It's never easy to say goodbye

Even if it is to a building. (Especially if it was not just any old house, but your HOME for eight years!)
And yet that is what this past weekend was for us.

After eight months of not much action in a slumped housing market, we decided to consider renting our old house. Less than a week after we formally requested an exemption to pursue Darcy's adoption from our new agency ~ despite some reservations about our financial situation with two house payments ~ we were contacted by someone we knew (and more importantly FULLY trusted) who was interested in renting. Yet one more way that God revealed Himself as we took steps toward what we believed He was calling us to do. What a financial burden lifted without us lifting a finger!

Anyway, with renters coming in, that means that our stuff that had been left to "stage" the house had to come out. And so it was not a very fun weekend. Sure we had moved the basics up here with us in October, but we had furniture, pictures on walls, and in general eight years of life left in that house. Slowly we sorted through it all, making huge piles to toss or donate and boxing up the rest. I held it together until it came time to disassemble Ky's room.
I'm not sure I can convey the emotional energy that went into creating this room, from the "pigtail pink" walls to the custom made chair rail shelf above the white bead board half wall to the hand made furniture to the custom created bedding to the recovered glider to the paintings and book lovingly created by my sister to go along with the theme of this blog to the hand-me-down Eeyore rocking horse. This room was the two year wait to bring our much anticipated first child home.













I loved every detail of it. Soon enough we will unpack the boxes in a new home and then we'll work to make the girls' room unique. I'm guessing they won't want pink walls, but I'm holding out hope...

We worked like dogs most of the weekend, taking a quick break to celebrate sweet Abby's 7th birthday (I forgot my camera, but check out this post to see Kylie's "great manners" and this one to see Caleb's cake eating joy from my cousin's blog) on Saturday and attend church with Ian's mom on Sunday. Overall it was physically and emotionally draining. When we were finally done, I did let the tears flow freely as we made one last walk through. Then I remembered that I was leaving that house with the three reasons that life is joyful on a daily basis and was able to smile and say, "Goodbye house, thanks for storing so many memories!"

It's painful to now more officially close the Charlotte chapter of our lives, but I will say that I'm hopeful for the chapter to be played out here. God is just full of delightful surprises...