Our New Home

When we moved into this home, it wasn't nearly ready for us. It was, in fact, mid-renovation and the basement had several walls that were (and still are) only really drywall, the stairs were bare particle board and the basement tile floor was only partially grouted. Grouting dust was on pretty much every surface of the home and floating in the air, I could taste it. And the place was just plain dirty and messy. Several of the kitchen drawers were full of trash. It was a tad discouraging. Here we were feeling triumphant that Fionnula, after all her anxiety over the move had announced that riding in a moving van was "Like a ride at Disneyland.... a really boring ride at Disneyland," and yet facing the monumental task of making this new place livable.

We spent two days just cleaning and rearranging. The boys slept in the living room at first until we could get the basement cleaned and their beds moved downstairs. This is a furnished rental, but their beds were all stored upstairs during construction, two sets of twin mattresses and box springs were propped up in the dining room and one full bed was crammed in a closet in the upstairs bedroom.  We cleaned cabinets and counters and showers and tubs and floors and walls. Kris spent hours just extracting lego pieces from the jets in the master bathroom.

Then we commenced living here.  The furniture is not ours. The decor is definitely not ours. Our books are mostly not with us. But our first weekend here was General Conference and we had our traditional cinnamon rolls for breakfast and we had our traditional sandwiches and chips for lunch and we watched and listened together just like we always do. We have now celebrated a birthday here and colored Easter eggs here. We talk to our older kids on hangouts every Sunday from our ugly, rented couch. We play skip bo, we cook dinner, we watch Seinfeld and read together. Basically, it is our home.

One evening not too long after we had moved, I went to my book club meeting. The meeting was way north of the area of town we live in now, I drove pretty close to our old neighborhood and kept on going. I came home in the dark, drove right through the old neighborhood without a thought. As I approached our little community of town homes, I could identify which lighted window was ours and I knew that beyond that window, Kris and the kids were hanging out together, probably watching silly youtube videos and I knew I was home. My furniture and books and walls painted a certain color aren't what makes my home, its the precious people who were waiting for me behind that window that make it my home. Even if the curtains hanging in that window are a nasty gold and brown and feature orange tassels!