Home Sweet Home (April 2008 - October 2013)

Awww, the house we recently moved from. I have such mixed feelings on the move. No doubt this was (and still remains) a beautiful house, and has treated this family very well.

Though most of the time we lived there, it looked like this. It goes to show you that when we painted the house last summer, we had no idea we would be moving away. This is where we watched Ellie learn to ride the bike. It's where we lived when Addie was born and where she learned to take her first steps. It's where we would drop Bun Bun down onto Ellie's face below as she learned how to count. It's where we lived when Addie would always compare our real house to her other house full of magic. It is where they built their first snowman and first learned how to Trick-or-Treat and jump into piles of leaves. 5.5 years can be filled with many memories, especially when children grow so fast. Sigh.

This house had everything we ever thought we would want in a house, and then some. The buyers said that it was so nicely decorated that they were sure that it was professionally staged. As stunning as it was, there was also a lot of unused space.

We rarely used the entire front room, and had an entire bedroom dedicated to our library. We had a wonderful walk-out basement but never did much to make it special.

Though our master bedroom was the only room in the entire house we never painted, we certainly went out of our way to give the girls their special rooms. I believe these rooms are what I will miss the most about this house. Ellie's room was a beautiful garden of butterflies and flowers.

Addie's nursery was warm and peaceful, filled with sweet dreams and love to the moon and back.

It was quickly replaced by bright colorful rainbows. Like I said, these rooms will be missed.

It's tempting to say that the backyard will be missed the most, but I'm holding out hope that we'll be pleasantly surprised with our new home. Last year we started to build a tradition of story telling around our fireplace table set, and though our new yard is much smaller and a little less private, I plan to continue this family tradition. Hopefully we will, once again, be visited by more magical creatures in the warmer nights to come.