Final Chapter

Tomorrow we close on our house in Kansas City. While we are so incredibly excited and thankful, it is bittersweet. We loved our Kansas City home. I don't know if we will ever have a home that we loved so much. We brought Will home from the hospital to that house. We celebrated 1st birthdays, first Christmases, and other holidays there.

We saw Bennett take her first steps there, watched Will eat his first solid foods, and found out we were pregnant with our final baby. We went from cribs to big girl beds. We cheered on first bicycle rides and comforted many boo boos and scrapes.

We watched their first friends come over to play and grew in our own friendships as we invited folks over for dinner and game nights. We discovered Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Elmo, and Ariel in that house. We watched nervously as we sent them out the door to pre-school for the first time, and then sighed in relief when they came home safe and sound.

We read thousands of bedtime stories, sprayed monster spray at night to keep the bad guys out, and stumbled in their rooms blindly at midnight to give bottles or dry tears caused from bad dreams.

This was our home during such special and formative years. It is where we said good-bye to Kirby the Wonder Dog and where we decorated gingerbread houses and dyed their first Easter eggs. And while we haven't lived there in nearly three months, it was our last permanent link to Kansas City and the life we had there.

We are so extremely happy that it has sold. What an answer to prayer. We feel so blessed, but I will always have a special place in my heart for the house where I watched my children grow from babies to toddlers to inquisitive big kids.

This is what the house looked like when we bought it.

And this is what it looked like when we moved. We planted the roses in front for Bennett's birthday and we planted blue hydrangeas on the side for Will's 1st birthday. You can't see them in this shot, but they are there. We added the daylilies and azaleas because they reminded me of the South. Adding to our little yard each year was so fun and all of the touches remind me of specific times in our lives. And as you can tell, we had the roof replaced. It desperately needed it when we moved in and a nice little hailstorm helped us in that effort.

This was our kitchen before we moved in. It was nice, but very cold and impersonal.

We had all the tile taken out and put down the hardwood. We added a built in pantry and painted the island a beautiful green that shows up a lot better in person. We painted the walls an ivory/yellow and hopefully made it a whole lot warmer and more inviting.

This was our living room when we moved in. Look at 15 month old Bennett hanging out in her pack and play.

This room was my favorite transformation. We pulled up the carpet and extended the hardwood to the living room. We painted the walls the same ivory/yellow color so it would flow from the kitchen to the living room. We added the built in bookshelves that you see on either side of the fireplace and we had all of the dated brown wood work painted a beautiful cream color. I loved the finish result!

We didn't change much at all in the basement. This was before.

And this is after. No changes in terms of paint or flooring, but I just want to have this on here to remember our favorite hangout in the house. We loved having the separate area where Rob and I could chill out and where the kids could have their space. I drank many cups of coffee with my friends on those couches while we watched our little ones roam about. One of the best parts about the houses in Kansas are their basements. We loved ours!

And here are some shots of the kids through the years in our Kansas home......

Our first family picture at our home.

And our final one a few days before we moved.

I'm excited to get into our new home in Dothan. Ready to bring our baby girl home to her first house. Ready to send big kids off to Kindergarten, watch as the training wheels come off, cheer for new experiences, and start the next phase of our life. Here's to final chapters and new beginnings.