House Warming

So, as you probably know we decided to move to Monticello. We aren't looking to stay forever, and we already own a house in Brigham City, so we weren't looking to buy, and all of the houses that are for rent were either falling apart, or in the $800-$900 range, which doesn't fit well into my new "single Mom" budget. So that left the only apartment building in town. It is actually just renovated, and so we are the first person to live on the carpet, which makes me more happy than you can imagine. It also has new managers, so there are new rules which are pretty strict, and that makes me happy too. And Monticello isn't really the kind of town the has a "ghetto" or anything, so although it isn't the best situation, it isn't bad at all either. But then, as you probably also know, in the divorce Troy went through the house and took everything he wanted, and then I was left with everything else, so the quality of my possessions is not the highest. I have mismatched dishes, glasses, and silverware, one pan, two bowls, etc. I feel like a college students with grandma's hand-me-downs all over again, except now I'm 29 and a mom, so it's less acceptable:) It actually isn't that bad, and we have everything we need, our apartment is pretty cute (even though the entire thing can fit inside of my kitchen/dining room in my other house:) and we are doing fine. But, I wanted to have a housewarming party, and I needed a theme, so given our circumstances, I chose "WHITE TRASH"! It was SO funny. I actually picked a pretty bad weekend to do it, so we didn't have a huge turn-out, but it was fun just the same.

Right across the street from our new place is the city park. It has a nice pavillion and a pretty good skate park, and a playground, and everything else a good white trash party might need, so we decided to hold the first part of the party there and let the kids play while the adults visited. It seemed like a good idea until our friend Cade, not being told ahead of time that it was being held "in public" refused to get out of the car for 10 minutes for fear someone "normal" might see him.:)

We started out getting tattoos (some fun stick on ones I printed off of my computer onto this super fun tattoo paper I found online) I made sure to make them super trashy, hearts that said mom, barbed wire cuffs, etc.

Then we took family pictures. I'll show them to you, but you have to act surprised when you get your Christmas Card this year:) The only problem was that I took the pictures in Auto on my camera (I HATE AUTO!) for most of the night before realizing what I was doing, and they were in low light, so the pictures are really grainy.

My kids were pretty unsure about what was going on. They didn't understand why I wanted them to dress immodestly and why I was wearing my pajamas in public (an absolute no-no in our family) But they were pretty good sports anyway, until Ethan's shirt got ripped later in the evening and I said, "Oh, no! Now what are you going to wear to church tomorrow!" At that point they were worried that I was taking an unfortunate turn in fashion preferences and both of them tried to set me straight on the matter.

Cassie is barefoot and pregnant. (though she is pretty much to classy for this kind of party) and Levi is... just pregnant??? :)

After we were done eating the boys had to play on the playground. (they said they were entertaining the kids, but the kids were at the skate park, so really they were just trying to show off for each other.

We had super good White Trash cuisine. Pickled eggs, little smokies with a variety of dipping sauce, potato salad, chips and bean dip, squeeze cheese, a pyramid of no name soda, and for dessert, twinkies, ho-ho's and ding-dongs!



Finally the boys realized that the kids were having more fun than they were so they went over to the skate park and tried to one-up the kids by running around the bowl, stealing their scooters, and basically acting like children.



All in all it was a pretty good time. When it was over we went back to my place to exchange white (trash) elephant gifts where I got a much needed can of WD 40! I am really grateful to my friends for their willingness to humor me and really get into the theme of the party.