Leaving Home

Today wrapped up the tagging, packing, and loading almost six years of memories, furniture, and all the "stuff" in our house. The entire contents of our home, plus my car are currently on their way to Hinton, Alberta, hopefully arriving at our new house on Tuesday. More and more of my world has worked its way through this relocation -- first Josh, then Ruby, and now everything else except our girls and me.

We will fly up next weekend, after about a million boxes arrive there and Josh can fly home over the weekend to travel back with us. Good Lord, I cannot even imagine the chaos that would ensue if I took Molly and Maddie on their first flight by myself, an international flight nonetheless, with a week's worth of luggage. Oh, the horror!! 😂

After the busyness of the past few days has settled and the girls and I are cozied up at my parents' house, I realized I didn't have the breakdown I was anticipating when I saw our empty home. At least no breakdown yet. I have loved our house so so much and have often told Josh it would take building our dream home to get me out of there. However, when I saw our empty rooms today all I could think was that it didn't really feel like our house anymore. So weird.

It's my family and the comfort of our own furniture, photos, artwork, and toys that have made it feel like home. It has been the parties, holidays, family dinners, yard work, cookouts, and Saturday morning snuggles that have made it feel like home. The built-in bookcases and pretty granite have helped -- I love a good built-in -- but they're just materials without our books, pictures, and piles of mail on them.

We moved into this house in July 2012 on a day that was well over 100 degrees. It was miserable, and we moved in stages over several days because we were blending my apartment and Josh's first house a couple months before our wedding. Our "crew" consisted of us, my parents, and Josh's brother. When we moved in, I immediately knew where I wanted to put our Christmas tree, but the rest was a work-in-progress, as I changed things around all the time. This house experienced a lot with us. We spent the night before our wedding in it, against our plans, because Josh was sick and running a fever. I didn't want to leave him alone. We brought our sweet Ruby home when she was about 10 weeks old, and as soon as she got inside she pooped on our living room carpet.

We threw a surprise 30th anniversary party for my mom and dad, hosted our girls' first and second birthday parties in our backyard, and welcomed friends and family as much as possible. I found out I was pregnant in our house and vividly remember the night we had to leave for the hospital when I was having early labor signs during dinner. A dinner that was cut short not only by that, but by Ruby eating the meat off an e n t i r e rotisserie chicken. So gross.

I spent the last two months of my pregnancy on bedrest in our house and discovered the joy of Netflix. Game changer when you can only get up to use the restroom. We came home with our daughters after they spent two weeks in the NICU. Molly also pooped literally as soon as we got home for the first time. Our daughters both crawled, walked, and talked for the first time within the walls of this house. They've also tackled each other, bit, and climbed on things they shouldn't.

We have laughed, cried, played, rested, argued, worked through decisions, and loved so much in this house. I know we will do the same in our next one.

So I still have several more trips to make to our house to tie up a few loose ends, so there's a pretty good chance I'll eat my words and ugly cry at some point, but don't worry I won't post pictures of that.

I am so looking forward to getting our little crew back together and making our new house feel like home. My home is wherever my family is. Built-ins and granite -- maybe some nice hardwood floors -- are all just added bonus.