A Salute to Saint George

If you haven't heard, we're moving! We decided to join the ranks of the first-time Home Buyers. While this is exciting, and we have lots to look forward to at our new house - second floor laundry! - there is a lot that we'll be sad to say good bye to at our current place on Saint George Drive.

Saint George Drive:

A quiet street in the quiet neighborhood of Sherwood Forest.

Who could have asked for a more enchanted first home?

I remember the first walk we took around the neighborhood. I commented on it having the feel and smell of a camp ground (only people were in houses instead of tents and campers).
On that walk, we noticed black rings around the trees on a particular neighbor's property and have always meant to ask why they are there. We never got around to it, so I guess we'll never know.
Walks are one of our favorite parts of living here. Before kids we often walked our loop before sunrise or underneath the moon. Now we walk during the day and/or after dinner. Sometimes we have meaningful conversations and sometimes we just observe the neighborhood.

The summer before we were married, we spent hours working on this new place of ours - cleaning, tearing out, and building back up our future home. It was a labor of love (that came with a nice discount on the rent).

In the first few months we lived here, we watched our space transform from empty - cardboard boxes for cutting boards and a futon as the lone piece of furniture in the living room - to furnished thanks to many generous friends and family!

We've hosted many guests, some more cheerfully than others - spiders, silverfish, a toad, a mole, many many mice, ants... neighbors, friends, and family

We've explored the hiking trails that meander up and down the mountain, through neighbor's backyards, and into beautiful clearings surrounded by hunting blinds. That is, we explored them until No Trespassing signs were posted. Oops?

The winters here have taught us valuable lessons in freezing pipes - how to survive without running water for 3 to 4 days, how to thaw and repair PVC pipes, how to mop up a lot of water, and not leave electronics on the floors. This past winter was the first that we got through without any frozen pipes! Winters here also made us master leaf rakers, master wood stackers, and master fire builders. This past winter was also the first winter that we figured out how to get our wood stove to heat more than just one room. #successes

We've rearranged our small space several times. The most significant being the time we got rid of our second living room in order to make a second bedroom when we were expecting our first Little.
We came home to this house as newlyweds and our girls came home to this house as we became new parents.

We've had many pancake breakfasts here to celebrate The Weekend, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Birthdays, and the first time our first baby Slept Through the Night!

One of our girls practiced her walking skills up and down this little hallway of ours. The other girl will be learning in a new house. She'll likely learn to climb stairs first, an opportunity her big sister didn't have here at home. But she did have the opportunity to swing in her own back yard. Little Sister will have to rely on parks or come back to this house to visit her Aunt and Uncle and her big sister's old swing.

The Step is another feature that will be sorely missed by a certain blue-eyed girl. But Mama looks forward to a little, fenced-in yard where the girls can go out to play on their own.

We'll miss living beside the friends we've made here. And the friends we haven't made, but have named anyways: The Lady Who Mows Every Day, The Girl Who Stares A Lot, Triple D, The Dog Who Barks A Lot, The Creepy Professor, The Stig, Star Wars Bob, and The Guy Who Never Mows (no Mark, that's not you).

It's been a great place to live and we've loved all the minutes we haven't hated.
I say that because just tonight, we have had both an electrical issue that literally blew up my beloved rice cooker and a plumbing issue that has messed up our already messed up washing machine.
So our current mood is: Ready to Move