basement.

There, Jared bought a nasty old house for Jared to remodel....... sound familiar? Probably because Jared loves to buy nasty houses.

By the way, Ohio is BEAUTIFUL.

A year and a half later, Jared finally finished the house. As soon as we moved into the newly remodeled Ohio house -guess what..... yep, Jared got another idea in his head and we rushed to sell the house. Two months after moving in, we were packing up to live in California.



California did not involve his Dad's basement, and we would be closer to my messed up family, so I was only partiality mad at leaving my pretty new house.

In California, we moved into Jared's awesome grandparents house. After 4 months we bought the house directly across the street. We have been living here for over 6 years.

You saw the before pictures. Our California house was nassssstttty. Jared has spent every second of free time for the last FOUR YEARS remodeling this place.
He likes it though.

It does suck that I have the kids all the time and we rarely hung out as a family. Plus the mess of remodeling is incredible. Also, the amount of money spent on the materials was INSANE. We didn't end up saving any money by having Jar-bear do the work.
But it's all ok, because now it's all done and I can finally relax in my pretty remodeled California house!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just kidding!

A few months ago Jared decided he hates his job and that we need to move to Utah so our boys can grow up with family close by.

We had planned on staying in California the rest of our lives. Jared has always wanted to live here since it is his home. I never though the day would come when Jared wanted to move to Utah.

I had made my peace with the fact that we would never live by my family, so this has been pretty weird. I haven't lived in Utah for 10 years.


A few weeks ago, Jared was offered a job in Utah on the spot. Literally the NEXT DAY, we sold our house.

My self-diagnosed case of OCD led me to pack everything up early, meticulously label everything, and color code each box with duck tape.

We even packed up Ryan:

My kids and I usually garner a lot of pity from other people so I know I'll at least be able to get invites to a few Herriman, UT playgroups.

 I'm scared to say goodbye to everyone and everything here, because I'll probably cry. I hate crying. 

Bad Day

Yesterday was a bad day.

First of all I'm breaking out and my face looks like a topographical map.

I thought I would dress up a little, and by dress up a little, I mean get out of my pajamas. I pulled out some khakis only to find they wouldn't pull up past my post-pregnancy thighs..... looks like I'll keep wearing my maternity jeans for another few months.

 To make myself feel better I ate 3 bowls of Captain Crunch cereal..... with Crunch Berries.

I had to run some errands. Of course it took a lot longer than I planned - as everything takes longer with a feral 3 year old and a tiny baby.

Pretty soon Cryin' Ryan and I had eaten all the candy from the bottom of my purse, and Tyler was screaming for food.

We stopped at some little Mexican food place (no, unfortunately it was not my favorite restaurant ever, Taco Bell) and I lugged the kids and everything else in.

I bought some food and sat in a corner booth, because I know my kids are spirited freaking psychos, and I wanted to shield the other lunch customers from their shenanigans.

Right after we sit down, Ryan grabbed for the drink, knocked it over, and spilled red fruit punch ALL OVER my white shirt. I was pissed.

He looked up at me with terror in his eyes.

I felt so bad. I don't want my kid to look at me like I'm going to murder him.
I said "Dude. It's cool, it was just an accident" and he literally wiped his hand across his forehead and said "Whew! That was close."

We ate. I fed Tyler some baby food, but he wanted boobs. He starts screaming again. I hate breast-feeding in public so I was doing everything I could to calm him down.

 Then, I knew I didn't have a choice.

The problem was, I could not find my breast-feeding cover-up thing. With titty monkey shrieking and everyone trying not to stare at me, I pulled my boob out of my fruit punch-covered shirt and shoved it in his mouth.

While this is not the first time I have flashed people (I did go to college...) it was still weird and uncomfortable and creepy.
I gave the meanest stink-eye to everyone, DARING them to say something to me about it.
No one did.

Then I ate way too much Mexican, ensuring that I won't fit in normal pants for even longer.

Yeah. I've definitely had better days.

Nasty House: Rape Room

 

One of the best things about my house is that there is a ton of storage space.

