Moving on

Monday it became official. We no longer own our first home, and a new family has now moved into it.

What a weird and surreal feeling that the place we've called home for 4 years is no longer so.

We got the keys to this house 3 months before we were married, after much saving and scrimping and feeling like we'd never find the perfect house. We found it. The perfect house for us, in the perfect spot. It was meant to be. I lived there alone, painting kitchen cupboards and always dreaming of what this house (that felt oh so big) would look like with our things (that we didn't even own yet) in it.Slowly but surely we furnished it. Mostly with second hand & thrifted items and the occasional table found on the side of the road. We quickly became experts at judging whether something was worth stopping for as we drove past someone's trash, which would potentially become our treasure.Also slowly but surely, we painted almost every inch of the house. The bathroom is no longer yellow. My office became a perfectly subtle shade of blush pink. Our bedroom finally looked like less of a dorm room and more like a grown up room - the leather headboard helped! The nursery went from green to grey with a graphic wall. And I finally got my white living room, and it sure did feel good after 3+ years of brown walls! But beyond the colour of the walls, so much happened within them. We made delicious meals in our tiny kitchen - and also burned some. To spare you the burned meals, here are some of the changes we made... From painted cupboards to reupholstering thrifted chairs to the ever changing eating area with an entertainment center turned hutch, which we eventually said goodbye to. We worked together in the office once it became a shared space, Luther napping happily by our sides.We put in every piece of laminate flooring ourselves (mostly Alex), even the ones in the basement, which then had to be removed and replaced by a professional after our basement suffered a slow leak and had mould growing on the walls. Yep. That happened.We sat through endless episodes of several Netflix shows on our beloved first couch. The very same couch where we learned Luther loved to be completely covered in blankets. The couch where I told Alex I was pregnant, after that couch had already been soaked in many of my disappointed tears, negative pregnancy test after negative pregnancy test. The couch where I lay through much of my morning (all day and all night) sickness, where I folded the first of our babies' laundry. Where we so proudly sat with our boys to take out first ever family photo. Dang. That couch has seen some of our best and highest moments. Thank goodness it's moving with us!I know I'll never forget this home. I'll never forget the way we felt in it, even when we didn't really like it (because that main floor was just so darn small and awkward), we still loved it. It was home to us from the moment we put our patio chairs in it and used our first roadside find as a side table.As sad as I am to be leaving this home, that our boys will never remember it as being theirs, I'm elated by the thought of making this other house our ultimate home. It's incredible to think that our first house was so good to us, in so many ways, including financially. It's allowing us to move on to bigger and better. Not that bigger IS better, but in this case it will allow our family to grow a little more comfortably. And that's what mattered to us.Have I mentioned that this new house is also in a much smaller town, and even closer to the lake? Because it is. It's so lovely there. The drive in to our neighbourhood is a 2-lane road flanked by old luscious trees. I can't wait to see it all covered in snow. I mean, yes, I CAN wait, I just think it'll look pretty. For like 3 seconds. Then I'll get over it!I'll be sharing much much much more about this house with you guys, but we're in a bit of limbo at the moment and I'm trying to get settled, somehow.As renovations are happening, we're staying with my parents, and the boys are currently fighting a cold while Luca is fiercely teething. It's been a trying week, but we're surviving it!Moving is so bittersweet, isn't it?