one year

This month marks the one year mark that we have been living in our house!  I can't believe it!  I am so grateful, and am still very much in love with our home, our neighborhood, our ward, our town, and the beauty that surrounds us.  Heber is planted in our hearts, and our family is flourishing and happy here.  What a blessed place to live.

Rarely does a day go by, that I don't stop at some point during the day, look around me, and feel so, so blessed and grateful.  It is so fun to look at all of the décor, and have it be a reality.  I spent years planning the colors, the furniture, the style, and the décor for our home.  I have binders full of my ideas.  I still get butterflies when I look around and see those dreams and ideas coming to life.

As I was doing the usual Saturday deep cleaning today, I noticed some of the marks that are signs of being here for a year.  Some of the walls have some dings in them, a few doors squeak, there are a few small stains on the carpet, some of the cupboards need to be de-cluttered, and I still need to touch up the paint from the kids rooms that I painted when we moved in.

Our first month in the house, I was absolutely terrified of making any kind of mark, dent, stain, or scratch on anything.  I was so paranoid, and almost felt like we couldn't really live life without ruining something.  I was harsh on the kids, for just being kids, and I was worried all the time.

It is funny how today, as I saw these inevitable nicks and dings, that I couldn't help but smile.  Our house is now a home.  It has the stains from a  baby's sticky fingers, hanging on to the railing as they take their first step,  a ding from the boys playing catch and making memories, a scratch from a chair falling from a child trying to reach the crayons to make me a secret special note, fingerprints that will not be tiny for long, and so on.

Our house has character, and Maynard written all over.  It is a house with children in it.  Children who get dirty, wear bare feet outside, and then come inside, make messes, play with toys, spill food, make animal houses for crickets, and keep them inside, drop containers of art supplies, shoot rubber bands into the light fixtures, and are making memories.

I cannot change my personality, I do love a clean, organized home, and I can get extremely irritated by these things at times, but I also love my children and my family, and sometimes, the dirt and the dings, and the memories that come from them, are more important than perfectly clean white walls of boredom.

So, yes it has been a year, and our house will show many more years to come.  It is good to make a house a home..even if the "character traits" may make me cringe every once in a while.  The memories will last a lifetime.