I'm not even kidding. The worst ones happen to be right in front of our house. Creedo, Viv and I have sat on our porch in the afternoons watching drivers freak out as they drive by because they think their rear bumpers just fell off.
It is just one of the interesting things about our new place. At first glance, I was thrilled. It is spacious and not terribly junky and it turned out that we have a deck in the back yard, which was a surprise. But as we started unloading the truck an hour later, it became more and more evident that the place had not been cleaned well after the previous tenants. An hour after that, we had become aware the place probably hadn't been cleaned at all after the previous tenants. By the end of the third day of just cleaning, it was obvious the place probably hadn't been cleaned well, ever.
The good news is that we had lots of help from Steve's parents those hardest first days (and on the drive out here, and on the Provo end of the cleaning/packing. They are fantastic people). The other upside was that every issue was more or less fix-able, even if that meant painting over popcorn ceiling in the living room and completely re-painting the downstairs bathroom (thanks Steve's mom!). I still haven't gotten all the white residue off the sink cabinet in the master bathroom stubbornly left over from where I had to peel off velveteen stickers depicting each of the Seven Dwarves (why...?), but I'll get to that. Our landlord is a whole 'nother story, but I'll save that for a different day.
My Mom and youngest sister came out the second week and helped organize all of my storage (labels and everything!), clear out the miscellaneous boxes in the garage (read: those incredibly taxing boxes of odds and just barely useful things you just don't really want to unpack ever), hang pictures, and enjoy some Columbia fun. We took Creedo fishing, saw an outdoor movie in a park, did Steve's back-to-school shopping, and enjoyed how fun Vivian's new squinty-snorty-smile quirk is. It was great.
But then everyone left, and school started.
That was rough. We've had Steve around all summer more or less and then to have him just go off and abandon us... not. nice. but necessary (he says). Luckily, our ward has eight other toddler boys in the 2-3 yr old age range and we are having fun getting to know them. We trek through the jungle, Creedo's title for all the nature trails. Steve and I have also been re-watching all of Arrested Development. So, so good.
