52 Week Challenge: Question 2

52 Week Challenge: Question 2 

Question Two: When and where were you born? Describe your home, your neighborhood, and the town you grew up in.

KRISTIN:

This one is more difficult for me. I was born in 1972.  I have lived in 15 different homes and in 7 different cities while growing up. I was born in Provo, UT. Where I lived until my parents divorced when I was four years old. My mom and sisters and I moved to Bonners Ferry, Idaho, then Orem, UT, Springville, UT, Springdell, UT, Kansas City, and Houston, Texas.

The place that holds the most significance for me and that is my true "hometown" is Springdell, a little gated community, up Provo Canyon that is between the Squaw Peak turn off and Bridal Veil Falls.

This whole blog is basically an homage to my life there and the significance of those years. They shaped me into who I am and put me on the path I am now. I am forever grateful. It is holy ground to me. I have described it in great detail on this blog over the years so I won't do so again. But I will describe our house there because it was super cool and my favorite house ever. Tyler and I would buy it in a flash.

Not the best picture but the only one I can find right now. That weird arbor has been added by the current owner.

It was built in the style of a Norwegian Manor house. About 80 plus years old now. (I also found out that it is now an approved site on the National Historic Properties list.)  I was told that a doctor built it for his Norwegian wife. Springdell was originally the site of summer homes for the wealthy citizens of Provo. My Grandma McKinnon said that when she was a girl she used to go up there and have picnics and get rowed around on the "lake"...it must have been much larger and grander back then because now there is only a small but beautiful pond.

Anyway, this house was made of gorgeous hearts of pine wood. It was painted brick red with black trim when we moved in and it still is to this day. The walls are dark polished hearts of pine wood half way up and then there is white stucco. There were wood and stone floors throughout. When you enter through the front door. You come into a stone floored entry. There was a beautiful staircase going up and a stone staircase going down and with the living room to the right and a hallway to the left. The flight of stairs going up was gorgeous wood with a beautiful carved railing with a landing halfway up and a huge multi-paned window and then it goes on up to the top floor. This led to the upstairs hallway. On the left side of the upstairs hallway there were rows of small closets with shelves and some were interconnected. Perfect for hide and seek. The shelves were long and wide enough that you could lay on them. Which I often did with my Bugs Bunny Flashlight and would read. The first bedroom on the right had gorgeous wood built in beds complete with reading lights. This was Stacey and Kelley's bedroom. My bedroom came next also on the right. It had three huge windows overlooking the back yard I could hear the Provo River rushing by. My room had gorgeous wood floors and had a little hallway with coat hooks and deep but very short closets with built in shelves. The little hall ended with an interesting shaped door which opened into the room we called "the alcove". It had low eves and a big window at one end. We used this as our playroom. We were told that back in the day this was the maid's room. There was a little buzzer/bell type thing on the wall in there. It was so cool. Back out of my bedroom and into the hall way and at the end of the hall was our bathroom. Totally vintage, darling, and charming. On the other side of the hall there was a little nook  with windows looking out into the dell. We put a desk there and telephone there. That was where "our phone" (me, Stacey, and Kelley's) was with our own phone number. We thought that was so cool!!

Back down on the main floor and to the entry...If you went left down the hallway you came to a closet at the end of the hall and to your right was another hallway that you could enter. The entrance to this other hallway could be sealed off with an enormous and thick wood door that was more like a wall panel that you had to use your muscles to slide over and it could be bolted from inside the second hallway. Once the door/sliding panel was bolted you couldn't even tell that there was a door there. Legend has it that this was put in the house due to the original owner's wife who was European and who was deathly afraid of Nazis and wanted to be able to block off and bolt closed the section of the house where her bedroom was located. In the master bedroom which was to the left and down the second hallway there were two walk in closets...his and hers. In her closet there was a trapdoor that led down into a tunnel that ran underneath our house and came up in the large abandoned chicken coop (that kind of looked like a mini-version of our house) that was behind the garage. She needed to have a way out!! Once my stepdad opened it up and jumped down in and looked around. The tunnel was sealed off part way...the part that went to the chicken coop. Also in my parent's bedroom on the wall was a buzzer so that the lady of the house could ring the maid who was upstairs in "the alcove" but it didn't work when we lived there.

In the middle of the hallway that could be sealed off was a larger bathroom and then to the right of that was Kirk and Jordin's bedroom. It also had large multi-paned windows and floor to ceiling built in bookshelves on one wall. Beautiful wood floors. So pretty.

If you went back down the sealed off hallway and out into the regular hallway and to the entry... if you went to the right when you walked in you entered our incredible living room. Gorgeous wood floors...so beautiful and spacious that ballet lessons were held there every Monday for the girls in the dell. The cathedral ceilings were 20 plus feet high. A huge multi-paned bay window that was three sided and boxy rather than curved and nearly floor to ceiling looked out onto the front yard. On the other side of the large room was another huge multi-paned window that ran nearly floor to ceiling and looked out on the back yard and views of Mount Timpanogos. There were huge beams from which giant black iron chandeliers hung. They looked very medieval and awesome to me. The beams were so big and so high that we hung a swing from them in our living room. I loved to swing and read a book in it. There was a huge stone fireplace made from large rocks from the Provo River. Next to that was a built in cupboard for wood. There were also floor to ceiling built in book shelves on one huge wall. It was a stunning room.

