"F" is for FORBES: Chacooooo!

We live in a different house again, but this time, we are "renting" it from the bank instead! Drew had put out a help pls!!! pls help!!! on the Rio Rancho ward Facebook page, so we had a couple people very kindly take time Saturday to help us load the truck.

They were maybe not the helpers Drew would have chosen, (my friend's husband with a tendon injury, a man in our ward with a heart problem and his two teenage sons who needed to be "commanded in all things"), and we didn't have everything staged very well because we'd just gotten home the night before, but we did our best and crammed in as much as we could while our helpers were there and headed over to the new house around 11. I sent the older 3 kids with Chelsee Jensen and Merrick with the Halvorsens so I didn't have to worry about them.

Our new ward was there in force to welcome us so the unloading was super slick. It felt a little bit like being back at BYU--surrounded by a whole bunch of hard working, friendly, beautiful people our age. We all visited in the garage for a little while before I had to kick them out so we could go back to the old house for round two, which went without incident. The next day was Sunday, but we decided to finish out June in our old ward, so we went to church there and then sent Drew off to Portland for a week for a new hire orientation. The next week was spent unpacking and cleaning, which is very boring, so I will just show you the fruits of our labors. Here is a general tour of the outside:

I love the tree over the minivan. The purple flowers are very pretty, and the kids like to climb in it.

Every evening the kids of the cul-de-sac come out to play. Our first week there was my friend Lindsey Lawlor née Jensen's last week, so we made sure to go out and play with them as much as we could. Her husband Blake is walking back to his house in the picture below. Lindsey asked me to let the cleaning lady and the carpet guys in after they were on their way to Wichita, then take the keys back to the rental management place once everything was ready to go. I'm sad we didn't have more time with them, but I'm glad we were here together for a little bit.

Our neighborhood is awesome. Across the street is Grandpa Sam, who takes my garbage cans out if I forget and added my name to his Grandparents Pass at the zoo and brought us dinner after he won a bunch of money at the casino the night before (he's well-vouched for by the neighbors, so you don't have to be worried about a creepy old predator man living across from us). Next door we've got friends from church and their 2 year old on one side, and a nice couple who both work and have a 1.5 and 4 year old. Two houses down on both sides there are families with a little bit older boys that are very clever and super fun to play with. Joel and Michelle's driveway is always crawling with neighbor kids. They are cool people! And their driveway is an excellent grade for picking up ramming speed.

I'm sure Vivien would like to have a few more girls in the vicinity...

...but she finds ways to put her own spin on things.

I love the tree to the left of our front door.

It's a Natchez Crape Myrtle and has cool bark and beautiful, crinkly flowers. I had an arborist come out to the house and teach me about all the trees I am now responsible for and advise me on a good plan of care. She was like a mystic to me--she knew ALL the things!

The side garden is where the Boyle's (previous owners) seven-year-old kept his box turtles. The kids had just watched Coco and were leaving offerings on all the decorative stones.

There are honking honeysuckles along one wall.

The ants love them.

The Boyle's 7-year-old is their baby, so they left behind a lot of stuff their kids had outgrown, like their trampoline and their kid table, perfect for mounting the tramp, and for tea parties.

This is another favorite toy that was left behind.

They had a good thing going with the goldfinches that I've tried to keep up. The finches love nyjer seed, apparently. Sometimes the doves will come sit on the feeder too. They look very foolish.

Here is the puddle that gets left by the sprinklers that Merrick likes to drink out of. I haven't been able to catch him in the act with my camera yet. The kids wasted no time breaking 6 of the sprinkler heads trying to get each other wet. My Dishy Handyman Drew fixed them with his bare hands.

And here's a sample of what you see if you sit on my swing.

Aside from the birds, we've got a bunch of lizards that live in the yard, and some fun bugs too!

The kids have been spending a ton of time outside, which has been great for everyone except Rafe's toes.

We got to bring our garden with us and have enjoyed a good crop of carrots.

What's more fun than picking the stuff you grew?

There are a lot of smoke tree flowers that blow off peoples trees and seem to collect in the garden. They are feathery light, so they catch any little breeze that happens by. When I'm out there weeding and I see them out of the corner of my eye it makes me feel like I'm seeing things.

They remind me of the dust bunnies from My Neighbor Totoro.

Merrick most unfortunately likes to spend time in the garden as well.

He cuts a swath of destruction in my flower beds. It makes me very angry and glad I don't live as a peasant in the Middle Ages when anyone could just come by and destroy your stuff if they wanted with no consequences.

My favorite thing about the yard this year has been this Say's Phoebe nest. The two nestlings had just hatched when we moved in.

Both parents kept a sharp eye on them at all times. This was the bird whose song I would hear at dawn in the old house and it would wake me up like a shock because I wanted to know what it was. I was very happy to find more of them out this way. They're such light, acrobatic flyers.

