Moving, Again!!

Let's see,in the last 9 years of our marriage, we have moved 12 times. I should be an expert by now. I could do it in my sleep. I don't stress out (okay, I do a little bit when things don't go my way), I know how to do it, where everything will go, how it will fit, and again, unload more clutter due to no use in 1-2 years. Tonight we checked out our new house before we move stuff over in the morning. It feels huge to us! As we drove away tonight, I couldn't help but feel a little giddy about moving there. It sits on 3 acres of land and has an awesome view to the west: perfect for watching sunsets. I cannot wait!

This made me think of the best and worst of houses we have lived in. Some have been a wonderful dream to be in, and others, a living nightmare. So, first up, the worst house we have lived in was:

The Haunted House. It felt like a drippy, wet cave, and smelled like it. It was infested with fleas that attacked the minute you stepped foot in the house. One night I opened up the utility closet and it looked like a waterfall in there; the humidity and dampness only creating a more perfect breeding ground for the fleas. We left for the weekend to go to my 10 year high school reunion, and the roof caved in over our desk, ruining several books. Mold started to creep up the walls. Doesn't sound haunted, right? It had a few issues with water, you think. It got creepy when we would take a shower in the master bathroom and we would hear screaming and crying. We would wake up at night hearing babies crying. Then some mysterious red stains appeared in the baby's room. There just was no warmth to the house and from what neighbors had told us, the people that had lived there before had been having domestic problems and bad things had happened in the house. We had the house blessed, which helped, but didn't last for long. After the roof caved in and we reported it to the city, the landlords let us move out to another house. Thank goodness! Even years later when we would drive by the house we would get the creeps.

The Septic House. This was here in Nebraska. It was the first and only one we could find that was available for our big family. It sat in the middle of 10 acres of wheat, had a red barn and a garden with apple trees to the north of the house. The house was an old farm house, so old the lady we rented it from had been born in it. It was dated, that was for sure, but I thought it was romantic...until I went to put up the shower curtain and saw there was no shower. Then the toilet started gurgling. It was backing up into the "shower" (looked like a dirty, creepy, pink camp ground shower) in the basement. They came out to fix it, drained the septic tank, and we thought all was good. We got a portable shower head and used that for washing our hair. A week later, a cold front hit and it got down to 25 degrees. Upstairs had no heat, which is where our bedroom and the babies room was, but it was so frigid up there, we slept downstairs on the couches. Romantic ideas were beginning to wane. One night a huge mouse made his way lazily across the living room while my declawed cat tried to catch it. The living room chandeliers had ornaments hanging from them, but they looked to be more like one testicle someone molded into a metal ornament and thought people would enjoy looking at them over dinner or during casual conversations. We lived there 4 months and the septic tank backed up 3 times, as if on cue for a certain day of the month. We drew the line the day I was taking a shower, 9 months pregnant, and Jesse came in to use the bathroom. After he flushed, the toilet exploded, shot water all over the bathroom and not being able to move quickly enough, overflowed so much it seeped through the floor into the basement. Then the septic tank backed raw sewage up into the shower again. After I called to get someone in to fix it, they informed me I would have to wait until Monday, three days later, for a plumber to come out to fix it. They also suggested I hug a bush if I needed to go in the meantime. 9 months pregnant and I'm supposed to go relieve myself out in the bushes in the middle of the night?! That was it!!! I had the baby, and we moved out the following month.

These weren't the worst houses, but they had issues. The first house we lived in after we got married had a termite problem and three years after we moved out the termites ate the kitchen floor and it caved in. We moved into a tiny house in Utah after that. It was over priced, short on cabinet space, and had a swamp cooler that smelled like dead fish, oh, and was infested with spiders that Isaac, then 2, would let crawl all over his hand and only freaked out about it after I freaked out about a spider on my baby. One other house we lived in was small, but we worked with it. We got excited when the landlord said he would replace the carpet in the house. The day we moved in, the carpet was black/charcol. It made the house smaller, darker and depressing.

Our Favorite House:
The Blue House. It was also in Utah, and while we struggled a lot up there with different issues (financial, emotional, had a baby, bought our first new car), the Blue House was wonderful to come home to. The floor plan was perfect. Upstairs was like a one bedroom apartment, but we used it for a craft room, the boys bedroom, storage, a guest room, etc. It was such a flexible house. It had 11 rooms and each was open and flowing with the others. In the boys room (when they were downstairs) there was a little door in the wall that lead to a small room under the stairs. It had a ladder they could climb to the second floor, sort of like an indoor tree house. It was great! We cried when we moved away from it.

The New House. We built this when Curtis was in Qatar. I had never had that experience before and actually enjoyed it, but one day, after we had been living in it for about three months, I walked in the door and was over come with the feeling that this was not our house. We would not have that house for long. I think Heavenly Father was preparing me to move away because I was very attached to that house and had wonderful and grand plans for it. I loved the floors: a wood floor look alike vinyl. I liked my bathtub too. I had also set out to landscape the backyard, and had a U-shaped walkway installed. I loved to be outside there, and walk the path through the backyard. Nothing else was out there, but I had dreams.

So, that's the story of my favorite and worst houses to live in. I hope this house we are moving into this weekend will become one of my favorites, and I think it will. Woudln't it be great if we could save up all our favorite things about all the houses we ever lived in and create them again in one wonderful house?

Anyone care to share your story?