Happy House-iversary!

NO1_7383 (1)

E.V.’s scrambling down the stairs, yelling up to me, “Mom! Mommy! MOMMY! I hear kids!” Within seconds she’s practically hanging on the front door, desperately trying to turn the knob even though it’s locked. I catch up to her before she explodes and release her into the neighborhood. Cricket’s anxiously bouncing down the stairs on her bottom, eager to catch up to Emma Vance. Heaven forbid they miss a moment of cul-de-sac life.

It’s springtime again, and our trees are finally all starting to bloom. Our lawn isn’t too shabby, and the bushes (mostly) survived the winter. The girls and I spent an afternoon last week picking out plants for our container gardens, and we left Home Depot with polka dot plants and columbines and creeping jenny and all sorts of things that the salesperson assured me were practically un-killable. She clearly doesn’t know who she’s talking to. We’ve planted and watered and tended for a week now, and so far so good. The weather has been warming up nicely, and we’ve been spending a lot of meals on our front porch, eating, rocking and eagerly waiting for the neighborhood kids to come home from school and activities and daycare. My tiny social butterflies are loving our ever-growing gang of kids on the street, and as the neighborhood gets slowly built out, we’re excited to meet the new families that are moving in. Our fingers are always crossed for more preschool girls, of course.

The other day we were driving to school with the windows down, and E.V. yelled out into the wind, “Hey, look! It’s our old house!” I grinned out of surprise that Emma Vance remembered and recognized Amityville, our former rental house. There it was, up on the hill on the side of the main road, pale yellow and as dilapidated as ever. The past year has seen that property go from family home to frat house (like, literally), made obvious by the knee-high grass and American flag hung in lieu of curtains in the foyer window. The timing is ironic — a whole year in our real home is approaching.

It’s been a year filled with changes, mostly for the good. We’re still working on getting settled in our “new” house, although part of that settling in has been the process of wearing away that newness. The walls are marked up, the baseboards are dusty, the grout could use some bleach. But it’s ours. All ours. Slowly but surely, room by room, with the fading of newness we gain comfort and familiarity. And that familiarity is…perfect.

……………………………………………….

I’ve been getting a lot of requests for house and decor pictures, so in celebration of our first House-iversary, I thought over the next few weeks I’d share a few spaces in our forever home. Happy stalking! ;)

NO1_7406 (1) NO1_7410 (1)NO1_7420 (1) NO1_7430 (1) NO1_7438 (1)NO1_7446 (1)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *