Washington, Idaho, Utah, Ohio, Wyoming, Nebraska, Indiana, Iowa, Illinois, Italy, Switzerland, Greece and Turkey.
Seattle and Idaho with the pops, family reunions in Lake Powell and Midway, Cleveland apartment hunting, Europe adventure and a road trip to our temporary resting place, the Cleve.
After all of this I am happy to have my own stuff back. We lived with A's parents for the summer (which is a story unto itself) and this is the first time I've slept in my bed since April. I love my bed.
It got me thinking about home but more specifically my home growing up and how my parents made our home so...well, homey.
The first thing I thought of was my mom. She was always home. I loved getting home from school and she was there. Running in the kitchen door and yelling, "MOM?" just to always get a, "Hi sweetie! I'm in here. How was school?" in return. There is nothing more reassuring than that.
My parents are gifted healers. Neighbors and friends would always gravitate to our house when they hurt their back or twisted an ankle. The beauty of having a massage therapist for a mother and a physical therapist for a father. I loved it. I loved learning how they did it and I loved being taken care of when it was my turn. When I was sick or hurt my dad would always say to me, "I wish I could take it away" or "I wish it had happened to me." It makes me teary just thinking about it. But that in itself is better than any medicine.
Food. We all know how much I adore food. I really blame that on my mother's cooking skills. She was a master. We had family dinner every night, no questions asked, and it was always awesome. It wasn't anything elaborate or fancy. It was just nice knowing that I had a yummy meal to go home to.
The "other" family members. Growing up we had a black lab named Megan. I love Megan so much. But whether it was my 14 parakeets, a dog someone couldn't keep, a hurt pigeon, Tennessee John's roosters, a stray cat or dog or Aaron's beta fish, all were welcome. Megan was a rescue from the Orem shelter and to this day I still think that she is the best dog a girl could have. (no offense Yuki, I love you too!) Something about animals just gets me. My house will not be complete without my pups, cats, fish, birds...
Reading. We read scriptures every night as a family and there were always good books in the house. My mom loved to read and I remember seeing her in bed at night reading so I would grab my newest girl and her trusty horse book and jump in with her and we would just read together.
Work. I debated on whether I should put this one on because well I should be cleaning my apartment at the moment but...you know. After school chores and Saturday chores were miserable as a child but they taught me to work well. "A job worth doing is worth doing well" yeah yeah. I learned to become very efficient in my chores so I could get outside and play asap. My dad especially was a work hard, play hard kind of guy. 3 hours of chores meant an entire afternoon of four wheeling. That's a fair trade off in my mind.
And finally, traditions. We didn't have any huge traditions but I cherish the little things. Popcorn and a movie on Sundays, picking out and setting up the Christmas tree, monthly massages, adventures or as my family called them...conventures, a HUGE Thanksgiving meal, fun birthday parties, an Easter egg hunt no matter how old you are, getting ice cream at Baskin Robbins, Sees candy for Valentine's, the pumpkin patch and carving pumpkins, spring cleaning and flower planting, dying Easter eggs, the jello brain on Halloween, decorating for holidays, father's blessing for the new school year, neighborhood 4th of July firework parties, biking up the canyon, road trips with brown licorice to Idaho and summer trips to Hawaii, school shopping and birthday dinners at Teppanyaki or Outback.
Life will never be the same will it?
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