When a House Becomes a Home

A while back, I don't think I would have been able to differentiate between a house and a home. Honestly, anywhere that I lived was "home". When I lived with my dad...home. When I lived with my mom...home. The guys that I lived with...home. My apartment (which I loved, mind you), was home. About a year before Michael and I got married, he bought his first house, which would then become our first house. Of course, it was home to me. Everywhere I had lived up to that point was home. Maybe it was because I was clawing for any feeling of normalcy in my regularly uprooted life. Having moved more than a dozen and a half times before I turned 21, I wanted something that felt concrete, that felt real, that felt like home. So I made it that way for myself. Were all these places actually home? Absolutely not, and now, I can totally understand why.

Right around this time last year, Michael and I started house hunting again. Yeah, I had helped with the house he bought before we got married. I believe my exact words were "You better put an offer in on this house or we're going to lose it...it's not going to last at this price!" It wasn't an "OR ELSE!!!" statement, it just was the absolute perfect house for us at that time. As our family rapidly grew, though, we realized we needed more. Enter, the new house. We had multiple showings here. The first two, the "tenant" stayed home. (By the way, if you're selling your house, and you want to sell your house, make an honest effort to LEAVE for showings! If I can do it with two toddlers at 6 months pregnant, just about anyone can.) Our first impression of the house was "Well...it's nice, but it needs a significant amount of work..." - HELLO wallpaper in every room?! The second showing, it was already feeling familiar to us, and was becoming more of a "This could definitely work" feeling. The third showing, we had to request that the "tenant" not be here. That was the showing...the moment that we realized this house was the house for us. Being in here by ourselves...just felt right. Despite the gobs of wallpaper that would need to be taken down, the deep cleaning that it needed (and embarrassingly still somewhat needs), the mismatched tile floors, the wall paper, the windows and siding, the wallpaper...are you seeing a pattern? Anyways...despite that, it felt right. So we went for it. Man, did we have our work cut out for us! I can't even tell you how many times *I* was ready to back out, but Michael pushed on. He didn't reach his breaking point until about a week before we were supposed to sign over our old house to the new buyers (which are perfect for that house!). I don't remember what it was, but he basically wanted to tell the sellers to "f-off". Yeah...he wasn't happy. But, we all came to an agreement, and here we sat, in our new house, just a little while later.

So, when did this house become our home? You know, I don't know that I can even put a date on it. It just kind of happened. I can tell you when it really hit me that this is home, though. I have had little moments here and there where I felt like "yeah, this is where we're meant to be", heck, I even sent a message to our real estate agent telling her that because, well, it's true! We're meant to be here, and today, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was standing in the family room looking out the window at the snow coming down over the pond and starting to cover the grass. I could still smell a lingering smokey scent in the air from when we had our first fire in the fireplace last weekend because we had no power. It was that moment that I realized...

this is home

This is where we belong. This is where we will grow old together. Where we will invite our kids back over for Thanksgiving, Christmas...you name it. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we also have the rest of our lives to complete it. We will fix it up slowly but surely, and it will become ours. It will become our HOME.

God bless,
~Stacy