When we were first looking at this house we wondered the same thing all potential homebuyers wonder…Why did they move? It turns out, that was an easy question to get answered: After 10 years the previous family had grown out of the house.

This house? Who can grown OUT of THIS house? It’s almost three times the size of the house I grew up in!

Turns out…they had eight kids. EIGHT. And oddly? Something about that made me love the house more. I think of all of the joyful chaos three kids brings into my life and I think that these walls held almost three times that. I look at the chunks out of the kitchen cabinets and I wonder how many trucks rolling across the kitchen floor made those? I look at dents in drywall and imagine some sort of wrestling match or tickle torture session. I fall back on that fact a lot when we’re talking wear and tear on this home: Well, there were eight kids living here. It explains stains on the carpet and loose handrails on the stairs. It probably explains why we got the house for $60/sq ft – because how can you afford the time or the cost of making a house perfect that has contained EIGHT WILD ANIMALS. You can’t. And I see the signs and I smile.

Like all of the goodies the landscapers dug up in our flowerbeds this week. All of the things left behind to become a type of Playschool Compost.

This? Is a Pokemon ball. It brought me total flashbacks from E’s youth.

I mean – this is all stuff they gave up on. With 8 kids – how can you keep track of missing shoes or toys? Seeing these things makes me wonder if any of our missing items from the old house could be found under the dirt somewhere in our yard.

When we met the couple at closing, the wife was pregnant. (NUMBER NINE.) She was about the size of my pinky finger and gorgeous. Kinda made me hate her a little. But I looked at her and the most surprising feeling crossed my mind: Jealousy. Not because she was so tiny even pregnant with her ninth kid. Not because she dressed nice and knew how to put on makeup. No, I was jealous because of her eight nine kids. Not that I’ve ever wanted that many kids, it’s a thought that has never crossed my mind, but I imagine the joy and fun and vitality one child brought into my life for 10 years, and now I have that times three. So, looking at that Mom-to-be-again, I kinda wish I had it times eight nine.

I know the reality is with 8 times the joyful chaos, comes 8 times the PAINFUL chaos. If someone offered me a family of 8 kids today? I’d punch them in the face and run in the opposite direction as fast as my feet could carry me. But it’s still fun to think about. Never a dull or lonely moment. I feel the energy in this house sometimes, when it’s quiet. Like the wall are bursting with the laughs and screams of the family before. It’s a neat feeling and I hope that as the years go on, the walls continue to hold the joys of our family.

But maybe the house will let us keep our shoes.

This kid is SOOO happy he doesn’t have to entertain himself in an empty house anymore.

Between the new house and the old house I’ve painted somewhere between 1200 and 1500 square feet of rooms this summer. I’ve gone through over 20 gallons of paint and endless rollers and sheets of plastic. I’ve used an entire tube of caulk and installed 2 light fixtures and 1 sink faucet/drain. And as of yesterday? I’m done. I finished everything in the new house pre-move and I finished everything in the old house in time for the photographers to come take pictures yesterday morning. As of right now, any big home improvement projects I choose to do? I do because I want to. Not because we have to do it either A) Before we move in or B) Before we sell the house. And let me tell you one thing: If I never have to paint another wall again? I’ll die a happy woman.

Of course…we still haven’t even begun to tackle the wallpaper removal and subsequent painting in the upstairs hallway of our new house. But that can be done whenever I finally feel like it. It’s just a hall. And right now? I don’t feel like it. Today – for the first day in months – I’m just going to do what I feel like doing. I’ll take E and Nikki to school and maybe Wes and I will finally run over to Hobby Lobby for some of the things we’ve been wanting to grab for craft activities. Maybe I’ll look at fabric for my kitchen chairs I’m going to brave upholstering. (BECAUSE I WANT TO – Not because I have to.) Or maybe I’ll sit on my ass all morning and watch episodes of Dora. IT DOESN’T MATTER.

This summer has nearly broken me. There have been days when I’m so sick of it all, and everything that I had to do, that I’ve been teetering on the verge of tears for the entire 24 hours. Putting on my sunglasses so I can sob while I drive and no one notice. Sleepless nights as I struggle with the overwhelming anxiety and groggy days as I deal with exhaustion from those sleepless nights. Part of me looks at this summer and is terribly proud of all I did. Part of me is pissed off for wasting it. Although I tried my best to force myself to put down the paintbrushes and have fun with the kids periodically – I probably didn’t do that often enough. Am I glad we did it? Yes. I’m so happy in our new home and it would have been impossible prepping the old house for sale while still living in it. But does that change the fact that the summer kicked my ass? No. I’m just glad I have a house I love to be lazy in today – should the urge hit me.

The urge hits Lil’ Girl daily.

(Oops! I have no idea why comments were off before. They’re back on!)

