Within a few days, we will have lived in our new home for longer than we have lived anywhere since last March! It was sincerely daunting at first to move into a home with empty cupboards and no furniture after a year of vacation rentals. And then there is the yard, all that grass that we are actually responsible for. I will admit that we second guessed our decision more than once. Like when we learned that in order to water our immense front lawn, we need to set up a dam in the ditch behind our house, roll out a massive tube of plastic sheeting from the ditch to our front yard, and then hike on over to the canal on the other side of our neighbor, the wheat field, and open the gate that allows water from the canal to flow into our little ditch. Twelve hours later, when our front yard looks like a lake, complete with water birds, we need to close the gate and by morning we can roll up the tubing and remove the dam. That was a steep learning curve. Even after our trip to Colorado to empty our storage unit, the house remains mostly empty. We all have beds. Okay we all have mattresses and sheets and blankets. Most of us have pillows. Kris and I have our desks, but we got rid of the chairs. Our living room is furnished with a television, a stationary bike, and a lot of throw pillows. We call it the yoga room. Someday it may gain a couch. Maybe. Because one thing we definitely realized in our year of traveling was that we don't really need much. Possibly we don't even need a couch.
When we first brought all our boxes home and started going through and rediscovering what exactly we had socked away all those months ago there were a couple different reactions going on. It was really good to see some of our things but it was also sometimes bewildering to see some of our things. I was relieved to see that I had kept enough bowls that I wouldn't need to get over to the nearest thrift store and find 'new' ones, and I was happy to see that I had indeed kept some favorite books I had been wondering about, but I was also perplexed by the nothing special, Target, wall clock that keeps me awake at night if I don't shut the study door. There are literally already clocks glowing from the front of every appliance and cell phone in the house. Do I really need one more? I seriously do not even want to know what time it is. But when we boxed up the study back in February we must have thought that clock deserved its tiny portion of our limited storage space.
The boys informed me almost immediately that they do not want any other furniture for their room besides the two beds. Which, again, are not beds but just mattresses. They are insistent that they do not even want any frames for said mattresses, they like their 'beds' as is: mattresses on the floor. I may over rule them. I also may not. They both set about going through their stored items and winnowing down their belongings so that everything fits in their closet: books, clothes, athletic equipment, favorite old toys, and even bathroom products. The closet is not that big, but all their worldly goods are neatly arranged within. Liam told me that when he looked at the stuff he had kept, most of it didn't matter so much to him any more, even if he had "thought it was cool," sixteen months ago. Fionnula was a little more sentimental about both her things and theirs actually. She is still in negotiations to adopt all the stuffed animals that the boys have relegated to the Goodwill pile. But even Fionn, who started by organizing her room with all her toys and books arranged neatly along the wall right next to her bed (mattress) where she could always see them, has been consistently rearranging each week and in the current arrangement, many of her things have migrated to her closet.
Life has commenced here. Liam and Fionn have almost completely taken over care of the yard; Liam waters and feeds the kitty we inherited, Fionn weeds and harvests the garden the previous owners planted for us. Ronan works three days a week at a local furniture store saving money for school in January and a mission in the Spring. Our older kids are around, many of them living in the house with us for differing amounts of time, and most weekends are a big, loud, crazy, family reunion. I am slowly building my spice collection back up and enjoying cooking some recipes we haven't tasted in months. Homemade cookies are such a luxury. But we also still enjoy some beans and rice, our Costa Rican staple, every now and then (even if we can't get Lizano salsa) and peanut butter and honey sandwiches, our nearly daily lunch for outings in Ireland and Scotland, are still just as delicious. And I wouldn't mind a good baguette either (I genuinely mourned the day I realized the Ritter Sport and Cadbury chocolates were all gone). We go on walks, do school, watch movies, sew, play games and read books and we are happy. But last week Fionn confessed to me that, "I like being home, but sometimes it's kind of boring."
