485 <3

I sat in the corner of my daughter’s empty nursery on Monday morning, exactly where her rocking chair used to be, and I bawled like a baby.

I looked at her name on the wall, memorizing the image, and remembered the day that her daddy lovingly painted it there. I reminisced on the hundreds of times I had sat in that same spot – both with our baby in my belly, and with her snuggled in my arms – and loved on our sweet Dorothy. I remembered the fear we felt as new parents when we placed her in her crib for the first time, and the pride we had when we first found her standing in her bed months later – greeting us with her toothy grin after nap time.

Nothing prepared me for the emotions felt in an empty house. Every moment of the last three and a half years flooded back as I looked around. Like the time we brought our daughter home from the hospital, the time we ripped out the entire main floor, and the time the besties and I had a wine festival in the backyard. The time we had a fire in the driveway on our sixth wedding anniversary, the time we had an outrageous house warming party, and the time I held my husband in the living room on the day his father died. The happy, the sad and the bizarre; it seems like our whole lives happened under that roof, even though we were only blessed to live there for a short time.

In the last hour that we owned 485, I didn’t want to let it go. I would have done anything to stop the transaction that happened later that morning. I even would have unpacked all three trailers that currently hold everything we own, and we all know how much I hate moving.

It was our first home, and it will forever house some of my favorite memories, but 485 now belongs to someone else. Another family will get to enjoy the squeaky floors, the “Lead Paint Gang” next door, the neighborhood luminaries on Christmas Eve, and our “pet” chipmunk who lived in the garage.

I only hope they love it as much as we did.

Thanks for the memories, 485. You will forever hold a spot inside our hearts.