Well, it's been a long day...as we knew it would be...

Here are  five of the many things I will take away from today:

The calm before the storm- an early morning breakfast date with my husband.

Standing in my new kitchen, putting stuff away and listening to the birds sing and the sound of the rain fall through the open window.

The tears that welled up in the eyes of our houses previous owners as they handed us the keys.

Meeting our new neighbors.

All the expressions of love and congratulations and support from friends and family.

Oh yeah, and here are some "sneak peak" photos! 

Enjoy!

Parting is such sweet sorrow...


-Shakespeare



Well tomorrow is the day. The day we never thought would get here.


WE ARE MOVING!


And yet as I sit here typing this I must admit I have ulterior motives. Sure I want to update you all. Sure I want to relay our excitement. But mostly I want to put off packing my daughter's bedroom.


You see, the prospect of going in there and boxing up all of her toys and her books and her clothes and her adorably displayed baby shoes is making my heart unaccountably ache.


"We're taking it all with us..." my husband has only just said, with a quizzical look on his face. And we are. More importantly we are taking her with us, of course. (Though for the next few days she is staying at grandma's house, playing and blissfully unaware of the destruction taking place in her house.) But the reality is I can't take her babyhood with us.


We are leaving behind the room I brought her home to after we left the hospital. We are leaving behind all the still-vivid memories of nights spent pacing the length of our carpeted hall, imploring heaven that she stop crying and I stop crying and we both get some sleep. We are leaving behind the living room she learned to crawl in and the dining room she took her first steps in and indeed all the other myriad places that conjure up a part of her life I will never get back.


So.

Here I sit. Crying on my keyboard and prolonging the inevitable. Who would have thought, huh?

But the important thing about learning to wait, I feel sure, is to know what you are waiting for.


-Anna Neagle

One week to go. One interminably long, endless week.

Can it go by fast enough?

Yes. And no.

On the one hand we waited two years to sell our condo. It took us three weeks to find our new house. And a rather prolonged weekend past before we knew the house was ours. In the grand scheme of things what's another week? Seven measly little days??

Yet. 

We are currently as packed up as we can be at this point. And as clean. I'm finding more and more that anything I want/need is located in some box somewhere in our garage. (Because two weeks ago I foolishly thought I wouldn't have any use for it before we moved.) And even the outdoor plants I have bought; despite their persuasive pleading they just have to hang on in their restrictive plastic pots a little while longer. In short there is nothing to do right now. Nothing. 

But I know that in seven measly little days there will be A WHOLE LOT to do. Thus this strange vacuum; this deceptive limbo. 

So I'm trying to remind myself what it is we are really waiting for. In my very task oriented way I tend to focus on the details. But the reality is we are waiting for more than the work of moving to begin. We are anticipating more than the cleaning and the unpacking and finally locating all those little things I haven't see since April.

We are getting a house. Our dream house. And we're beginning the journey of transforming it into the home we live in for many, many years to come. One chapter of our life is ending and another is about to start.

When I put it that way it's kind of a big deal. And I guess worth waiting for...so...here's to making the most of seven more days.

"Because falling for a home is only realized when your heart skips a beat upon viewing it, not just the first time but every time."

-Kerryn Harper-Cuss

We had a home inspection at the new house last night. Which meant we got to be in it again. And it was quite possibly more thrilling for us than the first time we were in it.

Don't get me wrong. When we initially looked at the house we loved it. But it was something like our 14th house that week. Our expectations were low. We were weary. Down. Dare I say it, glazed over. A sizable chunk of too-good-to-be-true-ism was probably dampening our enthusiaism, as well.

But now that the house is ours...? Officially ours...?!

Well, it was like walking into a totally different house. A house we loved even more. And I hope that continues to happen every single time we come home to it.

“All great changes are preceded by chaos.” 

-Deepak Chopra

 

So maybe I have been wrong all these years. Maybe isn't not that I dislike change, maybe it's that I dislike chaos. 

With all the contradictory and jumbled-up emotions I feel jockeying around inside me for a position of dominance (excitement, nostalgia, anxiety over all there is to get done) I think I have pretty much reached my chaos limit. Yet, everywhere I look I see my external world suddenly full up to the brim with it, too. And it so perfectly mirrors the disorder inside me the whole scenario is a bit, well, bleak.

