Sunday, October 25, 2009

Happy Sadness

We are down to the last day or two here in our home. We will officially begin residing full-time at our property on Monday. Tonight is the last night we'll be sleeping here. While we are very excited, this whole experience is bitter-sweet.
As a child living with my parents, we moved a lot. They are missionaries, and although we never lived in any foreign country (they now reside in Canada), we lived in many different houses. I could never get too attached to one location, because the location constantly changed.

Fast forward to my life now, with my own family, and I've been privileged to experience the opposite of all that, having lived in our little home for 10 years now. Wowzers. It has been so good for me to have security and enjoy making our house a home. (Thanks, Jeremy.)
(This is our bedroom, after the crawl space, aka black hole, was unloaded.)
(This is our new bedroom, in the camper.)

We have brought three babies home here and have made countless memories. I never want to be wrapped up in temporal things, but I must admit to myself: moving out of this house is hard.

Our renters will move in on Nov. 1st, so I'm planning on having all next week to clean and make ready their new residence. We will be moving into a pull-behind camper and we'll be living between that and the cabin. Our plan is to live there until we complete our basement. We have finished the footers and slab (pictures to follow in another post), and our next step is to build and pour the walls. Then we'll build a temporary roof over all, with materials we can reuse in the Spring, and move in. Our generator system is on its way to Anchorage, and our wood-burning boiler furnace will make its way down from Fairbanks this week.
In the Spring, we'll begin construction on our log home.

Last night was fun for our family. We originally planned on staying in the camper at the property last night, but things changed and we were here, but without our beds, etc. because we had mostly "moved out". So we went camping in our house. The kids had lots of fun playing with whatever scraps they could find on the floor where the couches used to sit. Anna set up shop and the younger three played "store" while Ryley and Jeremy were at Home Depot. Josiah and Isaac were the customers, and they paid for random store stuff with coins they found laying around. When they were bored of shopping, Anna hired them as plumbers to fix things in her store.

After dinner, they built forts in the living room and slept in sleeping bags.We'll miss our home. And we will enjoy our last night here. "The last time always seems so sad, but it isn't really. The end of one thing is only the beginning of another." -Laura Ingalls Wilder, in These Happy Golden Years

3 comments:

Chris or Karla said...

This post really makes me want to cry! So many of those feelings flooded me when we moved out of our house. I just had to sit down and bawl my eyes out once everything was moved and I knew we wouldn't be coming back "home" anymore. So many memories. But you know, I love where we are at now. The memories came with me and I definately feel a real sense of the house being ours now. I am so excited for you guys and for your new adventures and memories you'll make building and living in your new home.

sacra vim said...

Aww...well-expressed post. Love the pictures. Love you guys, too!

Dana said...

How exciting. And sad. All at once. I should show this to my husband. I keep telling him it is OK to be sad about leaving here and excited about moving there all at the same time.

This is our first house. We moved here with one child and will be moving away with five!