The beginning of the beginning....

Well, it was an interesting weekend. I'll tell you this, I didn't think of Ozzy Osborne ONCE all Saturday.  Part of that is because I believe I had complete faith that God was looking after Noah and I didn't need to worry about it. Part of it was because my brain was truly completely taken up with other goings on.

Earlier last week Jeff and I signed the papers to put the Canal house on the market.  Once more, God blessed us by sending us Pat McGuire as our realtor.  Not only is she a member of our church family, but she has intimate experience with our home away from home, as she and her family actually stayed there last summer. They were the winners of the Relay for Cancer raffle that we put did last year.  How perfect!  She really put our minds at ease, at the same time trying to keep us realistic.  Telling the kids, namely Lydia and Noah was infinitely harder and the reaction was worse than I had expected, don't know about Jeff, but I wasn't ready for the some of the belligerence and hyperventilation.  To be fair, this is the only home that N and L have had, consistently, that they can remember. My heart broke for them but even worse for Jeff.  He has handled it so well so far, I am so proud of him. As a result, I think I have broken down twice as much.

Actually, I did pretty well....until Saturday night.  We had spent all day trying to finish up little projects around the canal house (removing the last vestiges of Rosie's remodeling attempts etc), throwing away, giving away, organizing for the final move, and generally trying to empty out a LOT of stuff!  I think it finally hit us that we not only owned two houses, we owned to HOUSEHOLDS, and the thought of trying to combine them into one is really starting to stress me out!  Granted, there isn't a lot of the furniture that we want to keep, a dining table, a chair, a bed and a dresser, but even those have no place in our "town" home. THERE IS NO ROOM!!  I wish I had taken pictures of the car loaded up for the first trip to the thrift store. It was packed, and yet we could still barely walk across the floor of the front room.  I was able to clean out the dresser, the bookshelf and the closet in the guest room, half of the closet and bathroom storage in the master bedroom, the junk cabinet in the kitchen and most of the upstairs.  The hardest part was deciding how much to do. Did we want to still be able to use the place or did we want to get as much out and cleaned up so that the final one will not be so painful? It was hard. Hard, hard, hard.  In the end, I left a few towels and our toothbrushes, but forgot myself and got rid of all the extra pillows that the kids used. Threw out all of the flip flops and water shoes (none of which fit any of our kids anymore) and packed up everything eatable, but left all the past-date and condiments in the fridge (I can't remember why, might have been out of room in the garbage can by that time).  I think we left all of the movies but I know that we got rid of the VHS player and the TV. Sigh.

Anyway, piles were pretty much consolidated by the time my brain completely quit and I found myself carrying around a handful of dryer lint that I had dug out of somewhere and wearing two different pairs of shoes (I guess at some point I was trying to see if I still wanted either pair, I didn't). It wasn't hard to determine where we were going to eat, you couldn't get to the refrigerator, let alone find the top of the table...so off to Robinhood we went.

 Two beers and half a hamburger each and we were feeling much better, although I will admit that I was in no big hurry to go back but I couldn't convince Jeff to stay for one more drink when, as he pointed out, we had a liquor cabinet back at the house that we were going to have to empty out one way or another.

Here is where the night got interesting. As we poured our first shot of whatever, we found ourselves standing in the exact spots in the kitchen and having the exact type of conversation that we were having 5 years ago, almost to the month, the first time we actually admitted to still being in love. Well. That set me off. Tears and memories were kept flowing by another shot or two and they ended up all good as we went through Jeff's catalogue of pictures from the canal on his computer. Ugh, he has ALL the good pictures, I really need to steal all of them, but here are the few that I managed to get him to send my way...

Taken this year. This (checking the crab pots) was a SERIOUS undertaking. Next year plans include a six-pack of root beer.

I love this picture. LOVE IT! That chess set has been a big hit at the canal the past few years.

Success! Definitely root beer worthy.

I think we easily spent 3 hours just looking at pictures. And I am so glad that we have them all, along with the memories.  I have to keep reminding myself that the memories are ours to keep, they have nothing at all to do with the state of ownership of the building or our future time spent there.  We get to take the best parts with us and they don't take up space in our home (leave that to the dishes, linens and clothing) or cause me stress or cost money to upkeep.  No moles destroy them, electrical outages will never affect them, there are no monthly dues or neighbor issues to mar them (well, except maybe the memory of such issues, but they can be selectively forgotten over time).  I am really excited for what is to come. I truly am.  I know that our decision affects more than just the kids and Jeff and I, our neighbors and extended are family are sad and somewhat shocked by our decision as well, but change is good. Without it we won't grow. I won't go so far as to speculate what might be coming down the pass, but I know that it will require us to try new things, see new places, and meet new people. All of which, rather than taking the place of that which we are leaving behind, will be ADDED to them! How awesome is that! And no vacuum storage bags or Rubbermaid tubs are necessary!! LOVE IT!

To what is to come.  May it be worthy of the memories of all that which came before!