Being grateful and happy has always come naturally to me but this move has really thrown me for a loop. I’ll go from feeling on top of the world with little victories like the kids making a new friend to feeling gobsmacked and overwhelmed.

I was reviewing my blog post from last year at this time as I poured out our many blessings. It was a tough read. Life as we knew it was pretty darn perfect and I was so grateful for it. Two weeks later, I would receive the impression we were supposed to leave Colorado.

I think the toughest thing about moving from an idyllic  world to a less-than-ideal situation is expectations. I miss Colorado. I miss our friends. I miss that my friends were also the kids’ best friends and we did everything together. I miss my job and all its perks. Sure, I still own and run Mile High Mamas but ’tis the season for VIP event and travel invites…and I’ve had to pass them along to my writers, which I’m happy to do. But I’m not happy to be constantly reminded of what I’m missing by all those invitations. I need to build out similar opportunities here but I just don’t have time.

One of my major sources of discontent has been our new house. There are many things I love about it: The view. The kitchen. The charming old farm table. My office. The huge basement. The granite countertops and hardwood floors. The massive yard (that will be a ton of work to complete but will be amazing when we do).

But there are just as many things I dislike about it: The small  upstairs rooms (particularly the master bedroom with the tiniest closet in the house), the mud room (so small that there’s nowhere to put the laundry baskets), the small family room that makes it difficult to entertain. The list goes on.

The financial strain of this move continues daily as we bleed money. We had to order a newer, most expensive couch yesterday because the one we bought is already showing wear. Our builder, Utah Home Builders, took several shorcuts that are costing us a lot of money such as putting in a circuit board with no extra spaces; we had to drop an additional $1,000 to install a new one in order to have electicity downstairs.

I recognize these are first world problems but we spent a lot of money on this house and to be unhappy with the layout is a source of constant frustration. Part of the problem was we never really saw our house before moving in because all the models were sold. We had the builder’s plans so conceptually we had an idea of the layout but living with it is an entirely different ballgame.

It makes me realize how much we loved our old 5-bedroom house.  We hated our view and didn’t have fancy upgrades but all the rooms were spacious and spread apart–the four bedrooms were on separate quarters upstairs. In our new ranch, all three of the bedrooms and two bathrooms are crammed into one little area. Hadley wakes up at 5:30 a.m. for school and we all hear about it. Daily. Top priority: scraping together some money to finish the bathroom downstairs.

The first five weeks were rough. Unpacking. Working 15-hours days getting settled before I started my job. Hadley sleeping on the floor in my now-office. Jamie’s desk in our little bedroom. We hired someone to frame and drywall two rooms in the basement and we’ve done the rest. We finished last week and moved Hadley to her room and Jamie is in his new office. Space is still tight upstairs but at least we’re not living on top of each other.

When we’re finally able to afford finishing our basement, we’ll be just fine but who knows when we’ll have a chunk of money to complete it? For now, I’m just trying to live and love what we have while lowering expectations. Sure, we don’t have the tight-knit group from Colorado but we’ve already made a few good friends. We love our ward, the kids are doing wonderfully in school and love being closer to Jamie’s awesome family. I truly love living in this charming mountain hamlet. In fact, I wonder why I’ve lived in the suburbs of a big city my entire life. On Friday, I went for a hike around Soldier Hollow, the world-class cross-country skiing venue for the 2002 Salt Lake Olympic Games. It is a five minute drive from my house. This just blows my mind and I can’t wait to ski it this winter.

So, for those of us who might be feeling a bit less-than grateful this holiday season while also still recognizing our blessings, this article I quoted last year from The Atlantic still rings true:

Gratitude is the truest approach to life. We did not create or fashion ourselves. We did not birth ourselves. Life is about giving, receiving and repaying. We are receptive beings, dependent on the help of others, on their gifts and their kindness.”

Photo taken by Willie Holdman of last week’s sunset in the Heber Valley

Halloween has been my unspoken benchmark for if we are truly on our way to settling into Midway. I figured if the kids had friends with whom to go trick-or-treating, that would be good enough for me.

We had that and so much more!

This is the first year I haven’t attended Halloween class parties and I felt such a loss as I realized despite the chaos, I really love those things. Darn middle and intermediate schools–I want elementary school again!

