Our home

So, goodness.  It’s two days before moving day and I’m beside myself.  Memory upon memory is seeped into the walls of this great house and so many of them are flooding back to me right now.  Like this door. 

That’s the door we opened to walk into our home as parents for the first time.  And the second time.  And the third time.  The door that they ran to countless times to welcome daddy home from work-Sam stopping short to collapse on the ground, fake crying that he wasn’t first and Jack sometimes letting him win.  The door that we welcomed family and friends through to help us celebrate first birthdays, and second and third and fourth and fifth.  The door that they stood in front of for first and last day of school pictures-and so many more!  That’s also the door I wouldn’t go out of if I saw a lizard perched on that banister out there!  Ha!  That door.  Oh, I’m gonna miss that door!The nursery.  Where could I even begin.  Our babies’ first room.  So many sweet times rocking them, nursing them in the middle of the night.  Reading to them, playing on that floor.  I loved watching Mark wrestle them in there and read to Sam while Jack jumped off his back.  I remember when we first brought Jack home…we went up there, laid him in his crib for the first time, and Mark showed me all the baby boy clothes he bought, washed, and hid from me until that moment.  Oh, goodness.All the “today from the chair” pictures of Sam!  Silly boy!  I can remember him crawling for the first time in there and hiding in the closet so many times.  I remember Jack teaching Sam how to make a fort for the first time in there and Jack taking his first bath in that tub.  You know, Sam nor Margaret never did bathe in there!I love that sweet, sweet nursery, and I think all our babies did, too!  Sooooo many hours of sleep in there.  So thankful God gave us good sleepers!And then there’s the boys’ room.  (I already took down the matching valences hoping to use them in the new house-we’ll see!)  I love, LOVE that they share a room.  Countless hours of imagination and best-friend-in-the-making moments have happened in there.  They’re learning to count on each other, comfort each other, and of course wrestle and fight with each other being together like that.  I once read that one way to help your kids become best friends is to have them share a room.  Oh, that is my prayer.So many ‘games’ played in there and books read in there.  Pony rides, basketball games, games of army men, hide and seek, red light green light and on and on.  They would look out the window sitting on that window bench.  I remember when Jack saw a squirrel pretty close in the tree and named him and kept watching for him to come back.  That window seat was my secret storage place for the silent night candles and wreathes I would hang every day after Thanksgiving in here and in the nursery!  Most of all, what a blessing it was to check on these two each night and see them sleeping side by side.  Takes my breath away. Oh, there is so much more to say about this sweet home of ours, but I’ll save that for another time.  Otherwise this will go on forever!!  I’m so thankful and so grateful that it belonged to us for almost seven years during such a sweet season of our life.  It will always be so dear to me, but as Mark says, it’s just a pile of bricks.  We’re taking the memories and the magic with us!