We Love the Mountains

If it was feasible I would move the Old Farmhouse to a new resting place at the foot of the mountains. Comfortably settled in its bed of pine bedposts, a canopy of trees, and a headboard of granite, it would spend each evening taking in an open view of the sunset from the west. I love the Wasatch mountains and everything they have to offer. We are forcing that same love upon our children at an early age. It might also have something to do with JR's desire to experience fulfillment of olympic aspirations vicariously through his boys.

Fueling up in the lodge

And yes, he is tied to that chair.

If you have seen one picture of me skiing in the last eleven or twelve years, you have seen them all. I have worn the same North Face jacket for over a decade and I don't even care.

Don't worry, I didn't allow him to go on the lift papoose style. We made great use of the free rope tow.

Emerson on the leashes

This is JR adapting to having children.

Do You Remember

when it only took a swing to make you this happy?

Before

I thought I was ready to commit and yet I find this large white space staring at me continuously. What would you paint if you had a canvas competing with your own height in the front room?

This Old House

I decided to give my blog a facelift and a new name that gives a little more intrigue to the page. My place of residence, my proud domain, my workspace for raising my family, my life, is in an old turn-of-the-century farmhouse. It all started when two young and ambitious newlyweds decided to renovate a 100-year-old structure of history.

Ugh, I want to cry for my past self.

I admit I was quite naive about the undertaking, thinking that after a few months of pounding a few nails and buffing the floors I would be basking in the sunlight of the large livingroom window enjoying a cup of sweet satisfaction and a good book. Little did I know that I would spend the next five months holding a crowbar, tearing into walls, filling up dumpster after dumpster, and welcoming my husband home at all hours of the night to help him scrub such things as 100-year-old soot from his body after tearing down the old flue.

While school and work took up most of our time, we pulled on our thick leather work gloves and warm layers to ward off the winter cold with any spare time we had to spend working on the house. The project continued to grow, and it seemed that every day another wall needed to be torn down and problem uncovered making our project seem without end.
During the following few years, the house would see certain walls torn out, others put up, an entire new plumbing system, new air ducts, new electrical and wiring, updated with a/c, new windows, 100% new sheet rock to replace the old plaster walls, a new staircase, ceilings brought back their original height, all new flooring, fixtures, doors, and kitchen cabinets and appliances. Boy, I'm glad that is behind me because even writing that makes me exhausted. JR did 95% of the work himself and even taught his wife to use a miter saw and a nail gun.

Room completions took priority as needed, first just a bedroom for the busy newlyweds we were, then a kitchen, the rest of the main floor, then two years later the upstairs was completed when expansion was needed for a baby on the way.

I wrote about living without a shower and heat for several months HERE.

At times when the world feels unstable and that things might just come crashing down at any moment, I think about the 12"-deep brick walls surrounding me in the Old Farmhouse and what they have withstood over the last century. Unwavering through World War I, The Great Depression, World War II, and four generations, they give me hope and security that spring WILL come again!