Dear [new owner] and your sweet daddy...

Dear "new owner" (and your sweet Daddy),

We are thrilled that you have chosen to buy our house and will be living in our home.  I know after having met you  last night on our cold doorstep...with your 84 year old daddy in tow...that it will be taken care of and filled with new, loving memories.  That is exactly what we did when we moved in, almost 17 years ago.  At that time it was just my husband, my first little boy, who had just turned 4, and my very, very pregnant self.  We had been looking in Dunwoody for several weeks, and obviously, I had a deadline! I fell in love with this house from the moment I walked in.  The previous owners were being transferred, but were so sad to leave, as they had only been in it for 9 months. They had just had their first child and put in hardwoods upstairs.  Although there was hideous wallpaper covering every bathroom and the kitchen, (metallic and pastels!! Really!!) and was “sponge painting” faux finishes in the sunroom and foyer, (teal was apparently the favorite color of another owner) I saw the potential and was ready to move in-that day!  I can remember getting the message that our offered was accepted at the school where I was teaching…and our life in this house began. (way back in the dark ages, when a message meant the school secretary slipped a hand-written note under your classroom door...back before text messages, emails, and docusign.)

I brought home my 2^nd baby, a beautiful daughter, to this house, just 4 weeks after moving in.  This house already had a nursery and the previous owners had a baby girl who just happened to have the same unusual middle name that we had chosen for ours. We began stripping wallpaper and making friends, and a year later, brought  our last baby home to fill up the bedrooms. 

This house has held our family in close.  We’ve celebrated countless birthdays, mothers’ days, fathers’ days, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  We’ve had big crowds for the Superbowl, and small spontaneous dinners with friends.  We've had blazing fires in the winter and candlelit dinners when the power went out during summer storms. Kids and pets have run from one end of the house to the other, from the front door through the back door, and all over that backyard.  That backyard was the scene for our son’s 8-year old Food Fight birthday party, his graduation lunch, Easter egg hunts, freeze tag, snowball fights,and late night “dates” with my husband. The little house in the back was my daughter’s birthday present when she turned 2.  My sweet daddy built that for her and was a mini house full of love and laughter. My youngest has had many a game of soccer, football, golf, bow-hunting, baseball, you name it-back there.  And one our favorite family memories will be the arrival of spring and our cherry trees we planted 15 years ago…just wait!  My husband swears if you stand still you can watch them actually bloom.

I’ve tucked in 3 amazing little people into bed under this roof.  I’ve put dollar bills under pillows, hidden Christmas gifts in the basement, and marked heights on the wall.  I’ve high-fived teenage boys, listened to girls giggle and sing with the music turned all the way up, worried as new drivers back out, and hugged little bodies like crazy.  I’ve said prayers and wiped tears, and used up a lot of bandaids and Tylenol.  And I washed 1.2 million loads of clothes in that laundry room.

This is the only house my 2 younger kids have ever lived in. My oldest has few memories of his first house, and will come home from college this year to a different address.  We’ve lived an amazing life of a family under this roof…and we will be leaving it empty of furniture, but full of our love.

We wish many wonderful days and nights for you and your family and friends under this roof.  We know life isn’t always a smooth ride, but we hope that when the road gets bumpy, this home offers you a soft place to land, as it has always done that for us.

So yes, it looks like we are moving...and FINALLY
selling our house.  Apparently the 3rd time on the market was the charm.  After a bazillion showings the first 2 times we

were on the market, this time we had an offer in hours.  The events following that day have been bizarre and crazy and unexpected, (including a bidding war and a late night drop-in visit from meaningful yet strangely desperate possible buyers..) and well, have shown me once again, that I am NOT in charge.  So boldly we go.  Without a clue or place to land (yet), but knowing that someone else does.  I can't wait to see what He has in store for us!  (and this picture of Tucker playing tennis last night is random and I just got tired of trying to figure out how to move it out of this post.  Enjoy!)