Moving (I wrote this a couple weeks ago)

It's been a long time coming, yet I'm sad it's finally here.  We are moving out of our 776 square foot 2 bed/1ba duplex.  We feel very blessed that we will have an opportunity to house sit Jeff's grandparents' home.  Jeff's grandma passed away just over a year ago, and his grandpa suffered a stroke in October and is in an Assisted Living Home.  Their home has been vacant, and so we will be living there for a little while to maintain it.  It has plenty of space for our family, and the timing is perfect because we were planning on buying a single family home after the baby is born.  I feel like after living here 3 and 1/2 years, this home needs a little memoir dedicated to it. 

We bought it in summer 2009 and moved in on Halloween day, after a lot of remodeling.  At the time we only planned on living here for 2 years, and now it's been 3 and 1/2.  This is the 3rd place we have lived since we've been married, and the first place that really felt like home.

I remember Jeff working long days at his job and then coming to work on the duplex, then driving all the way to Bountiful just to sleep and then do it all again the next day.  Those days were rough.  I remember when we got our gross tenants to move out of the east unit and totally gutting that side in Summer 2010, and when Jeff finally convinced me it was worthwhile for us to move to the east side after all the remodeling was done.  We (plus lots of help from others, esp my father in law) have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours making this place into what it is inside and outside.  Our yard is completely transformed from the weed patch it was when we first moved in.  

This is the place we found out we were pregnant with Becca.  When Jeff got home from work, Alayna and I hid in the bathroom and when Jeff found us, he also saw the positive pregnancy test.  This is the place we brought Becca home to.  We were nervous about fitting 4 of us here and sleeping arrangements, which have (for the most part) worked out just fine.  This is where I potty trained Alayna and where she learned how to ride a bike.  I've spent hundreds of hours in this living room rocking my babies to sleep.  This is where we found out we were expecting child #3 and for a time we thought she would be brought home here as well.  

We have spent a ton of time enjoying this backyard.  We learned how to garden here and had LOTS of popsicles on the back porch.  We have eaten apples and cherries off the trees in our yard, and tackled raking the TONS of leaves produced by our huge trees each fall.  We've learned how to be landlords and handle difficult situations.  We have spent 4 Christmases here, hosted BBQ's, birthday parties, a preschool, and made lifelong friends.  Moving on has always been planned but I'll miss it here.  We have some great memories.

For old times sake.  Alayna eating a popsicle on the porch the day we moved.