Hadley dressed as a zombie doll and Bode was an executioner. When Bode was at Vanderhoof Elementary, they would do a costume parade. All of his fellow kindergartners were dressed in sweet costumes like firefighters, unicorns, and princesses. Directly behind them in the line were the sixth graders whose common theme/color was zombie black and I marveled “what happens between kindergarten and sixth grade?”

This is what happened.

Bode was in an uncharacteristically bad mood before we left and didn’t want to take pictures (I later found out he hurt his foot). But really, do you want the man who is about to murder you with his ax to smile?

They call her “Doll Face.”

I was worried Halloween in Midway wouldn’t measure up to Skyline Estates. Next to the Fourth of July, Halloween is the best time to live in our old neighborhood with a party at the fire station, a fire truck-led costume parade through the streets and, of course, The Great Pumpkin.

I’m happy to report Midway is every bit as fun. We’d hoped to hit Park City’s popular Main Street celebration that afternoon (voted one of the best in the country) but I was busy moving Hadley out of my office and settling her in to her new room downstairs. My friend Sarah invited us over for dinner at 5 p.m. so the festivities were off to an early start.

On Sunday, I told Hadley she needed to find friends with whom to trick-or-treat or she’d have to go only with ME (oh, the horror) so she quick made plans with friends Zoie, Katie and Lizzie.

Old Woman Zoie and her little brother

Bode and Co. had a blast racing through the streets. We’re pretty hardcore when it comes to trick-or-treating. We’ll make small talk but we’re not in to to be social like my friend Sarah who stopped to chat–we were in it to win it!

Parents scored almost as much of the kids with various neighbors cooking up everything from fresh doughnuts with a killer warming tent to hawtdogs to a popcorn stand to hot chocolate to dozens of glazed doughnuts with a firepit to “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” on an outdoor screen to Willy Wonka commandeering a tractor-pulled wagon ride on our street.

Warming Tent

Cue: I think I’m gonna like it here. 

And The Great Pumpkin will be in good company next year.

There’s no better time to live in Skyline Estates than on the Fourth of July. That’s when we shut down our street, the entire neighborhood throws a party and fireworks are shot right above our house and late into the night.

We were remiss to celebrate our final holiday in Arvada without Hadley who flew to Utah for our new ward’s Young Women’s Girls Camp this week. A second bummer? I don’t even have one picture because my cell phone landed in the lake with me at my adventure race with Bode last weekend.

Regardless, the 4th of July had all the fixins for a great day:

• Jamie, Bode and I woke up early to attend our stake’s annual patriotic breakfast (though not too early and missed the 5K Bode wanted to run).
• Our friends, the Rolfsons, invited a few families to spend the afternoon at Hyatt Lake, a private lake where we swam, cannonballed, canoed, lounged and leisurely floated in tubes.
• That night, some of our dearest friends and neighbors, the Haymonds, hosted a bunch of families at their house for a big BBQ. As I sat there at the kid table laughing at 4-year-old Lucy, I had an epiphany: I love my friends’ kids every bit as much as I love them.  After a few hours, we all walked up to the fireworks together where more families joined us–the Carrolls, Cooks, Larsons, Wagners, Cardons and countless neighbors.

I’ll admit that we didn’t get into the Easter spirit as much as usual for the primary reasons that 1) Easter comes waaaaay too early when it’s in March and 2) We spent several days in Utah for Spring Break prior to the big day.

We tried to make up for it on Easter morning with our traditional Easter egg hunt.

And a ladder to up the degree of difficulty.

Another tradition is for the kids to wear new Easter outfits to church. 

Check-out this cute Easter flashback from years past:

Since I’m always behind the camera, Hadley took a picture of the happy couple, which would have been swell had we not been photobombed.

After church there was family time, we watched the Easter story, read scriptures and had a delicious Easter dinner with Uncle Chris and Aunt Lisa.

I originally typed Uncle Christ. Freudian slip? Maybe he’s not as far away as we think.

“For Paul the light of Easter is no lantern swinging over a narrow, empty grave, but a light capable of dispelling the thick darkness covering the nations. Paul never tries to explain the resurrection of Jesus. He knows that to explain the ways of God in the light of human experience is like trying to explain the sun in terms of a candle. It’s the sun that makes sense of the candle. Likewise we don’t prove the resurrection; the resurrection proves us. The Easter faith doesn’t ask us to believe without proof, but to trust without reservation. Don’t think your way into a new life, but live your life into an entirely new way of thinking.”
-William Sloane Coffin, The Riverside Years.