house vs. home

Recently, I have been really unhappy in our house, home, whatever you want to call it. Funny thing is that's part of the problem. Right now, it's just a house; and it has been, for over 5 years. The problem started with when we bought it. It was a stepping stone, the next step for us in whatever plan we thought we had. The first house we bought was just a rinky dink little house, and by rinky dink I mean not even 1000 square feet. Soon after we had Cadynce (and lets not forget the 100 lb lab) we knew it wouldn't last long. So, we set out to find the "next step." We looked and looked with our house on the market and I quickly gave up thinking we'd never find the right house for the right price. Selling a house in that market (about 5 and a 1/2 years ago) was great, buying one was a little different story. Anyways, Colby was diligent about looking at more and more houses and convinced me to come look at this house, so I did, and we bought it. It has nice yard, fenced, play set, more than twice the size of our old house, had 3 bedrooms (room to grow yeah!) and 2 bathrooms (even bigger yeahh!!) and so I was sold. We were looking at a bigger mortgage, but knew it was worth it and we only planned to be here 5 years or so anyways. Ha, yeah, where has time gone?

When we moved in, we were so excited and had so many plans and our "to-do" list was pretty long. We had a 5 month old baby, hunting season, holidays, then baseball and it started all over again. The to-do list never got done and the house remains the way it was when we bought it. And now we're practically outgrowing it again. In my eyes anyways, because there is not office/craft space or even room for a guest. Ugh. Okay, it's not exactly the same, we did paint the spare bathroom and tear down the border that seemed to be in every room. Aaack! The kids' rooms got painted  (although Cadynce's room has a hole in the wall that's strategically hidden because that to-do never got done) our bathroom got painted, we hung a few pictures and shelves...and then we come to a screaaaaaaching halt.

Our yard is a never ending mess. It's like a jungle out there. Each spring, we get all geared up and work really hard for a week or two, only to let it go back by the following spring. When will we ever learn? I know part of the problem is having enough hours in the day, and enough ambition to do it. I'll admit it, I hate yard work and I suck at it. The yard is really becoming a problem now because the kids can't even get down to the play set and that is so frustrating because they both want to.

Last week Colby and I started talking about all of this and made a big list, room by room, of all the things we need to do. The things we never did, or that now have been added to the list due to wear and tear of 2 small children, one large dog and plain old neglect. Now that our list is bigger than ever and even more daunting, we're trying to work on it.

The other part of this is that I realized I've never made this house our home. Sad, I know. I've never put my own touches on it really, except my cherry stuff in the kitchen. I look at my friends houses (or pictures of) and practically turn green with envy (like pinkalicious only from envy not cupcakes - someone does know what I'm talking about right?) not that our house needs to be just like theirs, but that they've actually done it, or something to make it their own.

...so here I sit, writing a blog about it, instead of getting up and doing something about it.