Don’t let the title of this blog post confuse you. We are positively settling, but not for less, just into more. This house is so warm and already wrapping its arms around us in a way that is hard to imagine anywhere else. Although a bump in the road, the delay in closing and life in boxes longer than anticipated, has really been a blessing by pushing me into a place of contentment at closing time, which was yesterday.
Throughout the week I can’t say I felt as much complacency as I do now. After Natalie, my oldest, was born I experienced some severe postpartum. After Brie, my second, was born I had it again but was slightly more prepared. This move has made me feel like my first postpartum in some ways. The feelings that progressed were unexpected, intense, numbing, and ultimately confusing.
Just me & my girls
After we slept in the new house for the first time I didn’t feel any different. It was a similar feeling to waking up in a vacation house. The boxes stayed packed and we were living out of luggage in the days following because the rooms weren’t painted, the closets weren’t finished, and the floors were not completed. Some great news for everyone reading, the floors are finished! The master closet is also finished! And we are working on the painting epidemic but it’ll happen along with a lot of electrical work. With a lot left to do and we are all thankfully comfortable with a slow settling, we haven’t had anyone over yet and probably won’t for a few more weeks. Just us living and melding into our new space.
In my life I have not moved a lot and so I connect myself emotionally and physically to my home. Our last house, was all our daughters knew, the place our second daughter came home to from the hospital, where our first daughter was potty trained, the place they both learned to swim, every room filled with firsts, some lasts, and a lot of in-betweens. It’s a chapter in our life that has happened and we’re supposed to move on from. Not easy! There’ll be times in the future where Shaun and I will say “remember when” referring to memories in our last home like it was yesterday but the girls, being still so young, won’t remember and these thoughts throw me. The circular motion of bleakness to excitement haven’t stopped for the past week. I hope that the girls’ best and more memorable moments are to come, in this house, and last with them forever.
Family room and kitchen floors during reno, post, and pre-cleaning but still gorg!
Tuesday I started homeschooling the girls. The one major lesson I have learned already is that we have to set boundaries during our homeschool time. Such as, I don’t answer the phone during this time. Monday we played hookie while the floors were being finished and we got errands done, like cleaning the old house and returning our snowboard equipment from last season. Tuesday after homeschooling we caught up with some friends (picture below) at a Girl Scout event at Curly’s Ice Cream. As you can see below, they had so much fun! We are now three days into homeschooling and we are loving it! The decision not to start the girls in a new school mid-year and to live out my dream to home school them seemed to just fall into our laps with our move timeline.
The girls are still involved in their regular gymnastics class, we’re checking out our local library (which we didn’t have one of before) and so much more is keeping us in tune with the rest of the world. We women in my family normally hibernate come cold weather so our slight exclusion from the world is not abnormal for this time of the year anyway. Honestly, everything couldn’t have fallen more into place thank God.
Here’s pictures of Day 2 of homeschooling…in pjs!
So, to summarize my chaos of feelings, it’s all bittersweet. The good memories, neighbors/neighborhood, life we had in our old house was beyond amazing and beautiful. However, our new house, home, is nuzzling us and bringing us a different kind of joy. Our family is growing in time together and different kinds of experiences with a future that is so wide open and promising!
Our neighbors (Whitney, top left, was 9 when we moved in and now she is 16; Cole is 14 yesterday and was 6 when we moved in; Natalie, bottom left was 2 and 3/4 when we moved in and is now 10; Brie was 4 weeks from being born and is now 7+)
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