"New" house

We moved from Orem to Mapleton at the end of September. Our Orem home was built in 1956 and it was getting old, so we decided to upgrade to a more modern home. Our new house was built in 1966, so we are living the good life. The reason we bought this house is because it has a large lot and has a big garage and shop for Dave. It seems kind rural, but we are close enough to things to not be in the boonies. I like that the bedrooms are all upstairs. This is nice when the kids are young, but may not be good for the kids (or us) when they are teenagers. We have a fairly large master bedroom and a master bathroom (which is kind of small), but the bathroom has a cool shower. There is no jetted tub, but I can live without one. The house has been updated since 1966, but the kitchen hasn't been redone since probably 1995. So it's okay, but it can use a makeover. In time we'll around to it. One downfall is that there is no attached garage. But I think I'll survive.

The lot is 1.3 acres and the yard part (about 1/3 acre) is separate and fenced off from the rest of the land. I really like that A couple years ago I came to the realization that because Dave wanted a big lot odds are we wouldn't find a large lot with a new, gorgeous house. This house is nice enough for our tastes and was within our price range. It was actually less than I would have been willing to spend, so that is good. We'd been looking for a house for over a year and in May we kind of gave up and decided to stay put for a couple of years. In fact, we'd driven by about 3 homes in this general area of Mapleton, and it turns out that those homes are in this same ward! Kind of funny.


The home is a tri-level, which wouldn't have been my first choice, but I really like the layout of the home. It was listed as 2700 square feet, but it seems bigger to me. It has 4 bedrooms. It was listed as having 5, but one of the rooms we call a "craft room" because it looks like a craft room. Unfortunately (or fortunately, which is how I see it) I don't do crafts. So we put Dave's drum set in that room. And we use one of the rooms for storage, since there is no storage room. There are no linen closets, or coat closets which worried me at first. Then a friend pointed out, "you have storage, it is just in different places than you'd normally have it."


The following picture shows the back of the yard. The home was empty for 4 or 5 months so the yard needs some TLC.





This next picture shows our clothes line. I'm excited to have it, enough that maybe I'll actually use it! I have memories of my mom putting up sheets on our clothes line and me running through them, I loved it! We'll see how it goes.




These are some garden boxes. I've always just preferred a flat garden, but since they are here I'll clean them up and use them. I'm not a good gardener, and having little kids makes it hard. Not so much the kids themselves, but sometimes I've been way too pregnant to weed the garden and then had a newborn when I should have been harvesting the veggies. But in theory, I love gardening.



Our neighbor to the west is kind of far from us. It is funny. We have a daughter, Molly, born in August. Their daughter they call Milly was born in the same hospital the day before Molly was born. And they moved into their home in July. I've talked to her once at church and I like her a lot. I look forward to getting to know her. And she has a daughter that can babysit for us. That will be nice, too. The husband and their three older girls came over our first week. He was nice.






We are really enjoying the new place. There are many things to fix/update in the house, but we have time. It is fun to see Dave give the kids motorcycle or riding lawnmower rides in the yard or in the field. We both want to get a 4 wheeler so he can pull them on a sled (so far he's been using the lawnmower).

This is the view from our front porch when it was pretty and raining. There is a lot directly across from our house (I think it belongs to our neighbor across the street). Beyond that there is a playground and a grass area. They have soccer and football practices there. There are also baseball fields there. We have very pretty views of the mountains in the front yard and the back yard. The street we live on can get busy (when people are going to work and school and when they come home). And our house seems really close to the street, so the kids are not allowed to play out front.




It has wicked cool shade in the evenings and that will be nice for summer barbeques. There is a peach tree and an apple tree. There is a crab apple tree which might not stay.

There is a deck, but it is attached to the master bedroom. At first I thought that was weird, but I have gotten used to it. It will be cool when the kids are older to sleep out there and be close to us.

Anyway, it is a big change but we sure love our house and new neighborhood.