blame it on the nudists

When Lonnie and I were engaged, we bought our first house, which is on Hyland Lake Drive in Murray, Utah.  It was a lovely old four bedroom house.  It was a great place for us to start our marriage and our family.

The house had some strange quirks, including a serious infestation of box elder bugs, a yard that needed serious work (which we never really addressed), and a shallow well (which entertained Lonnie but we didn't ever use).  But the most obvious quirk in the house were the floor-to-ceiling mirrors in the front room and in the kitchen (unfortunately, we don't have any of our own photos of the house to show here because we lost them after moving to Houston. I found the photo above on the internet).  The mirrors provided endless entertainment for our nieces and nephews, who loved to look at themselves while eating at the kitchen table and performing in the front room.

Shortly after moving into the house and meeting the neighbors, we started hearing bits and pieces about the people that had lived there before us.  According to the neighbors, the prior owners were nudists.  We had this confirmed when we found out that they had sold the house and moved to a nudist colony.  They must have been high self-esteem nudists with all the full-length mirrors in the house.

Max and Maya never lived in this house.  We moved to Texas before they were born and since then we have moved to Auckland and lived in two different homes.  But our house on Hyland Lake Drive was where our family began, and it will always have a special place in my heart as our first home.  It wasn't until the last couple of weeks that the residual effects of our family living in a nudist home started to show.  No, don't worry, Lonnie and I aren't going to run off to a nudist colony.  Maya loves to wear clothes, but Max loves to be naked.  Once he is naked, getting him dressed is a huge struggle.  He runs away, hides, and does anything he can to stay naked.  He walks around the house naked.  He runs outside naked.  He even climbs trees naked.  After we put him to bed, we will go down to check on the kids only to find Max completely naked asleep in his bed.

I can't imagine this has anything whatsoever to do with my parenting or anything to do with the therapy-inducing stress of potty-training....so I'm just going to blame it on the nudists.