My house

On Kelley's blog (one of my daily reads) she posted about her favorite room in her house and invited her readers to do the same. I had decided I wanted to partake in the blog-a-thon and went walking around trying to decide which room was my favorite and then develop a quick clean strategy so that I could post pictures without embarrassing myself...but I just couldn't decide which room to write about! Then and I realized my camera is at my Mom's house, which is a good thing because if I can't post pictures there's really no need for me to pretend to clean today!

I decided I don't have a favorite room at this house. I have favorite parts to certain rooms, but nothing that motivated me to post a blog. This kind of had me worried because it doesn't take much to motivate me to ramble on and on about myself or things in my world. Being slightly obsessive in nature, (when Kevin reads this he'll say to himself, "SLIGHTLY?!?!?!") I began to make a mental list of why I wasn't bursting at the seams to blog about my house...when it hit me. This house was always temporary in my mind (I always knew we'd out grow it and move eventually) and I never really took the time to make it the perfect home I'd be proud to blog about. In hindsight I wish I would have.

For the year prior to Kevin's move to Montana this was a house that had everything I've ever dreamed of. It had my son - my first born - the love of my life, a daughter I was blessed to inherit around age two that I've always loved like my own and the man of my dreams, the guy who always felt like the light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. Physically this house has never had the things I'd imagine being in my dream home, no granite counter tops, high end appliances or neat architectural features...it's decorated with a hodge podge of remnants from mine and Kevin's past, there's no real "style" to it...but there are signs every where of our life together and that's what makes me happy here, it's also what breaks my heart about being home these days.

Kevin put our laminate floors in himself, there's the toy box / ottoman we built together right after we started dating, the paint on the walls of the powder bathroom is a dark red that covers our attempt at stripes, on the stairs there are framed pictures of Hunter and Cierra playing in my Mom's back yard, the garage is full of the remnants of the coffee shop we opened together. From where I'm typing at the table I can see the Cone vacuum Kevin was so excited to buy. A three year old, curly haired, female version of Kevin just came running down the stairs from her nap. A one moth old baby we made together is asleep in her swing. Every where you look there are reminders of the times we lived here together, as a family, and lately it's just too much to bear.

I hate feeling like I wish I would have done things differently, it's such a waste of time because you can't re-live the past, but I do...I wish I would have done things differently. I wish I would have worried less about what this house didn't have and concentrated more on what it DID have. It had my family. A family I've waited my whole life for. I wish I would have treated this house like the most magnificent place I've ever lived, because it was... This house deserved to be clean and tidy and treated like a castle, it should have heard less frustration, less yelling and more laughter. If I would have known that I was on borrowed time to be living here with all of us I would have worried a lot less about the little things. Who cares that I couldn't get it decorated perfectly, why did I even care about that? I wanted this house to LOOK perfect and I couldn't feel attached to it until it did. But all along this house WAS perfect because it was OUR house.

I would give anything right now to have Kevin walk in the door from work. I would trade the new kitchen table I got for him to be able to see Ryland smiling at her brother and sister in a heart beat. I would give up the new paint the walls for him to hear CC singing "what Momma doin? workin on the puter, workin on the puter..." For all the nights I was frustrated at the amount of time Kevin spent in the garage...at least he was HERE in the garage. Hunter still had someone to play football with in the evenings, and Kevin still got to see his kids every day. Instead he sleeps on a futon 2,000 miles away and we make plans to see eachother for a weekend once a month (if we're lucky). I hate that I was always complaining that this house was too small for all five of us, because right now we seem to fit...and I don't want to fit. I want Kevin to be here and the house to feel too small again.

So all rambling aside, I still can't pick a favorite room in my house. I'm sure in a few minutes I'll feel like a baby for being so weepy and dramatic about all of this. I'll get my camera from my Mom's tonight, walk around the house and take pictures of happy things to write about. I'll get back on here and talk about all of the positives and turn into the glass half full person again....but since I started this blog as an honest and realistic look into my life, I'm keeping it real at the moment. And at the moment I just really miss Kevin, I'm nostalgic about the days when we all lived here, I'm feeling guilty for all the times I thought this house wasn't good enough. This house was PERFECT when we were all here together, it was our HOME then. Now it's just a house.