Late Wednesday Night Musings

We've been here in Happy Valley (still trying to come up with a new name for my neighborhood... any suggestions?) for a few months now and I must say, there are some things that never cease to amaze me. At least I hope they won't cease to amaze me because if they do, I am taking them for granted. 

Visiting teaching, for instance. SO convenient. I only visit two sisters and they are both within walking distance of my home. Do not ask me if I walk there. Okay, you did. Last time I didn't. But it was raining. Like really hard. But yes, they are close, so it makes dropping by and checking on them or saying hello througout the month something so feasable and easy to do. It's almost as easy as it was at BYU when my companion was my roommate and my teachees were down the hall. Almost.

Church is so close. My goal though is to get there with the children and be seated 10 minutes early, so we can listen to the prelude music and get our minds and Spirits prepared for sacrament meeting. I should be able to do without a problem, right?  I didn't do it last Sunday and I just don't get why. Church is at 11, first of all. Second of all, the meetinghouse like 30 seconds away. Thirdly, well, I don't have an infant so it's not like I have the excuse that "the baby exploded out of her diaper and I had to totally change her outfit" --- but for some reason I could not exit my home in enough time to be seated early. We'll keep trying.

I can leave 2 minutes before my presidency meeting starts and get to the Primary President's home early. For real.

The temple is so close! In fact, we have a lovely view of it out our kitchen window. Savvy's room has a great view of it, too. The booking time for a babysitter when I go to the temple is drastically shorter than it was when we lived in Chicago. Instead of planning on being away for about 5-5.5 hours, I am gone for about 2.5.

The location of our home is quite convenient as well. I marveled how one afternoon I had 45 minutes to run my errands. I was able to go to Borders, return some stuff at the dollar store, stop by the mall AND get a few things from Costco all in my little time window.  So nice. While some days I dream of living on a farm in the middle of nowhere, this suburban life is very nice.

In other news...
I'm super behind on my Spring Cleaning Schedule. Whoever said I could be done in 3 weeks was nuts. Oh, that was me. Well, the beauty of that is I am my own boss and so I'm the only person who can fire me. When I didn't finish when it was time for Kyle to leave I kept thinking with him out of town I'd get caught up. It seems these last two weeks after the kids go to bed (and after I binge on Oreos or Girl Scout Cookies or both) what energy I am left with is exerted into getting the house back to a general state of functioning order.  After that I'm way too tired to attack a new project and I'm ready to collapse on my bed, occasionally with enough energy to finish unwinding in front of my computer screen (I unpacked our Circa 2003 Dinosaur model laptop and it still lives!) and blog about the supremely exciting details in my life.  I still hold out hope that there will be a few pleasant surprises for Kyle when he returns home in the form of new areas unpacked, organized and maybe even furnished...but we'll see.

By the way, if you think you have too many clothes in your closet and you are a wannabe minimalist (like me) or are just looking to simplify, I have made a wondrous discovery.  The perfect time to do this is when you are pregnant.  Why? None of the clothes fit you and it seems an eternity away before you'll get to wear them anyway.  I received yet another flyer about week or so ago (maybe 2...time is so hard to keep track of these days) for an Eagle Scout project collecting clothes-- this time for Chile, and boy was it easy to go through my closet and get rid of stuff. Loved it. My old dishes and baby boy clothes got sent to Samoa, my baby girl clothes got sent to Haiti, and my clothes, Kyle's clothes and his old soccer cleats went to Chile.  just spreading our love around the world one shirt at a time...

That's it. Nothing deep for tonight.

* To all my readers who are not familiar with my "Mormon Lingo": This time I included links to the definitions of some of the mysterious words I've used.  I should have done this long ago! I'll do a better job in the future to not mystify myself quite so much. :)