When we first started talking about putting our house on the market, I was super excited. The thought of having more room for the girls' stuff made me grin from ear to ear. All I could envision was huge closets and cabinets on every wall...oh yeah, and NO TOYS in my living room!! Then we started showing our house, and each and every lead fell through and I got frustrated with the whole thing. I quit planning for the new house and started to believe we would be in that house forever. Then....we got a call. A call from one of the very first people that had looked at our house back in March (this was in August). She wanted to buy our house! I was excited, and a little nervous about packing up in 30 days all the stuff that had taken us 9 years to accumulate. But alas, I started to pack. Then it hit me....the house that we had spent the last 8 years building memories in, was no longer going to be ours. The house that I had driven "home" to for 8 years, was going to be someone else's home. It was sad to leave the house where we brought Brenna Grace home and walked in the door for the very first time as PARENTS (and were scared out of our minds!!)...
The house where we planned our first daughter's nursery so very carefully and decorated and RE decorated at least a dozen times before she arrived...
The house where Josh assembled the furniture that he built himself for our child(ren)...
The house where we brought our Macie Claire home and entered the world of Parents of TWO (and weren't as scared, but soon realized we should have been! haha!)...
But then I realized that the memories we made there were ours to keep. They didn't belong to the "house". They were in our hearts. It didn't matter where we lived, we still had the memories of bringing our girls home and of watching them grow. We still have the memories of every single room.
The memories of.....
...decorating Macie's nursery in my beloved Zebra print. :)
...my Dad putting the crib together while Josh sat in the recliner with his broken arm propped on pillows shouting out the instructions.
...trying to change a screaming newborn's diaper as quickly as possible with only the light of a small lamp-so that she wouldn't wake her sleeping big sister.
...sitting outside of Brenna's bedroom when she was 6 months old and sobbing into a blanket while she cried herself to sleep. (NOT because I wanted to, but because I knew it was best for her)
...curling up on this bed and listening to Brenna say the sweet words "Now I lay me down to sleep...." every single night.
...sitting on this floor each night and listening to the giggles of my girls while they were playing in the bath tub.
...opening up this front door because Nina, or Pops, or Memaw, or MeMawMom, or Aunt Emily, or Aunt Kim had stopped by just to see the girls and get a hug on their way home from work.
...standing at this bar mixing up a cake with Brenna standing on her step stool asking if it was time to lick the batter yet.
...searching high and low to find this table and chairs to match our cabinets.
...stepping completely out of my comfort zone and painting the kitchen green. (which I LOVED after it was done).
...sleeping on that couch for a solid 3 months while Macie Claire slept in the swing.
...sitting on the floor watching Brenna open up Birthday and Christmas presents.
...walking into the living room on the day we bought this house and seeing dirty brown carpet and wood paneling or wall paper on every wall, and wondering what in the heck we had gotten ourselves into.
...laying in our bed with the monitor glued to my ear to make sure I could still hear Brenna breathing in her crib. And then convincing myself that I couldn't and rushing to her room every 20 minutes to stare at her chest and make sure it was moving.
...sitting on the back porch (more hours than I can count) visiting with friends and family.
...laughing at John and Josh while they sat around the fire pit and attempted to solve all the problems of the world.
...inviting about 30 people to our house for a craw fish boil and watching as rain turned our back yard into a lake.
...pulling into this driveway every afternoon and looking around thinking how lucky and blessed we were to live here.
I am thankful every day for these memories and so many more. God is so good, and we have been so blessed. While it was sad to walk out of this house the last time and see it completely empty, I am grateful for the memories we made there and excited to make new ones on our next adventure!
