just when you were going to give up

At the urging of my husband, (who started his own blog) I am logging on to say I am alive. We have been alive for all these weeks (as opposed to mostly dead all day) but we have been in the process of moving, buying a new car and house-training a puppy. In that time, we also had family visits three different times, and a trip to the Rancho. Whew! No wonder I haven't had time to knit or blog. I've barely had time to breath.

We have moved into an actual house, with an actual yard, and an actual garage the last week of March. It was crazy, we had an offer we couldn't refuse; to rent a home for the same price as our little town-home that we had been outgrowing. I can't tell you how much I love having a yard. True, it is nothing but dirt right now, but we are in the process of thinking about doing some landscaping, and in the meantime, the kids and Buddy-dog run wild in the dirt patch. They are so excited, and it is wonderful to see them play and burn off some of the energy they seem to have in abundance. There are many nice things about having a home, the main thing that pleases me is the storage. FINALLY! I love having space for all the things that make my home look messy. We have an office for the computer desk and the fly-tying/fly-fishing things, which instantly makes my house look 50 times cleaner. There is an entire room of children's playthings downstairs, which makes it look like adults actually live in our home, and the garage has room for things that don't need to be hanging around my living room, ie: bikes, snow-shovels, spare-tires. We are being conscientious not to fill our home with junk just because there is more room, but it is about to be garage-sale time, at least I won't have to remove 1 thing for every new thing I bring home. There is still a lot of unpacking to do, and I am still arranging things a lot. I haven't hung any pictures yet, but that is coming too. One thing that makes me so slow about the unpacking and moving-in stuff is that I now have to drive both my boys to school. It is a huge part of my day to transport them back and forth. I feel like I don't have time to start any big projects before it is time to hop in the car and drop someone off or pick someone up. Only a few more weeks of that and then summer vacation starts up and we will have more time at home. I am ready for those lazy days when we can just spend time here. I can't wait to start planting stuff in our back yard and enjoying the sun and warmth.

I have been half-heatedly training for a half-marathon this summer, we got up to 11 miles in March, but have gone back to 5-7 now just because it has been so hard to be consistent. I haven't actually signed up for any races, so that makes it a little easier to be inconsistent about it too, and the other thing is that I have less access to my running partner now, so we are only going out about 1 time a week . My dog is a terrible running partner, he is only good for about 1/2 mile before his little corgi legs give out and he just plops down. I am finding that I am a better runner when I have someone to go with, so I use that as an excuse too. Somewhere inside of me, I know that there is a Kenyan struggling to run, I just need to release her. Riiiiggghttt.

I haven't completed my Tess Shawl, and I haven't really started anything new either. I am planning on making some baby booties and a hat to send to a friend who just adopted a lovely little baby girl. But so far, I haven't started them. I am just going to get to it, but probably not for a few weeks.

That is the long and short of mi Vida loca. Run here and there, move here, chase the dog there, dust, dish, run, run, run, sleep and do it all again!

Here are a few pictures of our living room, I will try to post some more when I have made some house-keeping progress. Ignore the tool box in the window, and all the boxes and junk. Don't ignore the dog, he is impossible to miss! Enjoy the kitchey kitchen, which is growing on me by the day. I do love me a turquoise oven...and everyone knows that diamonds are a girl's best friend!