The Blue House

Well, we are back from our road trip, which was so much fun. We traveled roughly 2,300 miles...and took just about as many pictures (without exaggeration—we nearly averaged one photo per mile driven). Needless to say, those poor pictures are going to be sitting neglected on my computer for a while because it is MOVING WEEKEND.

Luckily, we were able to get a lot of packing done prior to our trip, and we somehow managed to leave exactly the right amount to do when we got home. We've spent the last couple of days boxing the rest of our things and taking care of all the logistics that coincide with moving, and tomorrow the fun starts. We'll have a walk-through at the new place in the morning and get our keys, and pick up a U-Haul around lunchtime. My dad is coming for the weekend to help, and we'll get started moving some stuff over tomorrow afternoon and finish up on Saturday. By Saturday night, we'll be sleeping in our new home!

I'm really excited about the house. The extra space is going to be wonderful for us, and I think we'll really fit nicely there. I'm looking forward to being able to walk Ellie to school and to watching the kids play in our big backyard. I'm already fantasizing about lovely patio furniture out back and s'mores roasting over a fire pit. Can't you just see it?

As excited as I am about the new house, I'm feeling a bit sad to be leaving our current house. I keep reminding myself that we have been saying for months that we need to get out of here. I mean, this house is in pretty rough shape. It's small and old, and we've outgrown it quickly. The floors are beat up and uneven. The electricity is finicky in certain outlets at random times. Neither bath tub or bathroom sink drains well. We have cats that live underneath the house that have kittens every so often and gift us with a flea-infested yard. The windows are old and offer no insulation so we freeze in the winter and sweat in the summer. We've had the sewage pipes back up into our back yard several times. They've started construction across the street so things are loud and dirty. Basically, we've had every reason to leave for a long time now. Who would want to live in this place?!

But even with all those issues, I've loved this house. In the nearly four-and-a-half years that we have been parents, this is the home we have lived in the longest with our children. This is where the majority of our family memories have been made. Ellie named this house "the blue house" as soon as we moved in and that has been its pet name ever since. This blue house is the house where we got to know our newborn boy. These are the rooms in which I nursed my baby back to sleep every night, sitting alone in the dark and listening to the trains go by. This is where E.J. tasted his first food and he took his first steps on these sloping floors. This is where Ellie first slept in a "big girl bed" and learned to use the potty. She left from this house for her first day of school and her artwork she brought home decorated its walls. We've celebrated birthdays and holidays here. We carved our Halloween pumpkins in the backyard and hung our Christmas stockings over the fireplace. We've returned from many vacations to this house, always happy to be home. We've laughed here and we've cried here. We've celebrated and we've mourned. We've developed routines and enjoyed our surroundings and treasured our two years in this little blue house.

And so, it is with mixed emotions that I prepare to leave and move forward. What's ahead of us may be bigger and better, but this house and the memories it has been a part of will always be special to me.

Us in front of the blue house shortly after first moving in, August 2014