Home is Where the Heart Is - From Blacktop to Dirt Road

I thought I would give a little update on the house selling situation. While we have had numerous calls, showings and inquiries…we have no contract. We have had nothing but positive feedback, but the time has not been right for any of the potential buyers yet. We are planning on meeting with a relator on Monday to get the house officially listed with Reese and Nichols. Although this is not what we had hoped for, we feel extremely positive and hopeful that the RIGHT buyer will come along and the perfect time. We are trusting that God is faithful and that His timing is perfect.

With that being said, I have been overly conscientious about our sweet little house and the memories we have made here these past few weeks. Those of you who know me know I am extremely sentimental; like, the ugly cry, get in your sweats and eat a whole roll or Oreos kind.There are so many things that I love about our home; so many memories that I hold so dear and precious to my heart. So with that being said, I wanted to write down some of my favorite memoires on our little starter house here on 163rd terrace. You can insert my silent sobs while your reading this. It will give it more of a realistic touch 🙂

When we first bought our little house, we were so thrilled. It was the perfect place for us, and I was so excited that my parents lived just a few miles down the road from us. I fondly remember having our friends over from small group to start the priming/painting process just 2 days after we moved in. All of our woodwork was a natural wood color, and I was craving an updated Navaho White. We had a blast having our friends over to munch on pizza and paint our new little home. Our house was filled with so much joy that night and we were so grateful for our dear friends for giving up their Friday nights to help us out.

Chelsey, the great painter

Living room before

Living room after

Soon after we moved, Eric got the opportunity to make one of his BIGGEST dreams come true! We brought home our first baby, a 1970 Chevy C10 short bed, fleetside. Eric has always wanted to rebuild one of these for as long as he can remember. The time was right and we had the money, so we decided to take the plunge! We brought it home, stripped it down the frame and got to work. Piece by piece, we tore it down, decided what to keep and what to bring to the scrap metal yard, and began to bring this big orange thing back to life. We were hoping to have it all done by the time Nora was born, but we didn’t make our deadline. No matter, we have had a BLAST working on this truck together. We had many a late night in our garage, tearing things apart, sand blasting, rebuilding and rewiring this masterpiece, who I have affectionately named, “Biff.” And you should have seen Eric’s face the first time he started the engine up that he rebuilt. It was the most priceless thing you will ever see.

The day we brought Biff “home” from the field we found him in

Dominating the frame, pre-sandblasted

Removing the original engine

After 2 years, finally put back together. Now, it runs perfectly, has a black finish, but just needs the final coat of paint. We decided to paint it the original color – copperhead black

I have done LOTS of cooking in our house. My favorite part about our home is our kitchen. Not only do I love the open layout for entertaining, but I adore that I can whisk gracefully all over the kitchen from cabinet to cabinet and cook and host with ease. In this house, I made my first Thanksgiving dinner ALL BY MYSELF. This was, literally, one of the proudest days of my life. I will forever be grateful for my kitchen and everything it has given back to me. I will sob as I pack up my measuring cups, everyday dishware and coffee mugs. But an even better feeling is knowing that they will be unpacked in our brand new, dream farmhouse.

By the look on my face, I was obviously bursting with pride

Eric and I both love being outside. One thing that we had so much fun doing together was landscaping all four sides of our house, including the deck and patio. We ripped out all the old bushes, trees and stones and started fresh. We built new retaining walls, did our own custom landscape and planted all new bushes, trees and flowers. We worked SO HARD to make our home a beautiful place. It was especially fun to watch Eric use his new-found knowledge of trees and shrubs to help pick out the right foliage. What made it even better was that we had the perfect place to enjoy our new fire pit off of our deck and have fires at night. So many important, life changing conversations have happened out there. We enjoy doing big projects like this together and I love that we were able to step back when we were all done and say, “Hey, we did that together!”

All done!

And then there was the day that we found out we were pregnant. I swear, there has never been more joy in one bathroom than there was that cold, January day. Never did two lines look so beautiful to me (and those of you who know me, know I love a good print!). And never had there been more throwing up in on bathroom than there was those first 4 months. But they were a beautiful 9 months that led up to the birth of our little Eleanor Sue. Lots of rearranging, organizing and baby everything. The summer I was pregnant with Nora was a record breaker here in KC. We spent many evenings in as little clothing as possible, laying on the hard wood floor with the fan on high and the AC blasting, dreaming about our life as a family of 3. I’ve never been so thankful for our hard wood floors as I was that summer. I swear I lived on them with a bowl of ice cream.

9 months pregnant with the truck behind me. Both the truck, and Nora, were almost done!

Eric and I had SO MUCH FUN putting Nora’s room together. We spent so many hours laughing and dreaming about our little girl in this room

And then there was that time when a tornado touched down a mile from our house and we went outside to watch (and hear) it drop from the sky. We promptly ran back down to the basement and hid in the bathroom with blankets over us. But only after taking a picture of it, of course. Duh!

And then the greatest thing ever happened. We had Nora. And then something even better happened. We brought her HOME. I remember the surreal feeling of walking into our house after being discharged from the hospital, opening our front door and feeling the greatest sense of relief. “We’re home…” There really is no place like home, is there? So many things happened in this home with Nora. So many firsts. So many wonderful things that make my heart soar. And so many things that hurt my heart. Her first smile, her first roll, her firs ear infection, her first crawl, an endless 9 months of exclusively pumping, her first steps, her first solid foods, her first tumble down the stairs, hours of hysterical laughter, long nights of crying and teething, even longer nights of constant rocking with a cold, and even more hours of laughter. If your a mom, you know…the list could go on and on.

Getting home from the hospital

Hours spent in the living room in the bouncer

Nora and I did chores all the time in our house in the baby carrier

Hours spent on our living room floor playing and becoming best friends

Love.

This.

Child.

But what the pictures don’t capture are all of the little moments we have spent in our house. The hours of Eric and I sitting on the kitchen counters talking about our days, the parties thrown at the house and the joy on everyone’s face who was there, the late night talks around the fire pit working through some of the hardest moments of our lives, the prayers said over the loads of laundry, the hard conversations that needed to be had, the prayers around the table, the nesting period, the tears of realizing that breastfeeding isn’t going to work out, but determined to pump for as long as possible, the handy work of my “I can fix anything” husband on display whenever something went wrong, the hours of yelling at the Huskers on TV….and the LOVE. Oh friends, if you could only feel the love that lives in this house. If you could feel the energy you get when you walk through the front door. It would bring you so much joy. I know it’s brought me just that.

So when we leave this house, this home…I will leave knowing that I can take my memories with me. But more importantly I will leave knowing that I am taking the two most important people along with me to this new chapter in our lives. And my heart is so deeply rooted in my Eric and little Nora Sue. And where my heart is, there also is my home.

“If my heart was a house, you’d be home…”

Comments

Kathy says

November 23, 2013 at 5:40 pm

What a great post Lauren. The first chapters of your lives….and many more to come. Your blog is like a book/diary you will go back to and re read and add new chapters too. I'll pray for a sale and for you as you plan your move. It's going to be almost like a new book in the series:) I can hear your sobs….and I also hear your excitement. Hugs.
- [email protected] says
  
  December 9, 2013 at 1:56 pm
  
  Thanks so much Auntie Kathy! Love you!!

Follow by Email

Related Posts

Comments