July Flowers

It's fun to see what crops up in the yard when you move to a new house. I haven't been disappointed in the near year we've now lived here. Many different types of flowers have bloomed throughout the past year. These were July's new-to-us flowers: stargazer lilies and hydrangeas.

I apologize for the brevity of this post, but I'm sure you'll get over your disappointment. 😆
There were also some really pretty bright yellow tropical-looking flowers, but if I took any pictures of them it must have been with my phone. Not having my phone pics makes putting posts together faster and easier, that's for sure! (But I do still hope they'll turn up at some point!)

Oh What Do You Do in the Summertime? Housework.

Last July was not the most exciting of Julys (that looks kind of weird but I think it's correct. The plural form of two other months that end in "y" is "Januaries" and "Februaries," but "Julies" looks pretty silly, so we'll take a page out of May's ("Mays") book and make it "Julys.") ANYWAY, I spent most of the month unpacking and working on getting the new house organized. We didn't get to the Cape until the end of the month, which is very unusual for us. But that was in keeping with a very unusual summer.

The first room that I unpacked and organized was command central--the kitchen!


It was still so bare and empty!

I bought myself a housewarming gift (courtesy of Von Maur in Iowa). 

First picture of Boo Boo in his new digs!

It's crazy but only four days after moving in we hosted a 4th of July BBQ and pool party for Peter's family. The house wasn't at all ready for social gatherings but we spent most of the time outside anyway. They helped us put together our new trampoline, which was nice.



Sometimes I like to pretend that Naomi or Lizzie is my long-lost daughter instead of my kids' cousin! Hee hee.

A pretty arrangement for the 4th that I bought at Target. This was the one and only 4th of July decoration that we had up. The rest was still in boxes.

Magna-Tiles were one of the only things unpacked that the boys could play with our first few days there.

Eating breakfast on the dining room windowsill. Who needs a table anyway? (Even though there's one right there. It even had a table runner on it!)

I should take a picture of Sam every year in this spot to track his growth.

I missed our Iowa backyard, but I had to admit that this one was a pretty nice replacement!

The garage looked like this for most of the month. So much packing paper!

There were a lot of boxes too but my mom's friend who was moving took a lot of them, and a family in our new ward took most of the rest. It's usually pretty easy to pass good sturdy moving boxes along. Gotta keep them moving! (Get it? 😉)

Five Things for Friday

1. I somehow hurt my arm and tore a muscle or something in the side of my left bicep (or maybe it's a tricep? 

I don't know). It's hurt so much this week. I haven't been able to lift my arm to do my hair, turn on the left-hand turning signal in the car, reach back to fasten my seatbelt, or other previously mindless things like those. It feels like I got stabbed or shot in the arm. But there's no bruise or anything. I've been taking ibuprofen all week and that's helped. Today it's almost back to normal. It's such a weird injury, especially since I have no idea how I got it.

2. The plumber came and fixed the low water flow problem in the shower. It was a problem with the showerhead. He put on a new one and it's amazing. My shower is now a glorious experience each morning. 

3. I got my eyebrows microbladed. I'd been wanting to try it because I have light, sparse eyebrows and I wanted them to be more defined without having to fill them in myself anymore. So I did it, and and I looked like Frida Kahlo for a week because they were so dark and dramatic-looking. I looked ridiculous and had to go into hiding as much as I possibly could last week! But then they healed and lightened up and now I really like how they look. I'll post pictures at some point if I feel okay about publicizing how funny I looked. Oh what am I talking about, I'll do it, I have no shame.

4. There was a cursed day recently when in the span of just a few hours I was confronted with three dead/almost dead animals. It was so random. And so gross, especially the third one.

First, Boo Boo got something that looked like a mouse that was hiding in some stones near the front porch. He ran off onto the lawn with it and I called him in so he dropped it and I think I saved its life because it wasn't there when I very gingerly looked later. 

