A Place I Love

The house on Millington Court has new inhabitants, as of this weekend. The family that lived there last year has moved somewhere closer to the city, and a new family has moved in. They have four small children to fill it with laughter... to play in the basement we remodeled, to get new little hand prints on the wall going up the stairs, to take baths in the funky triangular tub in the master bath. The curtains I chose are still hanging at the windows in every room. The fireplace wall in the family room is still dark blue, a color chosen by the people who lived in the house before we did. When we were in the US a couple of weeks ago and drove by the house, the twig wreath I had hung on the front porch next to the door was still bravely in its place.

We have a realtor managing the house and the tenants for us while we are here in China. He had the house cleaned before the latest tenants moved in over the weekend, and took these photos for us so we could see the state of things. He took photos of every room, all of them empty except for a Foosball table in the basement, left by one of the last two families. I downloaded and opened each one, examining every corner of each empty room. There are still some butterfly decals on the wall in the girls' bedroom, and pennants over the window in Caleb and Seth's room. The carpet on the steps going to the second floor looks quite worn and even stained... how did that happen in the eighteen months we've been away?

I'm glad there's a new family living at Millington Court. I hope they take care of my house for me. I don't know if we'll ever live there again, but for now it's still our house, and I love it.

Hope Deferred

We're a little disappointed this morning. We woke up to an email from the realtor that is managing the rental of our house in Chicago. All week we've had a deal in the works with a family that we thought would be moving in this weekend... but this morning, Todd's email said the deal is off. No more details than that. Not sure what went wrong. I guess they found something they liked better... we had been told that they would either move to our house this weekend or temporary housing in the area, because they were moving in from out of town.

We've had a number of deals like this. None that got quite this far, but a lot of showings and second showings, and lots of good feedback

I'm sorry for our neighbors... I had so wanted the house to rent quickly so there wouldn't be a vacant house in the court for them. Somehow a vacant house seems dead. It needs a family to bring it alive.

I guess the right family just hasn't found our house yet.

Home

This framed print was a gift to me from my mom at my bridal shower sixteen-plus years ago. It has hung above our bed in every home we have lived in. When we moved into our last house, I had a new mat cut for it, and re framed it to update it a bit.

Last week I finally hung it above our bed here. The frame doesn't exactly match the furniture in our apartment, but somehow this print says "Home" to me. It feels good to have it in its place