Weekend

After work on Friday, Adam and I headed to Nevada.  We listened to a podcast and talked and listened to part of the Newsies soundtrack.  

He's just my favorite person to be with and that is all.

We got to Pleasant Hill around 8:00 local time and started sweeping and making the bed and moving furniture (my dad and Robert had delivered some furniture that we got from my grandma).  It's a process to get set up and getting more seamless all the time but takes effort all the same.  I said, "Just think, Adam, if we were home, we would just be relaxing on a Friday night!"  (Sometimes I wonder why we do what we do.) We got everything squared away finally and whenever I'm there, I remember how very much I love it and never want to leave.

Our house in Utah is on a quiet cul-de-sac, but this is next level quiet.  Besides the birds, there is silence.  Everything is getting green and it is beautiful out every window.  I also love how restful it feels in our not quite empty anymore, but sparse, house.  Stuff lying around is stressful and an absence of stuff lying around feels wonderful.

These are lessons I need to take with me when I leave, but I always seem to be surrounded by stuff!

My mom is in a get rid of stuff mode after dealing with my grandma's estate.  She had Marianne and Olivia and me come over Saturday morning.  Adam and my dad went back over to our house to see about the wiring on our water heater (it is literally always something breaking down around there!).  When they got back, my dad wanted a report.  He wanted to know how much stuff we'd taken (he is also in get rid of stuff mode).  Adam took a chair back that we'd borrowed and my dad wouldn't let him unload it.  "No returns!" he said.

I got some good stuff from my mom.  Among other things, I got a few tablecloths and shirts I can wear to work and some red Christmas sweaters, which are my love language.

I also got a little quilt we used for our dolls and I'm going to put it in the little toy room I dream of creating for QE.

Adam said, "I thought you wanted less stuff...."

So I showed him the red sweaters and said, "Shhhhhh."

I may admire the minimalist life, but I'm not there.

Adam and I went back to our house and did some yard work.  I used the hedge trimmer and cut part of the behemoth juniper in the front, but hardly made a dent.  Next time we come, I want to borrow a chainsaw and get rid of it completely.  It is so overgrown that trimming it only reveals the dead zone underneath and it is way too big.

I cleaned off the front porch and weeded some flower beds and trimmed some more branches around.  There was a big pot with a pretty ground cover plant in it sunk into the ground next to the ditch brook. Adam helped me dig out the plant and I moved it over to a flower bed, then I tried to pull the pot out of the ground.  It was plastic and cracked and full waterlogged soil and then fairly big rocks.  I emptied it as much as I could and then tried to move it.  I couldn't get much leverage because the cracked pot just collapsed if I pushed one side.  I finally got it out and I hope that's the hardest thing I have to do in awhile.  The spot where the pot had been immediately filled with water and I had slipped through the soggy ground a few times and one foot was completely soaked and my jeans were covered in mud.

But hey, I moved the pot.

Adam mowed.

The fledgling grass barely needed mowing but Adam loves mowing like I love red Christmas sweaters.

Marianne and Robert came over and Marianne and I went on a walk to the horse pasture.  It was the most magical place of many where we played when we were little girls.  There are all these charming little stands of trees that create houses if you are a little girl with an imagination.  Marianne and Robert bought most of it at the same time we bought our place there.  Marianne and I traversed a barbed wire fence and then we had to cross a ditch.  Marianne looked at my legs which are 5 inches shorter than hers and said, "Do you think you can do it?"

I said no.

She found a narrower spot and crossed it in a graceful little leap.  I said, "I can't."

It was like we were those two little girls in the horse pasture again and she was my older sister, urging me on.  I've always been the I can't sister.

But I said, "Well, I already fell in the water once." So I took a little jump and made it.  Marianne was very proud of me.  

In shortest sister related news, I recently saw this photo on Family Search:

Grandma Dahl and her siblings:  Reid, Farnes, Bruce, Kay, Margaret (my grandma) and Ruth

If I am significantly shorter than my siblings but it means I'm like my grandma, I'll take it.

Marianne and I decided the horse pasture is every bit as magical as it used to be.

Back at our house, we sat with Adam and Robert and visited a little.  It's nice to have actual furniture to sit on for things like that.

My mom had invited us and Marianne and Robert to dinner (Olivia was busy and couldn't come).  I cut some tulips in our yard and took them over.  "Dear mother all flowers remind me of you."  Marianne and I went early to help my mom.  She had already pretty much done everything.  She's always been the I can mom and it is hard to get her to stop.

We had a nice dinner together.  I love being in the neighborhood.  

Yesterday we came home and today it's back to school.  Beach Day 2.0.  I'm wearing the same clothes as last week.