Saying Goodbye to our Home

Candace came across an amazing “coincidence” while looking thru our original title paperwork: we bought our house on May 28th and moved in on the 29th, 2003.  The sale of our home was accelerated and happened to land on those exact dates 10 years later…such has been much of this experience of saying good-bye to the home that welcomed all but one of our children into the world.

The process of staging the home, showings, and the sales process was not fun.  We have an amazing realtor, but even with her, the process is one of short notice, aggravation (e.g. inspectors and appraisers!), and issue after issue to resolve.  Suffice it to say, we were quite happy when the last obstacle was overcome and we could focus our efforts on packing and moving out of the house.

staging our home

We took the Friday evening, Saturday and Monday (Memorial Day) before the movers came to move our staged belongings back from storage (thanks to my guy friends who helped out!), sell our TV, washer, dryer, etc., and label everything in green, red, and orange duct tape (green = sea shipment, red = storage, orange = checked luggage, no tag = air shipment).  That last item took quite the effort.  I totally underestimated the effort involved in going through ALL of your belongings and sorting them into those groupings.  Glad it’s done!

packing our stuff

Work allowed me to be home Tues/Wed to help Candace with the movers.  The packers/movers were amazing.  They flew through ALL of our stuff in about 1.5 days.  They were professional, polite, and fast.

movers

these last 2 are my favorites: our youngest son watching his life pack away and our daughter waving good-bye to the sea shipment container as it pulls away

We spent the latter part of Wednesday cleaning the house and making it ready to hand over to new owners. Once again, many of our friends came by and helped sweep, clean, scrub, and brush.  It’s true what I once heard from a friend of ours, “Everyone should move just to feel how loved they are by those around them.”  We even had friends bring us dinner on those nights to help out. 

After the house was empty and totally cleaned and friends gone, Candace and I took a few moments to walk, room by room together, to say good-bye to our house.  I’m glad we did.  I didn’t expect to get emotional at all, but when I got to the kids’ rooms and remembered all of our babies and cute little kids, I definitely felt the sadness of saying good-bye to that part of our life.  There’s something special about the home that houses your young family.

When the kids came home, we had a family dinner at the local park and then brought them by the house to say their goodbyes.  We decided to have a family prayer, and our oldest suggested that we kneel in the same spot that we knelt when there were just 3 of us and we moved into the home.  So we did, and it was beautiful.  We knelt in circle, held hands, and thanked God for 10 wonderful years – to the day.  10 years of love, tears, laughter, stories, friends, families, storms, sunsets, tickle torture, and so much more.  When I finished with the prayer, all of us had tears in our eyes.  Our daughter asked if we could do tickle torture once more before we left…and we did.  It was delightful to hear the kids’ laughter bounce off the walls of the empty house and giggle as we tickled and chased them once more.

Once done, I encouraged the kids to say goodbye to their rooms.  Our daughter was fine until she got up into her room.  We then proceeded to hear her bawl, literally mourn her room for the next 10-15 minutes.  Poor girl.  She then wondered around the rest of the house just crying and hugging it.  The rest of us felt some portion of the sadness she had in saying goodbye.

We walked outside and saw a beautiful sunset.  We took one last picture of our house, and then drove away.

Thanks to a family friend of our realtor, we’re staying in a beautiful home as we transition out of house to a hotel next week.  It’s been a great stepping stone to move from one house to another.  God is definitely in the details of our lives.