Saying Goodbye

2 weeks ago we moved out of our home. Our house of 8 years, the place we started our family in, the home we put countless hours of sweat and tears into. I still remember walking up the front stairs for the first time and opening the red door. I remember walking around the empty rooms, looking at the forest green and burgundy walls and seeing all the infinite potential. I remember the feeling of being home. I stood there imagining our future children running up and down the stairs. We imagined where we would put the Christmas tree, and we imagined where we would hang art. From the moment we signed those offer papers I instantly knew this was where we were supposed to be.

We painted those walls and changed the brass knobs. We grew giant gardens and celebrated Christmases. Then we brought home two tiny baby girls, both on cold, snowy, winter nights. We began the years of zero sleep. We didn’t sleep much but we were in love. Boy, we loved those teeny babies. We celebrated first birthdays and danced in kitchen. We cheered for first steps, first foods and first days of school.

We celebrated all the holidays in our little home… but, goodness, did we ever celebrate Halloween. Decorations galore, parties and costumes, all on our street that reminds me of a scene from Hocus Pocus. We greeted hundreds of trick-or-treaters every year and watched Halloween fireworks from our front lawn. It’s hard to imagine a better street on October 31^st.

(and yes, Maeve has been a puppy for 3 years in a row…)

We had good times and bad. We held a “Congrats-On-Finding-a-Bone-Marrow-Donor-Match” party and cried. We held a “We-Survived-The-Seven-Year-Itch” Party and laughed. We argued about money and work and life and sleep. We laughed about marriage being a union of just two really good forgivers. Some years we sailed through and some years the hard days just kept coming. From this little home we raced to the hospital to hold my mom’s hand as she took her last breath. We came back to this home to cry. We went through pictures on the floor of the basement through the night and celebrated every good day we ever had. The good times always outnumbered the bad.

Now 8 years after signing those papers on a sunny day in July, we moved out on a cold day in September. As much as my heart loved that brick house with a red door, it was time to move on.  We knew  it was time for new memories between new walls. We contemplated many different ways to give us the change we desired, from Tim taking a job in Victoria to renovating an old house. In the end, we decided to have a fresh start by building a home.  Making that decision was a menagerie of emotions. From excitement of picking out a floor plan to the realization that we had to actually move all our stuff. But in the end it was surprisingly calming to declutter, dejunk and minimalize.

So now we say goodbye to our little home on Tanner Wynd. Goodbye to the home we started a family in. The home that holds the memories of rocking babies to sleep and making apple pies with grandma. The home that taught my girls how to grow our own food and pick raspberries right off the bush. I’m not sure if I’ll ever love a home as much as this one, but I’m going to try. Because change is good. Between the waves of sadness of saying goodbye, the waves of excitement are always bigger. Because we know the good always outweighs the bad, and most importantly our home is wherever we are together.

xoxox,

Kelsy

Thank you so much to my friend Carla for these wonderful pictures of the last day in our home in Terwillegar.