Is it July yet?

June 2010 will probably go down as one of the cuh-raaaaziest months in history for the Johnson family - cleaning, packing, painting, cleaning, moving, unpacking, and more cleaning. Oh, and all of the lovely paperwork and running around that comes with buying your first place. A few things I've learned over the past few weeks:

-People are filthy, filthy creatures. Well, at least some of them are. My SIL Brittney took some "awesome" before shots of our place. Let's just say I discovered that the inside of my kitchen cupboards were an entirely different colour than I thought after I took to them with a magic eraser.

-Once you venture into home ownership, it is probably easiest to just sign your paycheques directly over to Home Depot. It's a good thing the kids are always up for a run to "Ho Depot" as Emmett calls it (snicker, snicker), because we've spent a lot of time there recently!

-Mormons really are the best movers on the planet. A bunch of people from the ward showed up on Saturday morning and swarmed our old place like a hoard of locusts, leaving nothing in their wake. All of our wordly belongings were out and loaded in the truck in 45 minutes!! The entire move was over in 3 hours...incredible.

-There's nothing quite like the feel of brand new carpet under your feet. Emmett actually told me the other day the was going up to his room to lay on "his carpet". ;)

-Being able to walk around your bedroom (versus shuffling and frequently banging up your shins on pointy furniture) is a wonderful thing!

-Seeing your old place all empty is a weird feeling. While I'm so happy to have moved to a place of our own with double the space, we have a lot of great memories from our little basement apartment. We moved there when Em was just a newborn, and that's where we brought Seth home from the hospital. There was something just a little bit sad about scrubbing scribbles off of those walls for the last time.

Tonight I'll be finishing up with the old place and handing the keys back - there's one chapter of our life over. Then it's on to a busy summer exploring our new neighborhood, completing a million little reno projects, and just getting down to the business of enjoying our new place!

House Update

So it's officially super official now...we're homeowners! We got the keys to our place on Tuesday, and well, I'll be honest - it was little underwhelming. We bought the place knowing it was going to need a good cleaning and a lot of paint, but it was BAD. We knew that the sellers' dog liked to pee on the upstairs landing, but they had obviously been covering up the smell somewhat with incense, because once they stopped doing that the smell was overwhelming. I emptied a full bottle of Febreeze into the carpet and that only kept the smell at bay for about 4 hours. Good times. I can now say with almost complete confidence that I will NEVER own a dog.

So needless to say, that first day was pretty discouraging, but it's been a very busy week. The nasty carpets have been ripped out (thanks so much Carl, Kryssy and Rod!!), which has taken care of 95% of the smell issue (the other 5% will be tackled when I get a chance to scrub the heck out of everything). My hideous dark pink bathroom is now a white (and soon to be turquoise) bathroom. And other projects are well underway...we had planned to tackle the ceilings and painting later, but my parents came by on Wednesday and offered to help us take care of things now. My dad, bless his heart, has been breaking his back scraping the filthy popcorn texturing off our ceilings, and after that it will be time to clean everything top to bottom and seal it all with Killz. Yaaaaay Killz! We're going to paint the bedrooms and hallways a neutral colour and worry about personalizing them later.

I've been a bit worried about how Emmett would react to the move and how much of what was going on he understood. As usual, he has surprised me - no anxiety at all, and he asks quite a bit to go see "our house". In fact, he said our bedtime prayer last night and said "Thank you that we could see Grandma and Grandpa, and go see our house." Love it!

The house is a construction zone right now, but it's going to look so great when it's done, I'm so excited! It's really nice to see the kids excited too, I know we're all going to love having more than twice the space we did before.

Food Storage Rice Pilaf

I discovered a super yummy way to make rice tonight, using only shelf stable ingredients (several of which were right from the storehouse). Since some members of my family may be celiacs, I've been trying to come up with more interesting things to do with rice, so this was perfect.

Food Storage Rice Pilaf
(all amounts are approximate, since I didn't really measure)

3 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 cups rice (you could totally use storehouse rice, but I had Uncle Ben's on hand)
1/4 cup dehydrated carrots
1/4 cup dehydrated onions
1 box chicken broth (at least 3 cups) (homemade stock would be perfect too!)

Heat olive oil in a medium pot on med-high, then add rice. Stir for a few minutes until rice is starting to brown. Add carrots, onions and chicken broth. Bring to a boil and then simmer until done. Voila!

The only change I would make would be to add some parsely flakes for colour. I served this with pork chops but it would be a great side for a lot of dishes. You could also do this like regular rice without the olive oil if you're watching calories, but browning rice gives it a nice nutty flavour. (Besides, olive oil is good for you. Just do it!! ;))

I'm old.

I caught myself doing something today that is the very hallmark of the old: I complained about the fashion choices of today's teenagers. I saw a kid, about 15 or so, walking down the street today - well, walking isn't really the best word for it. More like waddling. You see, this young man had decided to combine two trends: 1) the super skinny jean, and 2) wearing your pants so low that at least 6 inches of underwear is visible and the crotch of the pants is closer to your knees than, well, your crotch. It appears the "waddle" is no longer solely the domain of toddlers and the very pregnant...sullen teenagers in tight pants are getting in on the game! What are these kids thinking?!

I imagine about 10 years from now he'll see a picture of his teenage self, and have a "What was I THINKING?" moment. But now I'm wondering how many people secretly snickered at my "awesome" vintage polyester shirts and bell bottoms I was so fond of a decade or so ago...