Second, there was a dead bird at the base of the front porch steps when Sam got home from school that day, which I had John dispose of because I just can't with dead animals. I don't know if Boo Boo got him too. If he did he was really on a roll that day. 

And finally, the horrors of the pool filter baskets happened again. Sam and I were checking them and he opened one up and there was a dead furry animal with a long tail floating in there. 😱😱😱 I only caught a glimpse and then shouted for him to put the cover back on right away!! This was even worse than the dead frog with the white eyeballs, and I didn't think much could top that! My mom is a brave woman and took care of it a couple of days later. It was a bloated mouse. I may never look at the pool the same way again. 

5. The law of threes happened again, but this time it was in a much better way. In the span of just a few weeks, I received three different Edible Arrangements. Two of them were completely unexpected. That has never happened to me before! The boys and I ate them all up. 😋 Chocolate-covered strawberries are one of my favorite things (especially when it's premium dark chocolate, which Edible Arrangements uses!).

Welcome (Back) to Massachusetts

I'm still mourning the loss of my phone pictures because there were some good ones in there of our last days in Iowa and of our trip East and of our first couple of months in the new house, but maybe someday in the (hopefully near) future they'll turn up and I'll be able to do a belated post about them. Crazier things have happened. In the meantime, at least I have my camera pictures and the phone pictures that I'd posted on Facebook! 

We got to Massachusetts on Wednesday, June 27th. Despite the heartache of moving from Iowa, it was good to be back in my home state--for good this time!

The house officially became ours when we closed on June 29th.

It's a pretty house in a pretty neighborhood. The neighborhood was in the early stages of development when I was graduating from high school and this house was built when I was in college. I used to babysit at a house nearby when I was in high school and during summers home from college, and I'd drive through the streets of this neighborhood scoping out the nice houses that were being built. I never thought I'd actually own one of them and get to live there!

The movers didn't come until the next day so we got to explore our empty new house. Sam staked his claim for his new room. He wanted a back bedroom that overlooked the pool.

The previous owners were very nice and we got to meet them briefly on closing day as they were leaving and we were coming. They left us a lot of helpful information and a bottle of wine (which we appreciated but did not imbibe).

I'll forever be grateful to them for accepting our offer when they had another competitive one on the table. And you know what's weird? Their last name is the same last name as the couple who my parents bought their house from when my family moved to Hopkinton in 1993, 25 years earlier! And it's not that common of a last name. Is that a sign or what!?

The boys took the opportunity to jump in the pool that day. It was hot out!

It was going to be so fun having our own pool! But then the water turned green less than ten days later! I had no idea how to take care of a pool. I hired the pool company to do it pretty quickly after that!

There were a few pieces of furniture in the house that we'd bought from the previous owners, which was nice because there was a comfortable place to sit in this otherwise empty house.

Snuggling with Sam.

When I see this picture I'm reminded of how tired I was. It had been a physically and emotionally exhausting week/month/season.

Move-in day was Saturday, June 30th. It was hot and humid and we couldn't figure out how to get the central air turned on. I felt bad for the movers! We did get it figured out later in the day, but by then most of their work was done.

It was good and comforting to have all of our furniture and things back again. And overwhelming!

I definitely had my work cut out for me for the next several weeks!

Niagara Falls

We made a quick evening stop at beautiful Niagara Falls on the drive East. I'd been there before on a stake youth church trip in high school over twenty years ago and I'd always wanted to go back. We're going to have to go back (yet again, for me) and give it the proper time it deserves, but we did get to do the Maid of the Mist boat ride down at the bottom of the falls, which was the biggest thing we wanted to do. We enjoyed the stunning up-close views of the falls, and all that water mist felt pretty good at the end of a long day in the car!

I love how rainbows shoot through the air down there!

I took these pictures when we weren't on the boat anymore (I guess that's obvious).

I don't know how people have gone over the falls in a barrel and survived! There is so much power and strength in the force of all that water.

Niagara Falls is definitely a wonder of the world in my book!