Storage space is a scarce commodity in Southern California, especially in the older houses.

 

I hate clutter. I hate clutter more than I hate the moderate case of thrush baby #2 and I are passing back and forth lately.

 

I am barely able to act socially acceptable as it is, if my house is a mess, I might as well put my muzzle on and stay in my kennel.

So..... I clean obsessively. Sometimes a clean house is better than sex..... which is not an insult to my husband as much as it is an example of my excitement towards clean stuff. Sometimes, after I scrub the house down, I just want to cuddle and smoke a cigarette.

 

 

I rely on storage space to keep my house creepily neat.

I breath heavily and out of my mouth when I think about it.

I love storage.

 

What I don't love is when one of my storage spaces looks like a rape chamber.

 

One of the bedrooms in my basement has nice travertine floors, mirrored closet doors, ample sunlight, and a door that opens up to a cheery veranda surrounded by a tall awesome hedge

There is even a cute arched walk way cut through the hedge.





This seemingly innocuous room contains a door in the corner that leads to this:

a little dreary, but it is an old house, no big deal. But see that smaller doorway?

 

 

 



Welcome to the rape room.

 

 



 

 

 

It puts the lotion on it's skin.......

 

Creeeeeeeepy, right?

 

There are no lights in there. You have to crouch down to fit since rapists/kidnappers don't care if you can stand up all the way. Dirt floors to absorb blood and tears. And also so they can bury the bodies when they are done. 

What is that white crusty stuff on the wall? Why are there random ropes and wires hanging from the ceiling?

Maybe I should hang something on the stained walls to warm the place up.

 

Or maybe not.


 

Nasty House: Basement

My house is wierd. In California, houses do not usually have basements.
But then again, houses usually don't have a Chapel and a bunch of nuns living there.......

I live on a hill, so the original owners built a walk-out basement.
The lower level is like it's own apartment. There are 2 bedrooms, 1 and 1/2 baths, full kitchen, fireplace and a seperate enterance.

We had always planned on renting it out, because when you pay over a half million dollars for a house, extra rent money is nice.

It was as ugly as the top floor before we remodeled. It looked like the 1970's had diarreah and sprayed it all over our basement:

We ended up remodeling this part of our house first so we could get decent renters. The people that wouldn't mind living in the un-remodeled squalor, were scumbags. Remember the human dog terd, Dane?

Ever since we remodeled, we have had awesome tenents.
Currently, the Mormon Missionaries are renting from us! This is freaking awesome because LDS missionaries don't watch t.v., they don't use the internet, they never have parties or bring home random girls AND they help me carry my groceries in.

Stop being jealous.

Anyway, here are the afters:

Once again, Jared did all the work himself......Dang, my husband is awesome.

Nasty House: Kitchen

We bought our house in 2008 and it looked like this:

The 1960's linoleum looked like it had a bad case of Hepatitis.
The grout in the tile counter top was chipping away, and our appliances barely worked.

It smelled old.
And not the good kind of old. This kind of old smelt disgusting.

It was livable though... and Jear-Bear has a thing for buying the nastiest house he can find.
I'm white trash so I got used to it quickly.

Jared thinks the only way to remodel anything is to rip everything down to the studs and start from scratch.

He is crazy.

 Is it just me or is it kind of sexy that he built the cabinets himself?

We moved our kitchen stuff the the living room for the 5 months he was remodeling! Lucky me.
Yes, that is a camping stove next to our couch.

When we finally saved enough money to remodel I insisted on white cabinets.
I am obsessed with white. It looks so fresh and clean.

We left a 36 inch space for an awesome stove like this one:

But since we are poor, we didn't have an extra $6000 to spend on a stove. We will get one soon though. Then I might feel obligated to actually cook for my family!

For now we just bought a cheap stove for $400 and will continue my crappy "cooking" in the microwave.

You all know how I feel about my sink.

We also went to a granite quarry to pick out the awesome granite.

I'm just happy that all my appliances are out of my living room and that my house doesn't smell like old stuff.
amen.