Tour de Village

In honor of our upcoming move, we thought we should document all of the things we love about the little village that we call home. We love it here. We love the miles of sidewalks, 80 acres of grass, 5 playgrounds, neighbors from the world over and we love that we, as Americans, are by far the minority. 

So here are some of the reasons why we love Purdue Village so much:

(this was found inside a  bathroom stall in the community center...I know people live here from all over the world, but don't we all have this need in common. Why does it need explaining??) I laughed out loud the first time I saw this.

A plethora of plastic toys

The community gardens. 

They are really lovely. I want to move into some of them.

This person made their garden into a store. It has a gate and paths and a cashier. It is seriously humongous. Mighty ingenious if you ask me. A friend once told us that they knew someone who had made 10,000 dollars selling his vegetables from a garden like this one year. It costs next to nothing to rent the land. Nice profit.

SLAM DUNKS!

Swings

Slides:

"Whee!"

"I'm gonna die!" fears Anna

Trees to hang from

And sit on

We will really, really miss it here!

A Beehive State of Mind

We've been really bogged down with the reality of a big move coming very soon. We still have to sell a ton of junk, throw away a ton of junk, box up a ton of junk, and clean the junk off of the floors, among other things. It's stressful. But we've been disciplined and very rational about the whole thing. We're very serious around here. So, we've decided that since we have so much to do in so little time, the best and most rational thing to do is

take a two-week vacation to Utah and arrive back to home on the day before we have to load the moving truck. 

I think it's smart for several reasons:

1) If you can't see it, you don't have to pack it.

2) There's a chance the apartment could be robbed, leaving us with nothing to pack.

3) The kids haven't seen their maternal grandparents in over a month.

4) Annika turns 2 in August, so we had to get one last flight where we get to hold on to her with all our might while she struggles to run down the aisle flinging off her clothes and diaper and screaming for freedom.

Anyway, from our standpoint, it's a sound decision. The trip promises to be full of mystery and intrigue (our first visit to Christina's parents' new place AND Casey's studio), bloating (we're going to the cupcake store, probably more than once), and wonder (A new temple is opening, and we are excited to go). So, to our reader(s), if you live in the Provo area and you are aching for a visit from the us, you're in luck. Jonathan is bringing his disc golf discs, hoping to convince his brothers-in-law to give up the clubs and grab the frisbees, thereby scoring one for the proletariat.

If you are a burglar, however, we are indeed NOT leaving. We will be here the entire time. Just us, our kids, and our pitbulls. And the cops who live next door.* 

*Disclaimer: no individual or family with an actual job would ever live at The Village. As for the pitbulls, Mr. Burglar, you need to decide how badly you want our 2nd edition of Trivial Pursuit and our dishes from Kmart. Is it really worth the risk?

P.S. Check out The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. It's one of the best books ever! Seriously.

p.p.s. We randomly drew the winner of our contest several weeks ago. Congratulations, Kayli, you've won yourself a (slightly toxic) family adventure game! There's (virtually) no lead in the game at all! Plus, it was taken off the market, so it's a collector's item!