Boxes and totes. Piles of framed photos and artwork and clothes. Packing paper. To-do lists. Bank documents. A Goodwill stack that grows daily. I know it is temporary. And I also know it is merely the beginning. But it is chaos. And it is stressing me out.

Maybe that's why I've taken to baking. Maybe I'm trying to tell myself that if only I turn a counter full of rather random ingredients into something warm and edible everything will be okay. Like that universal notion - fixing a problem with food. 

Except it's not the eating that I find therapuetic. It's the making. The order of it. The method. The precision. My entire life is about to reside in a very large and mobile pile in our garage but in my kitchen, well in my kitchen I can corral and measure the tiniest of salt crystals into an 1/8 of a teaspoon quantity. And add them to uniform cubes of butter, dark drizzles of vanilla, dusty clouds of cinnamon, exact mounds of snowy sugar. And before long baking away in my oven is a creation whose scent alone can turn even boxes and bare walls into something resembling a home.

Me: "Do you know what would be great for moving our clothes? One of those..."
Josh: "Wardrobe boxes?"
Me: "Yeah. Didn't we..."
Josh: "Use those last time we moved? Yes, we did."
Me: "We didn't..."
Josh: "Save them? Yes. They're in the garage attic."


That, ladies and gentlemen, is love. Not only can my husband read my mind in the moment, he can read it in the past, too.


Once upon a time I thought true love was passion and romance and flowers. (And indeed, sometimes it is.) But what means more to me now, after 6 1/2 years of marriage...? That my husband held onto, for most of those 6 1/2 years of marriage, wardrobe boxes. Because he innately knew someday I'd ask him if he did.

I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house.

-Jerome K. Jerome

It's official! We have a house!! Our offer was accepted, closing dates are set and now all that remains are the logistics of moving in. Oh yeah, and the waiting.

I think that might prove to be the hardest part.

I can't even begin to tell you how thrilled we are. Thrilled. In shock. Humbled. Amazed.

Since back in our wedding planning days, when Josh had applications sent out to fire departments all over the state, Janesville is where we knew we wanted to be. And since moving to Janesville 5 years ago Columbus Circle is where we knew we eventually wanted to end up.

Our new address? 1187 Columbus Circle.

It is truly a dream come true.

We would have settled for a lot less, truth be told. Our priority list was rather short. Nice neighborhood. Yard. Basement. Josh and I are both insanely practical people and we honestly felt, though our close friends tried to tell us differently, that we might never actually walk into a house and love it. We might just have to make due with liking a place and decide that buying it was the smart thing to do.

I am, however, happy to say our close friends were right.

Now a little bit about the things that we love. The house is not new. It is full of character. Personality. Quirks. It's yard is lined with mature maple trees and beneath their shade grow Lilies of the Valley, Mountain Bluebells, Hostas and Honeysuckles. Inside, the floors are hardwood. The walls plaster. Crown molding edges every ceiling and in the dining room there's a built in china cabinet and a small cubby whose sole purpose was, in the days of yesteryear, to house a land line phone. Upstairs there's another built in cabinet in the hall. And in the bathroom, my dream since childhood, an antique tub. 

I know you will probably think that I am exaggerating but truthfully I am not. To drive through Columbus Circle you feel as though you have somehow found your way onto a movie set. No one lives in a neighborhood like this, you find yourself thinking. Not anymore. Not since Leave It To Beaver went off the air. The houses are all adorable. Colonials and brick Cape Cods abound. The street itself, sheltered by towering maples, is a circle within a square. And in three of the four corners there is an expanse of green lawn. Generally filled with playing children. Since Elli turned 1 Columbus Circle is where we have gone trick-or-treating every year. Along with a good portion of Janesville. You have not seen picture perfect until you've witnessed Columbus Circle after dark, candles and Jack-o-lanterns ablaze on every porch and in every window, the golden glow of the street lamps illuminating leaf-littered sidewalks, the whole neighborhood one giant, costumed block party.

And now, we will actually be living there. With our very own maple trees and adorable house. Our hardwood floors and plaster walls. Our phone cubby and our jack-o-lanterns in the windows.We will actually possess a small piece of historic Columbus Circle. And with it a dream we never imagined would come true.