From one end of the living room you could step up into the kitchen. There was a little telephone nook to one side with scroll work and it was so cute. Our kitchen was very pretty with large multi-paned windows on two sides and what we called "the back door" that opened up to a little landing with stairs that went to the front yard and driveway. There was large white tile on the floor and small white tile on the counter tops. It was very pretty but an absolute pain to keep clean and white. (Yes, that was my job to mop that floor once a day...usually several times a day.) There was also a special spigot on our kitchen sink from which icy cold water from a near by spring flowed. That was what we always drank and it was the very best water that I have ever tasted. On the other side of the kitchen right next to our refrigerator was what we called "the cooler" which was original to the house. It was built into the wall and quite big almost the size of a refrigerator but looked like an old ice box on the outside. When you opened it up there were three shelves and in the bottom was cold running water that came from a spring. It kept what was in there nice and cool. We used to keep our bread, fruits and vegetables, and things like that in there. It was neat. Then you could go through a doorway from the kitchen into the dining room. The dining room had gorgeous multi-paned windows and built in lighted corner shelves with gorgeous scroll work. You could step down into the living room from the dining room.

If you went back to the entry way you could go downstairs. The stairs going down where beautifully polished river rock. On the first landing there was a multi-paned glass door going out into the back yard. If you kept going downstairs it led into a large family room. There was a fireplace down there as well with built in shelves on the sides. This was the part of our house that was carpeted. On the right side of the room there were a row of four doors. Each one opened into a big walk in closet...some had shelves and some did not. At the end of the family room there was a door that led to another bedroom. This was the bedroom that our nanny had. It also had it's own bathroom. You had to walk through this bedroom to get to the laundry room and our laundry room had an outside entrance. You could also lock the door between the nanny's bedroom and the laundry room. There was a micro hallway between the two rooms. When there was a nanny in residence which there nearly always was while we lived there we would have to lug all our laundry outside and bring it in through the outside entrance so as to not go tromping through the nanny's room. This was annoying!! But that outside entrance was perfect for sneaking out which I very often did. We had a super nice nanny, Amber, who is still like a sister to me who would never lock the doors and would let me sneak in and out as much as I wanted. It was fabulous!! On one wall of the laundry room there were rows of built in cupboards and pantry shelves for canned goods. At one end of the laundry room there was a door to another room that had a bunch of built in shelves. We called it "the sport room" this was where we kept all our skis, camping equipment, and sports gear. There was another little micro hall next to that door that led to a storage room...a previous owner had left quite a collection of rocks in shoe boxes down there that we loved to go through. From there it lead to another room which we called the "furnace room" this also had a coal bin that held the coal to put in our furnace. It used to be delivered once a year. The heating in our house was horrible and the so-called furnace barely put out any heat so we mainly used our two wood-burning fireplaces that had blowers and space heaters. It was chilly in the winter but always delightfully cool in the summer. We got wood delivered maybe twice a year as well.

If you went outside to our free standing two story garage it was pretty cool. We had a basket ball standard mounted on it. I loved to shoot hoops. If you went into our garage at the far end was a huge wooden box that my stepdad had built to hold the majority of the big chunks of coal that would be delivered. There was a door behind it that led to another storage room. We called this "the wood room" this was where we would stack all the wood and keep it when it was delivered. It smelled amazing. On the other side of the garage there were built in workbenches and it the far back there were stairs that led up to the large attic room. We didn't really keep anything much up there. That was where I would have slumber parties. It was perfect!! We could hook up a TV and VCR up there and watch movies all night. It was great!!

Our backyard was beautiful with views of Mount Timpanogos looming up on one side and Cascade Mountain so close it felt like you could touch it on the other. There were several large cottonwood trees and tons of lilac bushes and a few old rosebushes. We also had a blackberry bush. One of my favorite sounds is the sound of wind in the leaves of cottonwood trees...my nightly lullaby. Our lake house is surrounded by cottonwood trees as well and that sound is one of my favorite sounds of the lake. My parent hung up a hammock between two trees and there was a stone patio back there. It was beautiful but we very rarely played back there because we had the dell and the mountains to roam.

As far as what it was like to grow up there. Magical... and terrible... due to the utter dysfunction of our family while we lived there. But in the years that have followed it is the magic and the beauty that remains and outshines the darkness. It saved me then and it continues to save me now. The magic of Springdell is in everything I write and everything I am. The feeling of those who lived and loved in that place and in that house were palpable. The history close and encompassing. I am grateful to have added to the history of that place.

TYLER:

(I will add some pictures of Tyler's house growing up when I get them.Tyler grew up near the Old Trafalga Water Park on the hill that heads down towards Geneva Road. His backyard bordered a farm that was owned by a woman named Josie who had ducks, geese, rabbits, peacocks and all kinds of animals. I have heard many stories about Josie. Tyler and his brother Brett were also undoubtedly the menaces of the neighborhood as they rode their bikes and pummeled other kids in the surrounding orchard. Don't mess with the Johnson brothers!!  Tyler has told me many hilarious stories of his "adventures" in his neighborhood growing up and the cast of characters that lived there. It sounded like a fun place to live as a rowdy boy.)

I was born in 1971 in Castro Valley, California.  I do not really remember my childhood home until we moved to Santa Rosa, California.  We lived in that home until I was 3 or 4.  We then moved to Flagstaff, Arizona.  We then moved to Orem, Utah.  This was where I lived and grew up until I went on my mission.  The neighborhood was a kind of a circle drive with one entrance and exit. It was a relatively quiet neighborhood and a great place to grow up.  The Orem & Provo area was a great place to live as a kid and be a BYU fan.

My childhood home was a two story home with a very large yard.  We had an entire second lot that was filled with 2/3 grass and 1/3 garden.  Lots of mowing time and loads of weeding time as well.  We had a large deck on the back of the house and plenty of play space.  Our yard was often referred to as the Johnson park in the neighborhood.   It was my home for 14 years.  It was a great house and we had many fond memories created there.  It's interesting to see that the color my brother and I painted the house one summer way back when we were teenagers is still the color it is today.