Thursday, January 21, 2010

Home Sweet Home

I've been fortunate in my life to have not moved around too much once I started grade school. I was born in Dearborn, Michigan on a Thursday at 3:11am. My mom and dad at the time were living in a trailer as they were young and didn't have much money. When I turned two we moved to an apartment in Ypsilanti, MI and not too long after that my mom found out she was pregnant with my brother. We soon moved to a house in Livonia in a quaint neighborhood of what you could call Huber Homes not too far from one of the Ford Plants. The house was nice and the first place I really remember living. It had a fenced yard, a finished basement with a playroom for me (well I guess Adam too) and a pool table. My preschool was in our neighborhood and my mom would walk me to school. We lived there till I was four when my dad was given the opportunity to start a new job in Ohio.

My brother was only 6 months old when my parents decided to move back to my dad's home state. I'm sure it was not easy for my mom trying to move with two young kids. My dad went first and tried to find us a house but it wasn't as easy as he thought and we ended up living with my grandparents for a while. Soon my dad found a house for us, a nice fixer-upper ranch in New England Acres.

It was an adorable house too, a big yard and a garage, I even got a room with pink carpet and wild 70's wallpaper! There were lots of kids in the neighborhood and that is where I met my best friends Jessica and Melissa. My mom and dad spent a good part of the first year there fixing the house, tearing up carpet and putting down new floors, stripping 10 layers of wallpaper in one room, painting the outside and having the basement waterproofed. As Adam and I got older, my parents decided that we needed a bigger house with more room for teenagers and more than one bathroom. I was in 6th grade when they put our house up for sale and my parents knew they wanted to stay in the same general area so we wouldn't have to change schools. Prior to this, my 5th grade teacher had retired and was in the process of moving away and told me that my parents should buy her house. I laughed it off, but a few months later my mom and I drove past where they lived and noticed a For Sale by Owner sign in the yard. My mom walked in the door a few weeks later and instantly fell in love with the house.

We bought my former 5th grade teachers house and in the summer of 1997 we moved to Chevington Woods! It was there that I met two of my other best life long friends, Laura and Alex.

I lived here till I went off to college in 2003 and lived in the next 3 places on campus at Otterbein College.

In 2007 I moved back home and went to school part time. I couldn't afford to be on my own at the time since I only had a part time job. In 2008 I met Andrew and we started looking for a house not too long after in the area where he was living. He got a job on the total other side of town and we had to start looking in other areas, which worked out because it was the same side of Columbus where I grew up!

Then in the winter of 2009 Andrew bought a house and asked me to move in with him!!! On March 28th it will be one year since he close on the house. This is the listing photo, but trust me it looks much better now!

I really hope that we don't have to move again for at least 5 years!

Today I'm participating in Mama Kat's Writers Workshop and I chose prompt number 4 about how many homes you've had, but I kinda changed it up a little talking about all of the places I've lived! Get on over there and choose a prompt!

4 comments:

Jennifer said...

We moved a lot when I was a kid, at least once a year. No way could I remember all the places I've lived.

Thanks for stopping by.

Emmy said...

Thanks for coming by my blog.

Sounds like you moved a lot too.. your was just when you were younger. I don't think I could have handled it when I was little, I was too shy for lots of years.

Maureen said...

Beautiful houses there in your pictures and beautifully written story of your childhood homes.

Erin said...

It's really nice that you have such great memories about your childhood friends and home!