Good bye House!

Yesterday, we said good bye to our home in Turkey. We walked through it with the boys. Abigail was in my arms. And we said good bye. The boys got silly. "Good bye cabinet. Good bye shower. Good bye windows."

It started me thinking back to all the homes I had. Since the blog is designed to be a history of my life for my children and grandchildren some day, I thought I would take a bit of a walk down memory lane, home-style.

My parents were born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. Before I was born, they moved to South Florida where my father took a job at Fort Lauderdale Christian School. I was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1977. I don'thave any memories of the homes I lived in prior to when I was four years old and we left South Florida to return to Illinois. Below is a picture of my brother and me with my great aunt Helen and Uncle Ray outside of the home I lived in pre-memories. Maybe my parents could fill me in. How many houses did I live in prior to Illinois?

This is where my memories of where I lived first began. I can vividly remember our home in Thorton, Illinois. When I was four and my brother was two, they relocated to the north again. My Dad and his four brothers were going to start an aluminum siding business. But after about a year, they decided to return to South Florida as the business, while successful, couldn't fully support five families. I remember we had a dog named Brandi. I remember that the house had a huge basement. I remember watching parades on the street. I remember thinking my bed ate my socks in that house. I remember eating M&M's in the backyard. Here is a picture of my brother and I preparing to go trick-or-treating on the porch of that home.

When we returned from Illinois to South Florida in 1983, my parents bought this mobile home. It was a double-wide. I would live in this house until I left for college in 1995. It was my childhood home. Today, that mobile home park is long gone. Replaced by a shopping center.

My first home "away from home" was my college dorm room at Western Kentcuky University in 1995. Here is a picture of me with Kristi Hartley Hunt. She and I are still the best of friends to this day. Hard to believe after living in this tiny space with each other for two years that we still liked each other. But this little room has some powerful memories for me!

After my second year in the dorms, I moved into an apartment with four other girls: Kristi, Laurie (who lives in Kentucky with her twin sons), Leah (who I visited with in Germany last year), and Shea (who just had her first son and I stay in good touch with.) This was before digital cameras, so photos were not abundant for broke college students. I did find a picture of my apartment building though that we took after a hail storm ravaged Bowling Green in 1998. We lived on the bottom floor of the picture in the middle. I shared a room with Leah. Everyone else had their own room.

In December of 1996, JB finished art school in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and decided to move to Kentucky to work as a graphic designer. He rented a 2 bedroom apartment a few miles from Western Kentucky Unviersity. His classmate Shawn was his first roommate. Later he had another roommate, Anthony.

It was in the apartment that I shared with my girlfriends that JB proposed to me at 12:01am on my birthday -- May 22, 1997. Here we are that night with our friends Shawn and Leah who were in on sneaking JB into the apartment to propose to me.

Then, JB and I got married. June 20, 1998. We moved into a two bedroom town home for a year that I cannot find a picture of. It was my senior year of college. When I graduated college a year later (1999), I got a job teaching in Franklin, Kentucky, and we moved into a brand new two bedroom two bath duplex. We loved this house! Here we are with our godchildren on a rare Kentucky snow day.



And here is that home on a beautiful spring day. The thing I remember most about living here was that my cousin Josh and his wife Sarah lived across the street. We were Lucy and Ethel in those duplexes. It was a fantastic three years in that home (two years for Josh and Sarah.)



In 2003, we were off to Rochester, Minnesota. JB had gotten into Mayo Clinic Medical School and our life would begin anew there. The first year we were there, we rented this house (pictured above.) Our great friends from Kentucky, Ron & Ebby (and their children: English, Veronica, Hunter, and Cole) moved into the upstairs of the home. And we rented the mother-in-law apartment down below.

After one year in the rental home, JB and I decided to buy our first place. We found an awesome condo one block from the medical school with underground parking. I quit teaching and began writing and editing. We walked everywhere! All of Mayo is connected by an underground people subway so you could not freeze to death. We lived on the second floor: #207. It was a building filled with mainly elderly, retired folks. It was quiet, warm, and peaceful.

We renovated the tiny kitchen of the condo. We had tons of meals with friends in this space. Because we lived so close to the school and were an "older couple" in the class, our house became a hang out for medical school friends -- especially many of the single ones. This house had so many warm memories. It also had a lot of painful memories as our infertility journey was its peak during the three years we lived here.

In 2007, JB began his residency on Eglin AFB in the panhandle of Florida. We decided to keep things easy and get a house on Base. This house would come to raise Scrubs, Isaac, and Elijah until 2010 when we moved to Turkey.

And then our home in Turkey. 2010-2012. Good bye sweet home. We loved living here!