Our home in Abilene Texas was larger than average home in Abilene but was one of the smallest homes in the exclusive subdivision of Saddle Creek Estates. The air conditioned ranch style house included 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, a den/office, dining room, large living room with 10 foot ceilings, large kitchen, kitchen nook/dining area, laundry room and a pantry/storage room. In addition to a huge 3 car garage the property included a 20 X 30 insulated and air conditioned workshop that had a 15 X 30 overhang/carport. The acre and a half yard was fenced, fully landscaped, had underground sprinklers and a huge drive that could park more than 6 vehicles. The boys plan for the huge fenced back yard was to build a dirt jump park but this was cut short by our move back to Canada.

The following pictures are quite good but don’t fully capture the essence of this home:

View from the street

Corner lot view

3 car garage

Back yard

20 X 30 Shop with 15 X 30 carport/overhang

Insulated and air conditioned

Large living room with polished concrete floors, 10 foot ceiling and crown molding

Living room view 2

Living room view 3

Kitchen & bar style counter

Kitchen & bar style counter

Kitchen view 1

Kitchen view 2

Kitchen view 3

Breakfast/Kitchen dinning

Dining room view 1

Dining room view 2

Den/Office

Den/Office view 2

Master Bedroom

Master bath

Master walkin closet - 10 X 7.5

Bedroom 2

Bedroom 3

Bedroom 4

Bath 2 - Separate toilet & shower area

Laundry & Pantry rooms

It’s warm and dark and Caleb and I were out trying out our new….hedge trimmer!! I didn’t think I’d ever get excited about such a thing. I do believe our neighbors would have thought we were really hippies (along with Levi’s untrimmed hair, we’ve let our hedges go as well:).

So maybe we’ll get some pictures up tomorrow, cause we don’t want to go crazy in the dark and see some regretful results in the morning.

I painted my room this week. Here’s the pictures. Oh and I painted my dressers but I already did a blog about that. Scroll down to see it.

Dad showing me how to paint (even though I know how).

Before

After

Before also

In between

I'm up High :O

Rolling

Taking of the tape

AAAAALLLLLLL DONE

My man loves tools. I’m told this is a male-type phenomena.

When we were engaged, we walked through a china display at a store looking for a “pattern” to pick for our dishes. He didn’t get it. We searched, and looked, and his eyes would grow wide at prices and his body would contort to move through the displays so not to brush one in passing. I’d be ooing and ahing over some beauty and he’d just not get it. You’d think I would have understood the same display of awe from him in a hardware store, but I didn’t. I didn’t get the extreme care he took in choosing a paintbrush, oh so many years ago. I couldn’t believe the prices. I can’t remember how much, but not your dollar store specials. Ah, but “with the right tools, it’s so much easier”. We collected a couple of really nice ones (he tells me) over the years. I began to actually hate them. When we were finished a painting project, they had to be cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned again, till all the bristles were free of the color of the wall. The hairs laid flat and perfect in their cardboard-fold-over-wrap-around-and-tie case again. I would much prefer to throw a brush out than spend the time washing them to perfection (not eco friendly I admit), but so much less time and water!

This week I have appreciated our Purdy and LeHay brushes, because this time, when we unwrapped them from their cardboard cases, they told Levi, Caleb and I a story, a history, of the homes we’ve lived in. You see, as clean as we got the bristles, the wooden handles hold smudges, or splatters, or speckles of walls past. Right there, that’s the color of our foyer in the Edmonton house, our bathroom, the family room. There’s the single color of our Lethbridge home that took so much work to repair all the bb dents caused by our neglect of reigning in the boy’s enthusiasm for their new sport.

So we happily paint new colors into our brushes and will remember another home where two boys/men and their mom and dad spent time in their lives together. Caleb with his Gibraltar Grey (which I questioned him about over and over and turned out just so beautiful) and Levi with his Maple Leaf Red (lovely name for a rich color that is our Edmonton red) have painted their own rooms and have added their colors to our history.

Life is different for the Harapnuik family this past week. You see, after camping on the floor for the last 9 months we are now all waking up and finding a new movement necessary for getting out of bed: we swing our feet “down” onto the floor and stand up . It’s really been fun having our beds on the floor; mostly because it makes us appreciate bed frames.

Other cool things: I can do what ever load of laundry I need and not feel like it has to be a week’s worth. I can yell at the kids (yes, they love that) to find out where they are in the house or yard. We wake to silence or, if the windows are open, birds singing. I can take an early morning walk and see the “mountains” of Buffalo Gap. We can leave our home in robes, bed head and underwear to sit on a patio and drink our morning coffee. The boys can be running 4 different projects and not have to clear one away to start another (though that could turn out as a negative somewhere down the line). Our tramp is up and hand hockey has been reborn and taught to a few choice friends. Negative – one accident sent a friend for 6 stitches on his chin…knocked his own knee into his chin. Don’t ask me… he can’t even figure it out. The guitars can be exploding from the back room and you can’t hear them outside. I can pull weeds. The sprinkler is more than a water source for the lawn. Silence at night. The moon shining in our window. The star spilling over the night sky. Sigh. What a gift.

So come on down. Ken and Heather broke in the house to visitors with rave reviews so “it would be so fine to see your face at our door”. I think that’s Carole King/Carly Simon song, So Far Away