The Unpublished Goodbye to our First Home...

Written April/May of 2014...


So, today it hits me...like a ton of bricks...out of nowhere.  It's been 12 months.  An entire year.  We have been anticipating this move.  Waiting for this home to be built and completed.  Dreaming about our future and all that we hope it can be.  Today I find out we are 4 weeks away from our house being done...almost an entire month sooner than expected....well...also 7 months later than expected at one point-but that's another story.  So, as soon as I hang up the phone I know we need to start purging the things I have been holding on to because I am just not ready to let go.  The high chair we don't use anymore, the bouncer that's been sitting in the office for 3 months-never used, the breast pump I hate and despise with so much emotion- but I haven't let it go.  As I am gathering all of these things to photograph and sell I start holding back tears, but they don't stay back, they come pouring out.  It's so hard for me.  Change is so hard.  Not just leaving this home...but leaving this chapter.  This has been the chapter I have waited my whole life to live...the hardest one, the most tiring one, the very best one.  This home holds it all.  The timing of this move just so happens to coincide with the time in our life that we feel our family is complete, our youngest just turned one and there is really no reason to move all this baby stuff that I so eagerly collected, awaited and have used for the past 3 1/2 years.  But it's not just letting that stuff go, it's about saying goodbye to the things you can't see that really fill our home...

• The fireplace we sat by and ate pizza next to the day we closed on our home
• The moment I told Kevin we were going to be parents
• The night we brought Claire home for the first time
• The office window I stood in front of holding Claire when she was less than 24 hours old and watching the snow fall down in the early hours of the morning, thanking God for her and just trying to take it all in 
• The floors where I fell to me knees and cried when she wouldn't stop crying for weeks on end
• The mantle I finally got to hang ALL of our children's stockings on
• The kitchen that served all of our family meals and the oven that prepared them all---this is ridiculous, I KNOW!  I might be crazy!
• The floors that I paced when laboring with both of these babies and the doors I walked out of when I was ready to finally meet them
• I can show you the exact spot where they were when they took their first steps, sat up for the first time, learned to crawl, first words-it plays in my mind like a movie...I hope I never forget it
• The sad times too- the place where our beautiful  dog Bindi unexpectedly and suddenly passed away in our arms 
• Claire's first day of school
• The nights I've spent in both of our children's rooms-nursing them, holding them, singing to them, cuddling with them

Writing this out makes me realize it is not the walls that make a home, but the people who are in it.  We have filled this home with love...our family has doubled in size since we got here.  We've stretched it as far as it can go....and now it's time for me to let go.  I know this new chapter is going to be sweet, more memories will be made.  It's just so hard to say goodbye- not to the walls, or the rooms, or the structure itself...but the memories that are inside of them and all the stories that unfolded here.