Goodbye home

My family is packing up their home of 20 years and moving to another state (my family includes my parents and 2 brothers still at home). I don't really have feelings attached to this house other than the fact that it is home, and Las Vegas is home, and the Westcliff Ward is home. So the fact that they are moving means I can no longer "go home" so I guess the impact of this event will sink in more over time. But I think it's been gradual enough... the past few visits, I have felt an increased sense that this isn't my home anymore; these people, though my loving family, aren't "home" anymore--that my home is in Oregon with Rychen and my kids. My heart belongs with my own family, especially my husband (even though my old bedroom upstairs still has glow-in-the-dark paint proclaiming "AG + SK" ...haha!)

 

So I guess that's what growing up means.

 

Nevertheless here are some of my fond memories.

• playing British Bulldogs in the backyard
• playing Sardines in the Dark with friends, especially Erick's friend Kelly
• coming home from my baptism at age 8 wearing my big "pioneer" triplet dress
• going up into the attic crawl space, thinking I had a secret hide-out
• sliding down the staircase in various positions when I was small
• laying in my parents' bed all day whenever I was sick
• seeing two of my brothers minutes after they were born in mom's bedroom (and immediately nick-naming one of them Esau)
• laying on the kitchen table as a first-grader pretending to be sick so I wouldn't have to go to school
• doing back-walkovers down the small hill in the front yard
• playing "Waitress" on the driveway with Camry
• playing Hide & Seek and tennis in the street with the Webb kids
• running toddler Andrew over to the Webb's house when I was babysitting and he fell and gashed open his forehead
• TP'ing my own yard during a sleepover at a friend's house (and then cleaning it up the next day)
• trading bedrooms back and forth with Laura multiple times
• searching for hidden Christmas presents after years of sneaking downstairs too early
• climbing on the roof or brick walls just for the heck of it
• breaking our built-in-bookshelves off the wall to rescue an imprisoned hamster
• when Erick leaned on the table which already had an old computer on it and broke the entire table in half
• multiple pet tortoises, fish, mice, hampsters, rabbits, and a guinea pig
• sneaking string cheese up to my room with Jennifer and eating most of a Costco bag in one night
• having a wild sleepover with Antonina and dad asking us if we had been drinking "Giggle juice"
• all the kids laying in my mom's room while she read The Westing Game to us
• changing the diapers of multiple younger brothers...Antonina fashioning a face mask before changing Evan's diaper
• covering my bedroom with glow-in-the-dark stars, gluing feathers all over my bookshelf, and filing my walls with colorful magazine pages and band names
• doing Tae-Bo as a teenager with the front door open to get ventilation
• coming home from Oregon in December 2003 and running through the house, so excited to be engaged

I could go on forever, I'm sure. But I probably already lost my audience! Well, I love you home, Adieu.