as tiny as the house was, it was huge in terms of the amount of memories amassed here. photos of the kids as babies and with their first friends. as much as i miss the familiar old walls and the cuteness, i have not once missed the crowded spaces and tripping over something.
we were just chatting with friends over the tiny kitchen. i never had enough cupboard space to store the few cookie sheets, muffin pans and such that we had. baking days meant that the table had to double as a counter. the baking supplies were usually stored on a shelf in the basement (which also meant they had to be cleaned before i used them....we never had mice issues, but i'm sure there were multitudes of bug families that probably danced on them). sometimes we would have company in the middle of baking frenzies, so i would temporarily store the baking pans in the oven. apparently it was only me who knew this trick. Kristian discovered this temporary storage place when he made supper one evening. without checking the oven he preheated it. in this instance the oven also stored a gingerbread house kit from costco waiting to be assembled. 2 new rules were added to our list that night. one, never put "flamables" in the oven as storage. second, always look in the oven before you turn it on!
here we are in our new home. more than ample storage space for my baking supplies. (oh, how nice to have everything on the same level! and no more cobwebs forming on my muffin tins.) i never need to store any baking pans inside my oven anymore. however, i still find myself checking the interior before i turn it on.
oh did this photo remind me of the final days of winter just one year ago. in fact it was taken on March 9, 2009. exactly one year ago.
we spent months looking at open houses and showhomes. a new community nearly every weekend. lots of time looking and praying about what decision to make. meetings with a realtor and our banker. by March we had narrowed the options down to rebuilding a new home on the present lot or selling and moving to a new pre-built home. the banker made that final decision for us.
then came the homework. the new way of house hunting. mls listings with photos on the computer. printing out houses we liked. this took a lot of time! after a few weeks i started to make spreadsheets of our criteria. the photo above was a common vision of me for at least two months. the first few weeks were fun, however my "fun meter" slowly dropped after that time!
my friend, Roslyn is at a similar point with her family. listening to her stories of their journey brought back my own memories. more than anything it also reminded me of the fun of the unknown. we each had our list of what we hoped for in our home, yet we didn't know what the complete package would look like.
i am excited to hear her tell me of the day that they found their new home.
i remember walking through the door and within 5 minutes knowing this was it.
was it only a year ago that we had no idea where our new home would be?
every once in awhile, usually on a quiet weekend, Kristian or myself will blurt:
"let's go look at a showhome!" to which the kids suddenly get very quiet. then we all smile and think how awesome that we don't have to do that.
