Top 5 Views Out My Window

This is actually an all-inclusive list because we've lived in five different places in the last 16 years.  In college no one really expects any kind of a view out the window and before that I didn't have any say in the houses my parents raised us in, so more accurately this post could be titled "The views out my window" and would still cover the same options to choose from. So, in order from least to most desirable, these are the five views I've seen outside my windows over the course of my adult life.

If you can look past those adorable pigtails you can see the vinyl wall that was our view at Crescent Arms. 

5- Last place, Crescent Arms.  One star, would not recommend.  This was our second apartment, which we moved into when we were expecting Leah and it was really not a nice place.  I won't go into details about rotting bathroom flooring, stained carpet, wall-mounted AC units that blew in dead leaves and bugs or any of the other interior follies of any of our homes in this post, but this apartment had all that and more.  Still, I'll just detail the view out the window. 

Out the back window at Crescent Arms we saw the vinyl siding of the neighboring apartment building about ten feet away from ours, separated only by the narrow drive that led back to the parking lot.  Out the front window was the windows of the other half of our small apartment complex.  Two bonus points will be awarded, one because we had such sweet friends across the hallway and one because there was a woodpecker that lived in that parking lot and did his best to wake up the entire block every morning with his relentless pecking on the wooden telephone pole that was just outside our window.  While I didn't particularly care for the racket, I did appreciate the small sign (sound) of life that the otherwise nature-less environment provided. 

Tiny bedroom, tiny bed, tiny bride!

4- Our first apartment- the Brown apartments in Provo.  Two stars for the possibilities that came with the view at our first place.  Out the front window, a beautiful bush that hid our front door from the parking lot it sat next to that turned a fiery red every fall and a full green every spring.  Out the back window, a solid brick wall, the backside of one of the super old houses in Provo that possibly hadn't been turned into a maze of tiny apartments. I used to look out that window and pretend that we lived somewhere in New York City or Paris, which made the brick wall seem much more appealing.  Mostly I loved that view because it was ours!  Our first apartment, which was a pretty wonderful place to be. 

This angle without a doubt provided the best view from our Ankeny house.  Now that view is filled with duplexes and high density Brick Town 3.0

3- Coming up in the middle, our Ankeny house.  There is SO much that we loved about this house, but the views out the window were never on the list.  When we picked out the lot there were no other houses on our street, nor were there any trees, on account of the fact that the house was built in the middle of a corn field.  While houses started popping up in every direction around us, trees never quite matured like I envisioned they would.  I suppose if we had stayed in the house for 30 years we would have realized the dream of being surrounded-ish by mature trees.  

Out the front window we saw houses, one filled with our sweet friends but most of the houses just filled with neighbors, other people living their lives, sometimes much more loudly than we cared for.  

Out the back window, more neighbors, more noise, more other-people's business that we didn't want to be a part of, including late night teenage basketball parties, all-day unsupervised teenage pool parties complete with vulgar rap music, a house with a revolving door that had 4 different occupants in the seven years we lived there, including the family with the shirtless man and aggressive dogs and smoking visitors, the family with the huge dog and screaming kids, and the family with the single dad and the occasional appearance of his angry ex-wife and the neglected children that often climbed out onto the roof of their house and sometimes unexpectedly appeared at my back door.  Also always, always, always seen from the back door was the next-door-neighbor who poured a basketball court into their backyard, with their three highly energetic boys who were up with the sun, winter or summer, throwing balls into our yard and then demanding them back while asking questions I rarely felt inclined to answer in the affirmative, like "do you want to watch me dribble?".  

For the first few years out our bedroom window I could see corn fields that eventually and sadly gave way to more streets and sidewalks and houses and duplexes and apartments, and I suppose the neighbors that were there before us once enjoyed the view that our house eventually decimated. 

To the side of the house there was the wide sidewalk/city walking trail, which brought with it a steady stream of kids heading to and from school, dog walkers, and families trying to enjoy time together.  The faces were once all familiar, but as the area grew so did the number of strangers that walked by our house every day.  As the years went by, we saw more and more cars parked in the street out our window. 

When we first looked at moving to Ankeny we were amazed at the "fish bowl" backyards in every neighborhood, and after a few years of living in one we definitely decided that is not the view of choice to have out our window.   None of what we saw out the window was bad, it just wasn't much of a "view", and what was there seemed to shrink as the years went by. But those sunsets could not be beat. 

This beautiful tree in Indiana was visible from the room we spent so much time in- the toy room. 

2- Our "first" house, in Indiana.  This house was such a luxury compared to the two apartments we lived in in the first five years of our marriage.  Out the front windows, a row of houses on the other side of the street, then a field, then a lake.  Mature trees and quiet neighbors. 

Out the back window we enjoyed a longer than wide backyard with a thick hedge and a wooden privacy fence separating us from any idea of neighbors behind us.  Our neighbors on either side of the privacy fence were also quiet and the trees in the yard were mature and offered satisfying limbs to climb and leaves to rake up. 

The view out this window was most definitely in line with what we enjoyed seeing out our windows!

This fenced in, quiet and private backyard was such a luxury for our little family!

1- First place, as it should, goes to our current house.  The view out the front window is grass, trees, and an upward sloping hill on the other side of which, eventually lies a farm and then the Raccoon River and then, a few miles more, the city. We can't see any of that from our windows, just the grass and the trees and the cars that occasionally zip by, and it's wonderful.  

Out the back window, there are more trees and more grass, and the yard slopes gently down to two creeks and then shoots sharply upward toward a house that we couldn't see at all until winter came, and now is still just a looming shadow behind the thick trees that separate us.  The house is owned but doesn't seem to be occupied.  

To the north side of the backyard there are the few additions that we've made to the yard so far- a tree house, a fire pit, and a swing.  To the south side there is another sharply climbing hill that is actually a dam for what we have dubbed "Shark Lake".  We can't see the lake from our house but the view, once you get up on the dam is usually incredibly rewarding.  

The most frequent visitors to our backyard are the deer.  They are the quietest neighbors we've ever had, and we like it that way, although Laney makes enough of a ruckus when she spots them to erase any measure of peace and quiet that they bring. Who really knows if this will be the last view we'll ever enjoy, but I do know that we are definitely enjoying what we can see outside our windows now!

And truly, while this list provided a nice walk down memory lane and a chance to reflect on some of the superfluous details of where we live, the memories that we have made in every one of these houses was more valuable than any view we could ever ask for!