A House is a House of Course.....

Except when it is your home......

So as you all know I started this blog a short time ago to write about our PCS, as well as getting myself prepared for the inevitable empty nest and well, of course everything else.
This will fall under the everything else part. For the past few weeks we have been working really hard to get our house on the market, washing, scrubbing,painting storing and the much love de-cluttering. In essence erasing any hint of the family, my family, that lives here. Mostly it has been frustrating. The fear of trying to sell the house is overwhelming at times. Those of you who know, it is almost impossible to PCS and still have to pay a mortgage at your old duty station. It can be done but who wants to go through your savings that took years to build because you can not sell your old house. Not me.

We have been through more moves than I can count, across continents, 4 to be exact in our first 12 years of marriage, from Japan to Spain to Africa and back to the USA with a 120 Lb dog, yes he is a Spanish Duel Citizen..and it all went pretty well. So I am sure if it were not for the sale of the house this move would be going much easier..maybe, maybe not. It has occurred to me, to all of us thanks to our son (out of the mouths of babes) that this isn't just our house, this is our home and it is going to suck when we leave.

He is right, we have been in this house the longest we have been anywhere, 5 years. This was the first home in the US that my son has any memory of, we came here when he was in the 8th grade and now he is going to graduate High School here. This is where we were for 5 birthdays, 5 anniversaries and 5 Xmas's. This is pretty incredible for a military family, for ours especially because we had moved so much our first 10 years in the military. I also realize for us military folks that home is basically where they send us and as long as we are together we are always home...but sometimes a house becomes a part of that story.

This house holds so many stories for us. We purchased it on the Internet from West Africa. As soon as I set eyes on it I had to have it..and I got it. This is where we have been together, apart and laughed and cried. This is where friends from out of town just happened to "pop" in to cheer me up after my hubs left on one of his deployments. This is where we walked on the beach and watched the sunset. This is the house where I cursed the yard every time my hubs left because I just couldn't stand maintaining it and this is where I ultimately hired a landscaper. But there were sad times too. This is where we received bad news of the death of friends, of family, and 3 deployments and countless training separations. But this is also where we welcomed great friends, were our last memories of some of them will forever be encased , gone to soon, before we were ready to say goodbye. This couch is where I was sitting when I got a call that my husband had hit an IED in Afghanistan and realized that however prepared I thought I was to get that kind of news, I was wrong, dead wrong. And this is where I was sitting when he called and I was shaking from my head to my toes and this is where I sat and was supported and kept sane by friends I never met in person but that saved my sanity on more than one occasion. This is where we have laughed, cried, and were a family like we never will again after this move. After this move my son will be off to college, and once your kid leaves for college it is never like it was before. I am sure our new house will have its share of memories, good, bad and all the things in between. We will have Xmas's and birthdays, and anniversaries and good times, with good friends.
But now it is clear to me, this house is a house of course, but mostly this is our home. I will miss you home...