Okay anyway. So my last post was about the unexpected purchase of our new house. I can happily report that we are just as obsessed with this big (void of furniture) space as we were when I wrote that thing. Life is freakin' great here, what can I say? If there was a complaint to be had it's that our newfound champagne furniture taste is a little out of reach for us at the current moment (who knew couches that cost upwards of $2,000 are now what I want out of decorating?), hence the lack of anything to sit on - but is that really such a big deal when you're walking around the ol' dream home situation? I think not. Well that, and we knew going into it that there would be ZERO Anthropologie, Z Gallerie, Restoration Hardware and even Living Spaces or Target purchases going down for a little bit - we were under the impression we were going to demo the floors first and foremost, but now we've come to the conclusion that floors can wait, furniture is needed before that - hahaha.
THESE ARE NOT BAD PROBLEMS TO HAVE.
Anyway, speaking of problems to have, I actually felt rather silly for the first few months after securing this new house of ours. When we were in escrow with this place, we kept getting weird vibes from people who we told about the whole endeavor. It's almost like people were trying to let us know that we DID have it good in our first, original home, so why are we trying to move mountains to get into a big ol' place? (We really didn't feel like we were trying to move mountains, we just let it all happen.) There was that. Then once we really did close escrow (meaning the over-the-market-sale-price of our small house successfully went through), it almost felt like we were informing people in a "we told you so" type of manner - like hey guys look! This really did work out! The whole thing just felt weird!!!! (I think, though, our family was trying to tell us to chill out on the moving - afterall, we were only in that first house for a little LESS than 2.5 years. We think people were trying to be like "calm your souls, you perpetual movers!" We knew they meant well.)
THEN, once we were actually in this place, I felt weird posting pictures of our new insanely happy living situation - almost like I was bragging. It's like I was crippled with fear that now that we had this cool freakin' house for us to play in, I was going to be the douche who posted 500 pictures of the coolness, you know what I mean?
(I know - this all sounds so stupid. I'm acting like we just purchased a 15,000 square foot home with a tennis court, sauna and acreage and I feel bad about the success of the whole thing - that is NOT THE CASE. This house is a pleasant 2,077 square feet and truly fits our family of 5 just perfectly. It's not too big, it's not too small. But I still felt like a douche when we first got it!)
So anyway, this all just proves that when you alleviate problems in your life (read: constantly debating living in our first house and when we would sell it), you find a way to fill those newly-opened-problem-spaces with new, made up problems. I felt like I was confirming that theory that every human being has, what is it, 67 problems? Something like that? The minute you have 66 problems, you come up with another problem.
Like furniture buying, floor demoing and feeling bad about having a larger-for-us-house are NOT PROBLEMS. I felt like the queen of the first world issues:
"OH MOM, WHAT DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD DO? DEMO THESE ALREADY-NICE FLOORS FOR HARDWOOD, OR TILE THAT LOOKS LIKE HARDWOOD? THE HUMANITY!"
"CHAD, I JUST FEEL SO BAD THAT I POSTED A PICTURE OF THE KIDS HAVING THESE FUN PLAY DATES IN THE BACKYARD - OTHER PARENTS WILL FEEL LEFT OUT! I'M NEVER GOING TO POST A PLAY DATE PICTURE EVER AGAIN!"
"GOSH DANG, THE TINT ON THESE WINDOWS ARE SO DEPRESSING! WHY WOULD SOMEONE INSTALL TINT TO KEEP OUT HEAT, WHEN THE SOLAR PANELS ALLOW FOR AIR CONDITIONING TO RUN 24/7? WHY WOULD SOMEONE DOOOOOO THAT?"
It was the strangest thing! I felt SO SENSITIVE to having these (stupid, non-) "problems."
Finally, after months of "beating myself up" about my stupid "problems" that I knew were "non-problems," I finally realized that they were some manifestation of the newfound responsibility of this place. The pool safety was pretty much taking over my entire being, so I think I was finding ways to express the overall worry of what the new house was doing to me. I also felt guilty about having the pool safety worry! Like
"OH MAN, MY BEAUTIFUL NEW POOL IS JUST SUCH A WORRY IN LIFE!"
I know, this is the dumbest post in the history of posts - but it's how I felt man! After a few months of adjusting to the place, I had a little talk with myself. I was like "Nicole. Don't feel so bad about every little thing. God is your homeboy, so try to figure out a way to bless others if you yourself is feeling ultra blessed."
So there you have it. My full circle feelings on the whole thing. Bahaha omg ridiculous and slightly embarrassing. But ya know, that's how it went down, yo!
I swear I'm not trying to humble brag here (again, I feel like I'm alluding to the fact that I have something to "humble brag" about - bah! This is an awkward thing to record!). But anyhoo! The family pictures are reason enough to post this here thing and that's what it's all about, right?!
So because I haven't recorded since March, the first set of pics are from April, second set are from May, then June, July and then these last ones are from August! Woo! I also realized I hadn't written about our first big family vacation we took in April: Hawaii! Doing that next. Woo! Love this stuff.
