Our new pad

So, for many of you who know me, you know I have my mother's gypsy blood. Prior to moving to American Fork, the longest I'd lived anywhere in my life was 5 years. This fall will mark 15 years for us here in our house in AF. Wow! Sometimes I love the feeling of roots I have that I'd never experienced before. Other times, I want to pack up my family, move to someplace entirely different and have an adventure! (Then I think about how much work it would be to pack up all the 'stuff' we've aquired, and I rethink the idea.)

The gypsy blood is strong, and I hope it takes me to lots of places of travel, but the practical blood seems to be stronger. We have no compelling reason to leave a place where we are so happy, so rooted, and so not in debt. And so we stay. To satisfy an urge, though, we have decided to finish our basement. Hmm, let me rephrase that. We've decided to pay someone else to finish our basement! It's been so exciting. The first step was to clean it out. What a job that was. Thanks to our good friends Kirk and DJ for helping with the heavy stuff. I'm enclosing a picture of the cleaned out basement so you can all see it for the first time in 15 years. Amazing, huh? Well, it doesn't look anything like that now. It's framed, the plumbing and electrical are done, the new windows are in, and we're just waiting for an inspection tomorrow before they can begin sheetrocking it. When it's done, we'll have two bedrooms (one for Daniel and one extra), a bathroom, a kitchen (we call it the lab as it will be used for family projects like soap making, science experiments, etc.), a nice big family room, and a big unfinished storage room. The sad part is that home-building materials and processes have improved in the last 15 years, so it will be largely a much nicer area than our upstairs. We're considering just moving down there as we wouldn't have to pack so much, and the moving van rental would be very cheap. We'll let you know where we end up so you can find us and come visit!!