Growing.

Ok, here I am, hopefully for good. This month has been....interesting, to say the least. We've been fully engulfed in a move and in a complete home renovation. Tomorrow we say goodbye to our "other house", as we've been calling it for a week or two now. I've been excited to move to our new house and my mind has been fully occupied with stressful decisions like which cabinet knobs to pick out and 'is this yellow paint color too lemony or is it more buttery? and if it's buttery, is it too buttery?' (who would have thought that decisions like that are hard?!?!) My mom even asked me this week if I was sad to leave our house and my response was a quick 'no!'. I think it was just too far away, even at T-4 days. Because yesterday, when Mike and I walked in and retrieved the final few boxes and began the finishing touches on cleaning it hit me.

We aren't just moving to a really cool new house (much more on that later..). We are leaving a very significant period in our lives behind us. It wasn't all good. Each smoke alarm battery seemed to only die in the dead of the night. Carpenter bees stalked us until Mike went outside one day with a big spatula to "take care of the problem" (my, how I wish I had a picture and video of that!). Fireworks every Wednesday and Sunday night in the summertime disturbed babies sleeping and prompted our dear guard dog to think we were being attacked each time they went off! Sometimes homeless people would walk by and say odd things...one day a man told Mike he would make a good chair. Then, there was a lady who would walk by with a golf club trailing behind her, but some days it would be a vacuum instead. But that is the stuff we will forget about in a month or two.

This "other" house was so much more than a house to us. It was our very first home after we were married. It's 4 bedrooms were way too big for the family we wanted but weren't anywhere near ready to start growing. The first thing we did was build a fence so Buxton would have a yard to run in. It's where we told my parents they were going to be grandparents for the very first time, where we welcomed home our sweet Kate and Summer and worried so much how Buxton would adjust to the newest addition to our family. It's where we painted the living room a color called "something blue" ...
...because Mike convinced me that it would look great on the walls. It's where playdates and dress up happened daily.




It's where we were when our nation elected it's first African American president.
It's where tacky Christmas sweater parties took place.

It's where first steps were taken and first words were spoken. It's where so many memories were made. It was a really happy home. We will do all we can to best ourselves in house #2. Continue the same traditions. Build new ones. Enjoy life. Worry less about the little things and focus more on the big picture.

So......goodbye first house.

My, how I loved you. I'm not sure I realized how much until just yesterday. May your new owners care for you and love you, and build happy memories every day. And...hello new house. We are 100% yours. I promise I will get all my boxes and crap out of the garage ASAP.