Home Plate

There are prettier places in the world, but there’s no place like home. My family’s home has 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a basement, and all the other amenities of a normal home. It’s in a large neighborhood, called the Meadows, in a town, called Castle Rock, in the suburbs of Denver. It was built in 1992, but we’ve only lived there since 1995. There are at least 100 other houses in that neighborhood that look the exact same. It’s a cookie-cutter house. This is our house on Google Maps:

It’s a very generic house with a basketball hoop in front. Nobody really shoots basketballs anymore, it’s mostly used as a post to tie up the dog when he’s in the front yard.

This is looking out our house during a blizzard:

 And at it, after:

There are wood floors throughout most of the house. Most of the wood is honey colored, very light. It's oak, I believe. Don't quote me on that though, I'm not a logger. They look like this:

The walls are subtle shades of grey, with one red wall in the dining room. The family room has blue walls. When you walk into the house, the first thing you see is a 6’x3’ picture of pineapples hanging in the living room. I think that sums up the feel of the whole house.  

There are a lot of stairs in the house. The family room is split from the rest of the first floor. The master bedroom is split from the rest of the second floor. All of our knees crack as we walk up the stairs. It’s a Kendall thing.

One bannister has Dustin’s name carved in it. He didn’t carve it though. I did, because I wanted to get him in trouble.

At different times, I’ve lived in each of the three non-master bedrooms, and in the basement. One room has green walls halfway up to resemble a baseball stadium. Another (which has mostly been my sisters’ room) has stars on the walls. The third has camouflage walls. The basement had curtains. The second story bathroom has a baseball theme with yellow and grey walls and some pin striping and old fashioned baseball logos.

The family room has a brick fireplace. Every Christmas, we have taken pictures of the family hanging stockings. My mom has taken all of those pictures and put them on a wall in the hallway between the living room and family room. On the opposite wall, there are the mission plaques for the four of us. Now that Jared is home, that is complete. There’s a few family pictures scattered around the house. We aren’t much of a family for family pictures. If you ever end up there, you can see the family picture with Dustin, Jared, and I and our bleached blonde hair. The 90s were weird. The favorite family picture is the one with me eating a grilled cheese sandwich, Jared blowing bubble gum, and Dustin’s foot in Jaimee’s face. That photo shoot took some time to get a normal picture.

The living room has vaulted ceilings, so every year we get a ridiculously huge Christmas tree. One year the tree fell on Dustin. I wish it did that every year.

The living room also has a big window that has incredible views. This is our view of Pikes Peak:

This is view of some of the other mountains around us:

We have wild rabbits everywhere. There's an owl that lives in the tree behind our house. You can hear coyotes at night. Sometimes there are foxes that run around our house.

The backyard is on a slope. We built a rock wall at the top for a garden. The dog usually walks around the wall and knocks some of the rocks off. The dog has also created these paths throughout the backyard, so there’s no grass where he always walks. Dogs are weird. 

I don’t know why, but as kids we thought the coolest thing was to be able to climb the fences. We would climb the fences and sit on them for hours. Kids are weird.

The backyard has a brick patio that is all sorts of not level. There’s a fire pit on the edge of the porch. One night my friends and I were having trouble starting a fire. So we used gasoline. There was a fireball that scorched the trees around it. Jaimee freaked out on me. I don’t know why. It started a fire.

The garage is supposed to hold 2 cars, but has only ever had one. The dog has a kennel in the corner where he should sleep every night (he sleeps inside because he’s spoiled). The other side has random things like tools, bikes, hockey gear, baseball gear, and other collected crap. During the summer, I would pull the car out of the driveway and shoot hockey pucks up the driveway into the garage. There was a table against the wall that I would use as a goal. The wall ended up looking like this:

One puck made it all the way through to the other side. Oops.

We used to play wiffle ball in the front yard and cul-de-sac all summer long. We'd pitch to each other in the backyard with real baseballs sometimes. Our neighbor hated how many fence panels we destroyed with errant pitches.

It’s not a mansion. It’s not fancy. It’s got nicks and dings and scratches and scars. It’s my home. 

"So you pulled my heart out

And I don't mind bleeding.

But I came to love you

Am I born to bleed?

Any old time you keep me waiting.

Waiting. Waiting."

-Lonely Boy- The Black Keys