Our house is a very, very fine house…

As we were fixing up things around the house, I realized that I have been blind-sided with my eagerness to move onward and upward to a larger house. It’s not just the walls, the upgrades, the age of this house that makes this a great place to live. Rather, it’s the home it has become for us. Reminiscing of the times we have had in our home made me very nostalgic and reluctant to move forward. When Adam and I first moved in we were engaged, planning a wedding. We brought our beautiful wedding gifts into our brand new house to start our life together. From plates to sheets to candlestick holders we filled our home with objects that signified the life we were building. The longer we have lived here that life has flourished. Everyone talks about the “house they grew up in” as the house they lived with their parents for the majority of their adolescence. In some ways though I feel that Adam and I have grown up in this house. Starting out with kegs on the front porch and picnics in the front courtyard to runs around the neighborhood and toy car rides up and down the driveway with Drew. We have matured as our home has too. We will never be able to tell future homeowners what this home has given us. And to put a financial value on a home, you built from scratch and is so full of beauty, seems practically impossible. As perspective homebuyers walk through and judge the taste of our decorating, the layout, etc. they are missing a lot more than just the obvious. If these walls could talk they would tell stories about Drew’s first night home and his screaming all night or his first steps taken from one side of the living room to the other. That stuff doesn’t matter to the perspective homebuyer because they are planning to make their own memories in this home. As we look for future houses, there walls have a story too. When the homeowners leave though, they will take their stories with them and leave us to make new ones in their home. So when the day comes that we finally sell our house, we are going to have to pack up more than just our things – we will have to pack up these memories and store them somewhere safe. Building a house, a life, a child from scratch like we have is an opportunity that I will always cherish wherever we go from here.