I mentioned back when we were trying to prep our house for market, that we were taking down personal photos and I was finally framing some of my “real” photography. Of course, we gave up on trying to prep the house while still in it, but I was determined to hang some of the framed photography in our new home as well. As most of you have probably experienced, however, it’s difficult to decide where to hang photos in a new home. There are different rooms and walls and colors and it takes awhile to decide what should go where. I finally finished the sitting room last week, it is the first room to be completely done. This means it is the first room that has stuff on the walls.

I’m very proud of this room as I chose everything from the paint color to the furniture myself. I decided where to put the old furniture and those are my books on that bookshelf you can’t see because it’s by the only light in the room. This is essentially my room and I could not be more proud to finally have some of my photography on the walls. It’s hard to tell because it’s hard to get good lighting in that room, but there are 5 photos of mine framed on the walls. I chose the more girly photos for this room because MrZ wants me to put some in the “Man Room” too. I sit in one of these chairs every day, and just look around.

Now all I need is a reason to invite people over to sit in the room with me. Or do you think people would accept an invitation to simply Sit? I think if they were going to accept an invitation to sit in any room? It would be this one.

Nikki posed this picture last night as she felt a bit left out since I was taking so many pictures of the teenagers. Heh.

LilZ has had one of his childhood friends in town visiting for two weeks now. She visits every summer and it’s like getting the Gang Back Together. Assuming, of course, that I’m part of that gang and they’re not typical teenagers wishing I’d quit annoying them with the walks down memory lane already! It’s been a great two weeks and as always – we’re sad to see our adopted daughter go. But the best part of this visit? Forgetting she was here.

Wait. That didn’t sound how I wanted it to sound.

Part of why we wanted/needed a bigger house was that every time LilZ had friends over, especially to stay the night, I panicked about waking the kids. They shared one room and it shared a wall with his room. But I also would get annoyed with them waking me as my room was within shouting distance of his and right off the kitchen. This visit? Didn’t even hear them at night. As a matter of fact, several nights in the last two weeks we had 2-3 extra teenagers staying the night and I still never heard them. No small kids were woken up. No parents were grumpy with the noise. All around this 2-week visit has confirmed that this house is perfect.

Except for the fact that it hates me.

There’s the spider bites, of course, which are still horribly irritating. Then there’s the stumble I took down the back stairs one night while holding Wes. This weekend there was a stumble down the front steps which sliced off part of my heel and caused Wes and Nikki to both cry as they watched me bandage it. I’ve scraped my bumper by running into a wall I didn’t know was there and my battery in my car died (like died and had to be replaced) the first week. THIS HOUSE HATES ME. But you know what? It has to deal with it because I LOVE IT. So, it better quit trying to kill me and just learn to love me already.

Two Christmases ago (Or was it three?) I was at Pier One shopping and found these chimes that I thought these would be perfect for my sister-in-law. And because I tend to really dig her style, I bought a set for myself as well. Even though I had NO idea where to put them. Everytime I went to her house and saw them by her window I would think Hmm…I don’t know if I have as good of a place for mine. And they never got hung. Partly because I couldn’t really decide on a good place for them in our old home, partly because I wasn’t sure about putting things in the ceiling of a house we were going to sell soon. This stopped me from doing a lot of things…knowing we would be selling the house soon. So the chimes stayed in the original box in my bedroom.

I knew as soon as we decided what room would be what, where my chimes would go. There are two living areas in this new house, the bigger room we’re calling the Man Room. That’s where the big TV is going and the surround sound and MrZ is in charge of finding couches for that room. The smaller of the two rooms I’m calling the Sitting Room and it’s mine. There is a small TV because it’s the common area downstairs and allows the kids to be near me when I’m cooking. But the TV is very well camouflaged and not at all what you notice when you walk into the room. I still haven’t hung pictures on the walls yet, but my chimes? Went up yesterday.

The walls are cream, although they look a tad yellow in that photo above. I’ve been adding pops of color in several places. (Here is a picture I took with my cell phone the other day.) The chimes? Perfect. Even better? I was also able to hang another set that my mother-in-law brought back from a cruise a few years ago. I’d take a picture of those but there’s still boxes of stuff in that area of the room. So…two chimes I’ve been holding on for two years finally hung up in their perfect spots. It’s the little moments like this that really make this feel like a Forever Home. Seeing things finally up and around that have been wrapped up for years. I walk by them both and just feel so peaceful. I didn’t realize how little we were letting the old house be home until we unleashed in this house. We were holding ourselves back so much knowing the house would be sold in a few years. Now? Not any more.

And to prove it? I’m finger-painting the kitchen cabinets tomorrow.

That sound you just heard was my husband screaming, “Noooooo!” because that’s been his biggest fear in this house – that unleashing that side of me would make me do something crazy. And while I’m definitely capable of crazy, I’ll just keep it to chimes in my sitting room.