Saying goodbye

 This is a strange picture for my closing picture from the old home, but it's symbolic of a few things. First of all, notice Abby Jane is on the floor between Blythe and Joy. She chose to sleep on a sleeping pad on the floor of their room every night that wasn't a school night between Christmas and our move. She loves being in with her sisters, so at the new house, the girls all share a room! But here's the last time she had to sleep on the floor to be with her best friends.

Secondly, I'm a task-oriented person. So I'm not going to spend moving day being emotional or considering the memories or smelling the roses. Sandy had taken the girls for the big move day, and I was focused on the work at hand. But after the girls' beds were broken down and my mom was getting things ready to stay behind us to do a final clean-up on the house, she asked if we were going to use the yellow base rug from the twins' room again.

I told her, "No way. Do you see that spot there? That's where Blythe threw up one time and she got half of it on the crib and the other half on the floor and the white is where I used baking soda to take care of the smell. That stain over there is where their humidifier leaked one winter when they were babies. The circle over there is where Joy randomly had an accident the other day and we were shocked because she hadn't done that in months."

It was then that I was reminded of all the life that happened in the walls of that tiny shoebox.

Our entire family history of being a family of five up to that day had been in that home... all the precious moments of learning to walk, birthdays, big parties that we squeezed into small places, Christmases, dress up, hide and seek, taking care of newborn twins, book reading, ballet shows, etc etc etc had all happened at this one tiny home that we were so excited to leave... and yet God had blessed our family richly while we were there. We will always look back on that home and our time there with great affection and thankfulness!