Currently we’re sleeping with mattresses on the floor and eating at our dining room table while sitting on camping chairs. The couch, dining room table and one of our cars still needs to sell.

Our house is pretty empty.  Nothing on the walls, no shelves to hold anything, 5 boxes are waiting for us in Italy, and soon we’ll pack our travel bags.

I wrote before about slowly saying goodbye as items sold on Craigslist and now that our house is almost empty, I feel like an official goodbye to our home is in order…..

Thank you 1085 for being our first home as a married couple.  Just shy of our one year anniversary, we parted with our downtown skyline view apartment for this space. An investment in a home close to Nick’s job in what we were told an up and coming neighborhood.  We put a deposit on the house the moment we saw it. “This was THE ONE” we said.  And besides, Nick’s job would buy up our home and move us out in a few years, so resale value wasn’t a worry.

The market crashed. Nick’s job changed and we wouldn’t be moved out after all. We were “stuck”.

And while “stuck” was a word we used often when talking about our house over the years, I’m glad we were “stuck” in this beautiful home.

We brought home a second kitty just a few months after moving in.  She was just a teeny little sick thing we nursed back to health.

Soon I landed my first job out of college and we became grown ups I guess.

Then after over a year of trying, we brought home our first sweet little girl with a head of read hair.  We’d just sit around snuggling and staring at her. She slept in the room we’d painstakingly painted and decorated for her from the very first night.

Not too long after, the best neighbors in the world moved in and introduced us to their new puppy.

Our baby learned to crawl and talk and dress herself in tutus in this house. Soon we wanted another little one around, and we spent another year trying to make that happen.

I left my job to pursue photography and be a stay at home mama.

We welcomed our second baby girl into a now pink bedroom and the little redhead became a big girl overnight.  Two kids rocked my world and eventually my faith was strengthened.

I returned to my first job.

My first baby became a kindergartner. My littlest started full time daycare.

Being a working mom kicked my butt and brought me joy at the same time.

We started dreaming and praying, and now we’re headed out.

Thank you 1085 for being our first home and allowing us to start our family here.  These walls hold so many memories for our young family. Giggles, late night rocking our babies, Scrabble games and fondue with friends, taco Tuesdays, Friday night pizza and a movie, deep tub soaks, cartwheel practicing, learning to read and ride bikes, candlelit dinners, dreaming, praying…..there just aren’t enough words.

While the location might not have ever been our ideal, we’ve loved having the pond as our “backyard” and a big lake with a beach just a short drive away.  Our next door neighbors were more than we could’ve ever asked for – borrowing cups of sugar and sharing food over the balcony, puppy walking and babysitting and so much more.

It’s hard to leave such a big chapter of our lives behind and say goodbye to our home.  Technically it’s not a full goodbye as we’ll just be renting, but we won’t return to this home if we return to the US to live. Nine years and a lot of life happened here. Walking out the door will be teary I’m sure.

I knew the goodbye would be hard, which is why we had the talented Carissa Christine Photography come for a lifestyle session before we started packing and shipping all the things. I love how it’s just us doing life on a Saturday in our little 1085.