Letting things go - specifically our piano

We have moved a lot.

8 times in all.  And I purge a lot.  So, we don't have a lot of things that have stuck with us.

But, this one has.

It's a beautiful piano.  Built in 1910 and made to last.  The style is completely us - clean lines, no frills.  I picked out this piano from a shop in Fort Collins, Colorado right before we moved into our new, large-enough-for-a-piano house.  I greeted it with visions of kids someday, kids who would first bang and then actually play the keys.

When we moved out to Chicago, the piano stayed behind.  A friend agreed to keep it for us at their house.  I still think they were pretty surprised when, 3.5 years later, we asked to take it back and we moved it to Chicago.

I was so thankful to have it - it is huge, heavy and loud but you could just as easily say it's grandiose, substantial and vociferous.  This year our 9 yr old, Claire, decided to start lessons.  It's been amazing to hear her play daily.  

But, as we prepare to move back to Colorado, we decided to not bring it with us.

This has been hard for me and for Claire. But we must say farewell.  On to new adventures without the weight of a 100 yr old piano.

 On a separate note, the cats' puffer balls have all been found.

So long to the old pine....

We had this huge white pine right in front of our house.  It was not only unpleasant to look at, it also made a huge mess on the roof, ground and cars.  It was impossible to grow anything around it and I was always afraid one of the trunks would break off and land on our family room.  So, we saved up for a few years and then finally had it removed.

The BEFORE!

Pulling it down.

The AFTER!

How do you say goodbye?

I am trying to figure out how to process the events of the last few weeks.  In some ways they were planned out long in advance and in other ways they seemed to appear suddenly.  Matt accepted a job in Colorado so we find ourselves putting our house on the market, finishing out summer camps quickly and planning to move there in just a few short months.

We came to live in Chicago when Anna was 2 and Claire was just 4 months old.  We uprooted from suburban life and settled ourselves into a busy, crazy city.  We sometimes lived on ramen noodles and canned carrots, but we were just so happy.  Happy to be on our own, away from our home state for the first time and excited for whatever the future held.  Matt was just starting his graduate degree in Philosophy and all doors seemed open wide.

Fast forward several years to the surprise pregnancy that would become Katherine.  This took us a bit off guard and we decided to head back "home" to Colorado and try to sort out our new life as a family of 5.  It became obvious pretty quickly that Matt wouldn't be able to finish his degree and establish his new consulting business.  So, we found ourselves back in Chicagoland - this time we settled in our favorite, close to Chicago suburb.

Our home in Evanston was beautiful and the neighborhood was almost too perfect to believe.  Our littlest one learned to walk just a few months after we moved in and we felt it was a perfect place to be. A couple of years later things changed dramatically and we ended up deciding to buy our first home since Anna was a baby.

When we arrived in Glenview back in 2011, we hoped and prayed for good neighbors and a quick adjustment.  Wow, were we surprised!  This home has felt the most "home" to me so far, the neighbors have been truly family and being so close to our church we have put down deep roots there - helping out weekly and hosting several different groups at our home.

We will be leaving close friends - friends who would drop everything to help out, friends whom our kids play with every single day.  Friends who have shared hurts and their hearts with us.  While we leave with anticipation of being close enough to see our family more than once a year, we also leave knowing it will be harder to keep in touch with those here.

During this time of transition we are thankful for:
1.  God's clear direction
2.  Our kid's resilience and adaptability
3.  Encouragement
4.  Each other
5.  Family

Those pesky analytics

So, today I decided to look at my Google Analytics.

Turns out that when you stop writing on your blog, you get less page views!  Say what?!

Yeah, I get it.

But, what to do when I just don't feel like writing.  I need a theme, a purpose, something to write about!

I'll keep searching. I think just writing about my kids gets old, writing about my day to day life is mega boring and writing about work is just not interesting to me!

There is something intriguing about having an audience, a support system as it were.