Reflections on Moving

I think it's hard to actually experience sadness on Moving Day. . . because it is so busy! My mind was racing a mile a minute.

We looooved our old house. We brought our babies home to that house and made so many wonderful memories there. Even when we had it on the market, we thought, "Are we crazy? We love this house!"

But there was no going back, so we went through the motions, sold the house, and started packing (well, eventually we did).

The Thursday before we moved, I took the kids on our last mail run ever. It was a daily ritual that I cherished. It got us out of the house, and gave our bike rides or stroller rides or walks purpose. Our mail box was about five houses up the street, so it was a short jaunt to get there. Ethan was in charge of the mail key, and had learned to identify our box all by himself, stick the key in and pull the mail out. Kate had learned to sit with me on the step next to the mail box while Ethan did his job.

Picture Ethan on his bike, concentrating on pedaling to make it up the hill. Picture Kate with her doll in a stroller and a purse over her shoulder.  That was our last trip to get the mail, and that's the only time that I got a little teary-eyed at the thought of moving.

Moving Day was too crazy to have any emotions but excitement. Funny story. . . I found out the day before we moved that Fun Run #3 was the next day. I had written it down wrong on my calendar! I actually went to bed that night with my things laid out, ready for me to run the 10K race, then head directly to the old house to move. In the middle of the night, I had a revelation that I couldn't do both well (the fun run and moving day), so instead I got up and went to the old house to straighten things up and label some things that needed to be labeled. I really didn't want to miss a race in the series, but life will go on.

We got the house cleaned up, and when absolutely everything was out of it and I was headed to the closing, I tried walking through one more time so I could remember our house. I had no emotions. . . it's not our house without the kids and our own personal touches inside. I prayed for the new owners, that they would make as many memories as we did and that they would be safe and healthy, and enjoy their new adventure.

And that's that. We signed the papers, forwarded the mail, and went to my in-laws to play in the kiddie pool.

(Side note: Our house had recently developed a problem with some critter leaving "surprises"--large ones--all over the yard. My only regret about closing day is that as I was finishing up with the final cleaning, I opened a basement window blind to see two huge piles in the window well. I closed the blinds and left.  I didn't have any tools left to clean it up!)

On a prettier note, I am sharing some of the flowers we had around our house to make it look nice while we had it on the market.

Tim got these for me one night after we had a stressful discussion about packing:

Some irises I planted several years ago:

My Mother's Day flowers:

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More flowers from our yard: 

 I had taken more pictures of the flowers in our yard (daisies and roses were blooming away), but apparently they got erased along with the Last Mail Run pictures and Kate's 2nd Birthday.