One morning I came out and one of the babies was draped over the side of the nest in a concerning way. I gave it an hour to see if it would move, but it hadn't so I risked the parents' displeasure to see what was going on. The poor thing was dead. It had somehow gotten its legs completely bound together by a piece of plastic thread that had been lining the nest, and I think it just wore itself out trying to get loose. I had to cut it free from the nest with scissors.

We studied its growing feathers and contrasted them with its baby fluff.

The other baby was not in the nest, but the parents were still nearby. It took awhile to find it, but I did finally spot it among the rocks on the side of the house. Can you?

It spent about a week on the gravel, hopping awkwardly to stay in the shade of the trees throughout the day. One day I was out in the garden weeding and I heard it singing the same song its parents sing, just smaller and higher pitched. I stopped weeding and went to sit against the wall to watch it. It was tracking its parents' flight in the sky and bobbing its tail up and down, and then it pulled itself up tall and flew from the front yard to the back yard right past my face. I held my breath and watched it bob up and down, perched on the garden bed rail, then it flew back to the top of our side gate and landed not an arm's length away from me. Its parents started making a new sound, like a trill, and started swooping up to the nest. It felt like they were saying, "YES! Great job! Now please, please, please come up here to the nest where it's safe! You can do it!" The baby gave it a shot, but only made it to the top of this box, where it spent the night.

I felt like it was a good analogy for Earth life. Once the baby leaves the nest, the parents can't physically carry it back, but they still take incredible care of their baby. I was never alone with the baby for more than 10 seconds before the parents came swooping. I watched them scare away squirrels and doves and even a roadrunner that got too close. They kept bringing it food. And as the baby got bigger you could see it watching the parents and trying to do the same things--hopping, singing, flying. It hung around the side yard for a few more days under careful watch, then the whole family was off to new horizons. Last I saw it was in our willow tree. It still had that huge baby bird mouth, and its parents were still bringing it food, but it was flying beautifully.

Shall we go inside?

Let's clean our feet before those footprints follow us through the rest of the place.

Here's a tour of the inside.

We've got lots of storage space, so I finally got to unpack my puzzles.

And now I know why that box was always so heavy. I am not sure who put the SCUBA weights in the bottom of my puzzle box. I want to say it was the Bremerton movers.

Comcast was here for about 7 hours one day, but we got our computer set up and the internet working. Marcus is all alone in Georgia, so there have been more gaming sessions than usual. "AAAGH! You idiot, Jayna! I just lost all our gems. I knew I should have stashed them..."

Vivien was happy to have the computer chair back in play.

The kids were happy to see their toys.

And to play with them.

Our Rio Rancho Jensens were looking at a house in the area, so their kids came over to play. It's fun to watch kids play with our toys like they're new and cool, not the same old ones we've had for years.

Today Rafe was playing a game with cars. The cars in the outer ring are "robbers who don't believe in God" and the two in the middle are believers who are fighting them. Always interesting to see how our conversations will be synthesized.

Vivien is back to creative crafting. She was quite proud of her stick doll.

I've enjoyed putting our table in the middle of the room. It's a fun place to do stuff together, like this science kit we got from a friend.

This experiment was about color mixing. We made a kaleidoscope.

And it's fun to eat in the very middle of a room. Like a banquet hall! Here is Rafe who maintains he hates quinoa, but will usually eat all of it once I can coax him to take a bite. I feel like I wrote that same sentence 4 years ago when he was a baby.

Here he is eating a spoon full of pepper at dinner, for fun.

It was maybe not as fun as he thought it would be.

But he'll never admit it.

Here is Annie in the family room, sporting her new uniform. I do get her dressed most days, but by lunch she's usually back in this getup.

Our family room wants a different rug and probably some side tables, but it will do for now. In fact it did quite well for a cousin screening of Sing when Heather and Casey came by on their way home from UT.

My favorite thing about the family room are these windows that I pretend are my Hogwarts paintings, because there are frequently birds roosting in the crape myrtle, but always in different places. Do you see the pair of doves?

Here is the upstairs.

Here is Vivien on her mattress, stylishly placed on the floor. There are a lot of pictures of Vivien sleeping on this blog. It's because I think she is so beautiful when she sleeps, whenever I catch her at it I have to photograph it! Though I'm catching her more often now--she likes to sleep in.

She lost her 3rd tooth late at night during her cousin sleepover. She was keeping it in a Tupperware on the bathroom counter, but Merrick got to it and it has disappeared. Hopefully the tooth fairy will be understanding. Vivs now has . . . 2 front teeth! Goodbye extra tooth.

I am liking the reading nook being upstairs. I have to clean up books a lot less. On the downside, the kids are doing less reading. Maybe when we get our giant reading beanbag things will change.