That's how long we've lived in this house and the LONGEST we, as a couple, have lived anywhere. The actual anniversary of our house-closing is also the anniversary of the birth of
Johnny Appleseed. I like to think that has some sort of significance--growing for the future, etc. (Also, 3 years is pretty close to the longest Greg has lived in any one house, at all, his whole life.) It got me thinking about the places we have lived and decided to post about it. Not much to do with the kiddos, but it's fun for me, since that's another thing this blog is about:)
The first place we lived on our own was our home in Provo, UT. Our friends (hello Anneka and Jeremy!) found us this great place while we still lived in NJ. We lived there for 2 years while Greg and I finished our bachelors. I finished before Greg and worked at a nearby school while he finished up. It had a perfect price, location, and lots of great neighbors. It had been a single-family home before the then/current? owner tore it down and put up this duplex. All the houses around us were cute and that made me happy, even if our home wasn't as picturesque. We were sad but ready to go. In the picture, right behind my behind is my first attempt at a garden. It didn't move with us but it blessed some of our neighbors with tomatoes after we left.
Next up is Belchertown, Ma. Fun name, huh? We lived in this beauty for (again) 2 years while Greg started and finished his Masters in Math at UMass Amherst and I taught at a daycare down the road. This was an interesting place. It was twice the price of our apartment in Provo and that freaked us out, but it was by far the cheapest place that we could find. Law office below us, Bed and Breakfast and Chinese food on either side of us, Italian food across the street and
Common. It was next to the intersection of the 2 busiest streets and 1 of the 2 traffic lights in town. There was a biker-bar just a few yards away, so during good weather we could hear motorcycles for minutes at a time roaring past our windows.
What you see was our front door, it lead directly to the staircase that lead up to our apartment. Parker was born while we lived here. His room was
tiny and was right above the front door and was a converted hallway. Our room was gigantic, the living room was normal, but the kitchen was again
tiny and the bathroom was right off of the kitchen--Sonya loved that--not. Nothing normal about this house. It had clearly seen decades of families/owners who did funny things, like say seal off the (probably) creepy attic and turn the staircase into a creepy closet. But living there was an amazing blessing, we enjoyed living there, again good neighbors, free public transportation to school (socialism at its finest), the rent was low for the area, and I found a great job close by. We lived well below the poverty level but lived happy. I tried container gardening again, with the same result, I left it behind.
While we lived in Belchertown Greg got his first real-life job in Boston. We moved the 2 hours east and found an apartment that we lived in for (another) 2 years. It had lots of green grass and other kiddos for Parker to run around on and with. Greg's commute was again free! It was small and cramped, but since it was right next to a busy train station (Boston calls it the "T") Parker was very happy. He would sit next to the window and yell:"bye train!", just like Yoda yells:"bye truck!" today. I tried an indoor garden and it didn't do too well until my biologist friend told me I had to hand-cross-polinate the plants. After that it worked ok.
Then we found out that Mimi was on the way and we needed a bigger place. I know other families do it with less space, but we just needed a change.
This is the best picture I could find, weird.
So we moved to a nearby town with more space, our own driveway and a lawn. We lived there for a whopping 3 years. We had 3 bedrooms and a basement. This is also where I started blogging so you can see more of the house if you start at the
beginning of the blog. Again we had amazing neighbors, like some of the best-to-date. But we also had 2 of the WORST neighbors imaginable. Picture high schoolers at 2 in the morning partying and urinating on your lawn or Celine Dion pumped into the air while the listeners sang off-key at the top of their lungs. It got so bad we didn't go outside unless we were leaving. But our good neighbors made up for bad ones, big time! We had AMPLE space for a garden and we loved it! Even though it was a rental, the landlords didn't mind that I churned up the yard and put in the garden. I did however put grass back in before we moved away.
Greg had a terrible commute for the first time in his adult life, but then he had a job change and started to take the commuter train to Back Bay/part of Boston. So his commute became the most expensive ever, but also very convenient. This is the time in my life where I considered myself a single parent. Greg worked a lot and barely saw us. We needed a change-badly.
Everything is a long story, this blog post included, but Greg found the right mixture of work/family life in Ohio and so we came here.
Not my dream home, but it has things I did dream of wanting: fenced-in back yard, a good commute for Greg, walking to the elementary school, and lots of space to run around in. Good, quiet neighbors and a big-ol'-garden spot with lots of sun. It's new enough that it's not yet falling apart--I don't think we're up for major renovations yet, although I am looking forward a few someday, in a different house. But it's old enough (20+ years) to get a few facelifts, and we can learn as we go. Yoda was born here and I'm realizing that this is probably the home that the kiddos will most associate with their childhood. That's weird to me. This isn't what I pictured for us in some ways, but in other ways it's not a bad way to grow up.
Three more years? I don't know, we'll see.
