Do It Differently Personal Training

We told our real estate agents, a lovely husband-wife team, that we would only look at house within a 1 mile radius of Corinth Square or the Village Shops. They gave me a puzzled look. They had never heard of these specification before and were very confused. I told them we wanted parks and amenities within walking distance, and we knew if it was more than a mile, odds are we would just get in the car and drive. With the research I could do in 2009, I knew that we needed to be in an accredited school district, and that we wanted to continue our walkable lifestyle. This was before Show Me KC Schools was up and running, and we knew that Prairie Village had walkability scores from 40-63 from walkscore.com (somewhat walkable).

We looked at a few houses and returned to the HMS Juniper a few times before making an offer. It sat on the market in 2009-2010 for several months (uninhabited) and wasn’t the shiniest apple in the barrel. We didn’t love it (everyone we consulted said that is normal), but we liked it and saw potential. We were extremely fortunate to have a rental near-by and could stay there while we did some renovations – nothing too major – pot lights, opened a couple of walls, new electric, drywall, flooring, painting, and we were ready to move in. Our first real single-family dwelling!

One thing we didn’t do in early spring when house hunting was look in the backyards of any houses…much…at all. Opps! Lesson learned. We didn’t realize the lot was twice the size of most of the homes in the neighborhood, which may sound good if you are into owning “land”, but we just moved from a 700 sq foot condominium in downtown Toronto, and hadn’t taken care of a yard, well, ever. We are the complete opposite of land tycoons! Which according to powerthesaurus.org means that we are land paupers.
The yard was lovely and open and amazing when it was watered, groomed, and on its best behavior! It quickly consumed us in the fall, spring, and summer with fallen leaves, broken sticks, downed limbs, root-dense weeds, Midwest drought, and drainage. Our yard gave us gifts in every season. We tried, with stubbornness to stay on top of the upkeep. The kids were 3 and 1 when we moved in, and we used nap times and late evenings to toll away. We liked it…at first…we really did! It was fun and different and rewarding. The trees were magnificent and gave us lovely shade during the summer, and the landscaping, when in full bloom, was beautiful. It was a great space to play and run, and to raise little toddlers and preschoolers who crave wide-open spaces.  We have a lot of great memories there with the kids crawling into leaf bags, swinging on the swing set, transplanting flowers, hosting friend parties on the deck, and cooling off in inflatable pools and slip-n-slides on the grass. That’s what we captured in pictures.

Now we enjoy a maintenance provided green-space, more trips to Franklin Park, Loose Park and the Arboretum. It really is nice when someone else takes care of it and we get to visit. To quote one my favorite bloggers (and really the only one I read on occasion) The Minimalist Mom. She recently quoted one of her favorite bloggers “Miss Minimalist”, “In pursuing a minimalist lifestyle, we must resist the temptation to recreate the outside world within our abodes.” We are so fortunate to live in a community with beautiful green spaces everywhere, that we don’t have to mow, fertilize, water, and aerate!