The House, As Promised

Please forgive me, I'm not a great photographer. In fact I didn't even remember to take pictures until the very last day, right as my Dad was coming to pick me up.

I wanted to get action shots. Action shots of my mom and sister painting, not shots of me painting, because I didn't do any of it. Action shots of my dad doing little odd jobs, not shots of me, because I only did even jobs. Action shots of the tree trimmers and the amount of cutting they did on the trees. At one point on Friday we had painting going on, guys installing a ceiling fan, a fence guy putting up a new fence, the tree trimmers buzzin away, my dad fixing odd wires that were hanging out of walls and me trying to look busy, but really just talking on the phone to my Sweetie. I was very busy and important to all the goings on, after all, someone has to sign the checks and make the lunch run.

I know that I said I'd do 'before' shots, but I'm too lazy to go digging through my picture boxes to find the 'before' shots. And I would just get distracted by all the cute little boy pictures I'd find along the way, so who cares. But at least I got these and you can see our cute little house and all the work everyone did.

The picket fence needed to be replaced, this is just a couple sections to show you.


The Living Room, sweetie and his brother put in this fireplace years ago, when Calvin was two and I was pregnant with Dave.


My Kitchen, my DREAM kitchen. We finished it in 2005. It's purty.


The Dining Room, Sweetie added about 4 feet to the front of it and gave it bigger windows. That's my grandmother's table and chairs, we weren't able to move it with us.


The Laundry Room, which was finished after we had moved, hence the different look to it. I would not have chosen the color of paint or flooring, but it works.


The hallway leading to the bathroom & bedrooms. This hallway is narrow. We used to have a Golden Retriever who would wake us up in the morning by walking down the hall with his tail wagging and hitting each side wall with it as he went along.


THE Bathroom, the ONE and ONLY bathroom. We knew no different. This was remodeled around 2003. We parked our camping trailer in the back yard. The midnight trip to go pee was NOT FUN!


Seriously wish I could get out the old photo of when we bought this house. This was the NASTIEST room. This is a PG rated blog, so I won't tell any details, but seriously yucky things in here. But we cleaned it, cleaned it, fumigated it, painted it, re-carpeted it and prayed hard over it....then moved my three month old first born into it. This was the nursery. Then the boys room. Then it became the Master Bedroom as I decided to give the boys the big room.


This is the bedroom at the back of the house, it's the master bedroom. It was the boys bedroom for the last couple of years, but for showing purposes we made it into the master bedroom with a little seating area. This little room has four big windows in it. For being such a little house, it has GREAT windows!


The little seating area in the master bedroom.


This is the office. When we bought the house, it was our concrete patio, but after we bought our business Sweetie added this office onto the patio. I had personally painted this room twice trying to make it look better. Well, my mama and sister now agree with my husbands decision to NEVER let me play with paint brushes again. We staged this room to be a den/guestroom.

The daybed we set up in the den.


These are THE ROCKS. This is one of the reasons Sweetie wanted to buy this house. The boys were trying to climb these things before they could walk. Sweetie and his brother hung Tarzan ropes off of them. Lots of fun was had here. And no, never saw any snakes. Really.


This is the new back patio that we had put in. We loved having everyone over for BBQ's. We are standing at the slider door off the den and looking over to 'the rocks'.


This is the flower terrace that Sweetie put in, plus the flower boxes. It all really adds to the charm of this side of the house, plus helps with all that melting Southern California sunshine.


The whole property is speckled with these oak trees. But this one was always my favorite. It's just perfect.

And that's our little house. Yes, it was sad. On one day I was working, okay I was watching the others work and a lady came by to see the house. I was able to take her all over the house and property and give her all the history. She and her husband and kids fell in love with it. They were like a mirror image of Sweetie and I when we fell in love with it. The way they appreciated the trees and rocks and oldness of the house. Even though they had three kids they were ready to 'make it work'. When she left, though,I could feel it happening, the sadness. And then after everyone left the house that day I walked around in a stupor for awhile. Then I just sat down in the back bedroom and bawled my eyeballs out.

It's not that I'm going to miss the house or the purty kitchen. It's the memories that were made there. They are precious. Sweetie told me it wasn't even just the good memories, even the bad memories of hard times, were good. That whole house is such a story of God and his provisions and blessings. Our marriage, our boys, our families and friends, our church and ministries, it's all there. Our life has changed so completely for us. Even if God brought us back, and we don't see him doing that, things wouldn't be the same. The boys are different, relationships are different. God blessed us there and now he has us here and he's blessing us some more. He is so good. I'm thankful for my trip. Thankful for the comfort from God that I didn't even realize I needed. For His reassurance. I'm thankful too for all the help that my family gave to me, I seriously could not have done all that without them. You are my heroes! Love you all.