Moving on...

I grew up on a farm in SW Nebraska in the same house my dad had lived in since he was about 4.  My parents lived there for 43 years together, raising my brothers and sisters and I.  Just last summer, they sold the house to my oldest brother and moved 5 miles into town.  Moving around was not in their blood, obviously...how it got into mine, I'm not really sure, but I think it had something to do with a guy from Minnesota, with brown eyes and who still makes my heart skip a beat when he walks into a room.

When I was 20, I left home for college and a few years later, met the brown-eyed boy.  Within a year we were engaged and 4 months later...married.  That was almost 13 years ago...and six houses ago...soon to be seven.  I guess you could say moving is in my blood!  My girlfriend Sarah calls me a gypsy and she may be right!

Home #1  When Paul (he's the brown-eyed boy) and I got married we rented a cute little apartment in Aberdeen.  We thought we hit a gold mine and signed the lease on the hood of our landlord's black jaguar.  I mean after all, it had a washer and a dryer and a big storage closet under the steps.  We lived there for 9 months...oops, so much for the 12 month lease!

Home #2  We decided we'd better buy a house...I only remember walking through one...and then Paul went and looked at one by himself and just knew I'd love it...so off we went to a darling story-and-a-half.  It had CHARACTER!  I loved it immediately.  There was a fireplace with built in shelves on one side, a tiny kitchen with a booth, original wood trim, and the top floor was a big master bedroom with a huge closet and bathroom. (Never mind the windows that leaked and caused our heating bill to exceed $400 one winter, the steep steps to the upstairs, the busy street...)  It was our first home and we loved it.  For the first time we experimented with decorating, painting, lawn care and entertaining.  When I think of that house I think of some of our saddest days (I associate our darkest days of infertility with that house) and some of our happiest days...we brought our son, Sam home to that house and our dog Jackson entertained all of the neighborhood in his little backyard that looked more like a war zone since he dug holes everywhere! It was our happy little home for 3 1/2 years. Having a baby changes everything....Once Sam came into our life, everything changed and one day while rocking him, I called Paul at work and told him there was no one in Aberdeen qualified or available to take care of our baby (I had called one lady, after all and she didn't have any openings) so I took a leave of absence from teaching and decided I would do in-home daycare...and this house, as much as we loved it wouldn't work for that.  The for-sale sign was in the yard for 6 months...and finally an offer came (potential buyers must not have liked the busy street, the leaky windows, steep steps nd and the war zone backyard?)  

Home #3  We bought a home on the opposite side of campus that was stuck in the 1960's...but had a great floor plan.  We worked our butts off on that house and thanks to some very generous friends we re-did every wallpapered wall and ripped up some lovely shag carpet...and called it home for 9 months.  When an opportunity comes, you take it...

Home #4  We moved our little family of 4 (Jackson was thoroughly confused by this time...) to Broomfield, CO to a home Paul picked out while Sam and I were busy selling and packing things in Aberdeen.  The day we closed on the house, was the first time I stepped foot in it!  The cost of living in CO was a little staggering and we often joked that a quarter of a million dollars should go further than it did...but we had a newer home in a nice neighborhood with a great layout.  Sam went from toddling baby to jabbering toddler in that house. I experienced being a stay-at-home-mom and Paul drove toward the Rocky Mountains each day to work.  Until another opportunity presented itself...9 months later...I kid you not, I had JUST unpacked the china!!!

Home #5 Our Realtor in Spearfish kept trying to take us through these huge houses..and I kept telling him, "NOPE, not in the budget..."  He obviously didn't know that we skipped the real estate class that says if you are going to buy a house, you should live there for a few years to build up some equity. AND....he wasn't married to the brown-eyed boy who was chasing his coaching dream....and the girl who only wanted to  be a mommy and who when finally became one, gave up her career to love on him full time!  So we bought what our money could buy us...a quaint ranch house with a great front porch and a big backyard for the baby who had changed everything and the dog who thankfully had outgrown digging holes.  Who knew this would be where we would live the longest???  In this home we became a family of 5.  Miss Becca came into our lives and filled it with joy, laughter and pink, pink and more pink!  We learned while living there that love does grow best in little houses, you don't need a big space to have big parties and steep driveways are a pain in the ass when you get 3 feet of snow!  Live and learn...after 5 years we were moving on..and across the state..

Home #6 We were ready to spread out and we found a house that had a TON of space and a HUGE yard and decided we "needed" it.  The house had everything that we would ever need and we would never need to move from it.  There was enough space to host holidays with the basketball team and all our family could come stay with us and we would have plenty of room to accommodate them all.  And although our learning curve is a little slow in the real estate department, we bought at the right time...and then knew when to sell at the right time also...and made the best decision for our family and SOLD it.  We move in less than a month and yes..I will be packing the china again!  By choice.  Moving must be in my blood.