This Old House

Today Leo said out of nowhere, "I love this house." 

I said, "Well, I'm glad you love it but we're moving out of it in a few days, you know." 

He said, "But we just moved in!" 

In some ways, it does seem like we just moved in. It's only been 2.5 years. But in other ways, like when I look at this picture, it seems like a long time ago.  

Leo was four. In fact, the day we moved in and took this picture he was still three. He turned four the very next day. Gus was 10 months old; Gus learned to walk here; he learned to talk here. Leo learned to ride his bike here; he started kindergarten here.

We had three Halloweens, three 4th of July's, but only two Christmases. It's a shame about the Christmases because it's really a great Christmas house. There's that "secret room" (as Leo called it) over the door where we would put our fiber-optic Christmas tree. And since the ceilings are high we bought a really tall tree for the "lookout room" (another Leo term).

We actually did things to this house, which we had never done with our other two houses, because we thought we might just stay awhile. We put in a beautiful new fence with a Texas star in the gate.  "They make fences like works of art here in Dallas," Popsy commented. We got a new door to make the house brighter. We had Cul de Sac Carrie help us with Roman shades for the living room. And Popsy painted the kitchen bright yellow.

Leo had his 4th, 5th and 6th birthdays here. Gus had his 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Frank and I had a few birthdays in there too. We celebrated our ten year wedding anniversary (and our eleventh).

We met fun, wonderful neighbors. We spent countless Friday nights with them at the pool with pizza and beer. I group texted with the "Moms in the Hood" about 100 times a day. All I had to text was "going to the park" and friends would meet us there within minutes.

We grilled fajitas on Sunday nights approximately 103 times.

The boys delivered our next door neighbor's newspaper about 506 times, and received the same amount of Goldfish in return.

We loved relaxing in the media room; we didn't sit on the front porch rocking chairs as much as we thought we would. I spent a lot of time in the laundry room but if you ever saw it, you'd know it was not a bad place to spend the majority of a day.

So it may have only been 2.5 years. But when you look at it that way, it seems like a lot longer. I hope we don't forget it. I hope it doesn't just blend into all the other houses.

Because every day, every day as I walked through this house, I thought, "I love this house."