1624 Lakeside Drive

It's a funny thing...moving, that is.

It's this whirlwind of a process that is months in the making and then in a matter of a day or two you have relocated everything you own into a million piles and boxes in a new place that you are now supposed to call home. It's exciting and scary and exhausting. It's something that I never want to do while I have children with more toys than Toys R Us living with me ever ever again. 

It's been a long week. 

Don't get me wrong...our new house could not be more perfect for us. And without the amazing help of my family, there is no way I would be able to be taking the time to write for months, let alone the week we actually moved. 

But it has still been a long and tiring week...and as of yesterday, when I spent a couple of hours cleaning the old apartment, it has become very emotional. 

There is a saying that was painted on a picture frame that I had hanging in my kitchen with a picture of the four of us being goofy that read "It's not the house that I love, but the life that is lived there."

It definitely still holds true, to some extent, but I guess I kind of sold short how much this place actually symbolizes. 

I drove myself back over here tonight with a cup of coffee and my phone charger and here I sit just staring at these empty rooms...I felt like I needed to just quietly soak in the memories one more time. 

When we moved in, it looked just like it does tonight. White walls, empty space and just kind of blah. I was very calm when we moved in...I don't even think I looked back when leaving our place before this one. I'm still calm tonight...but I'm a little bit sad.

My life has changed in this apartment. Our lives have changed. 

We moved in as Joe & Court...

We moved out as Joe, Court, Ben & Blake.

In this empty space...memories that will stay with me forever happened.

I remember what sweatshirt I was wearing when I was laying on the couch in this living room, pregnant with Ben, and we saw him kick for the first time. We had no idea what parenthood was going to be like, and we would sit together on the couch with our feet propped up on a coffee table (that eventually was deemed to have corners that were way too sharp) and talk about who we thought would be left on Survivor when we were watching it with a third person in our lives. 

In this very living room, I stayed awake almost all night for the last month and a half of both of my pregnancies. I cried to myself, yelled at Joe, felt sorry for myself, felt sorry for Joe...

I fell asleep drinking a glass of water and woke up thinking I was in labor in almost the exact spot that I am sitting in now. 

(That was not awesome).

We brought Ben and Blake home from the hospital here. We told Ben he was going to be a brother here. 

I am staring at the spot where Ben took his first string of steps that were long enough to constitute calling him a walker. Blake peed all over his own head a few weeks ago in almost that same spot. 

The funny thing about having a limited amount of space, is how much actually ends up happening there. In this room, Ben fed his brother his first bottle at home, I rocked both of my little guys to sleep, ABC's were learned, career choices were made, Bachelor's degrees were studied for, graduation parties were held, Christmas trees were put up, vertical blinds were destroyed by baseballs, entire basketball games were played, pizza picnics on old blankets while watching America's Got Talent were had, feelings were hurt, laughter was shared, train tracks were set up.

In this room, Ben used to push the little triangle that would pop up on the TV when we would turn a BluRay on and think that it would start a movie like it was an iPad, the carpet has been shark infested waters, the stage for The Price is Right and a football field.

In this room, Blake would watch his brother play basketball and baseball and eventually say his first word...ball. We took Ben's picture on his first day of school here, we watched Blake snuggle into Ben's chest at just a few days old here...and eventually, in this room, we decided that we had finally outgrown it here.  

Around the corner, Joe made each of our boys walk on their first days home from the hospital...each little boy looked totally unamused and their daddy looked so proud of how hilarious he thought (and thinks) he is. 

There is an empty room that used to be for storage of miscellaneous baby stuff, and then the nursery just waiting for the baby to arrive, and then the room our two little guys would share. 

There is an empty closet that I seriously wish I could take with me...

I mean honestly, you could live in that closet...and I am really struggling to make the contents of that closet fit into my, I mean our, new closet. 

There is a bathroom where I learned to give squirmy, slippery babies a bath, where Ben learned to go potty all by himself and where Blake learned to spit. 

There are apple juice stains here that I apparently didn't clean well enough. There are scratches in the paint from where golf clubs have been drug across  and there are handprints on the sliding glass door that are too cute to clean. There are anchors hanging on the balcony from the swing that I would push Blake in while watching Ben play with his friends outside without Mommy or Daddy for the first time and there are nail holes all over the place from the pictures that littered the walls serving as a constant reminder of just how incredibly blessed I am.    

We are bringing the boys here one last time tomorrow, but it won't mean as much to them as it will to me. (Honestly, part of the reason I feel so compelled to bring Ben is because when he is missing a toy a month from now, I want him to have seen that NOTHING WAS LEFT AT THE OLD HOUSE)!

But it will be an important moment, nonetheless...and while I so look forward to finally feeling settled in at our new house and enjoying all of the next memories to be made, a part of me will always miss this humble little place.

No, it wasn't the house that I loved...but I loved everything it made us.  

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