We're in our new home and are semi-settled.  That means most of the boxes have been unpacked, we found all the dishes (went for a week eating off 3 dishes until I found the rest in the freezer!), the kids rooms are set up and we're sleeping in our own bed. 

Some how this seems a bit anticlimactic.  After all the planning, discussing, worrying and just plain stressing over the move is has come and gone and we're down to the last two things to get our final 'CERTIFICATE OF OCCUPANCY'.  This means our construction loan will be completed and we'll officially owe the bank for the rest of our lives.

As a reminder, here is where we started in January of this year.

Here is where we are now with the garage complete, water system and septic hooked up and the house, sans gutters, complete.

I guess in the big scheme of things, this has gone rather quickly.  I admit I've been a bit pushy toward contractors and builders.  I even apologized the other day when shaking our main contractor's hand as we said thanks and see-ya.  His service is R & K Tractor and a wonderful guy.  Honest, fair and efficient.  I would recommend him to anyone in the Southern Oregon area who needs work done.

So the DH is on 3 weeks vacation and my honey-do list has a few items on it.  He is moving right along and the kids are helping out greatly.

Socks

With the move complete it is time to get back to my business.  Knitting socks from YOUR yarn.  I have lined up 3 venues I will be vending at this year.  Sister's Harvest Festival in Sister's Oregon, Sun River Traditions Fair, Thanksgiving weekend in Bend Oregon and the Brookings Christmas Festival sometime in November. 

My schedule is as follows:

July - All 100 slots are taken for socks

August - I've put the 100 slots on my ETSY webshop today

September - Start knitting for vending and customer's )125 slots available

October - Continue knitting for shows and customer's; 125 slots available

November - Customer's knitting, 125 slots available...last day for guaranteed delivery for Christmas is November 20th.

December - Finish up customer's knitting and start baking for Christmas.

So, if you are considering socks for the Holidays, get your yarn organized and email me with the # of skeins so I can reserve your spot in the production line.

I am keeping strictly to the above knitting schedule as last year came and went and I didn't even get to do many of the Holiday traditions we normally do because of sock knitting.

Remember, if you would like, you can request I knit the foot of your socks and leave live stitches for you to pick up and finish the leg with a fancy pattern.  Lace, cables? Whatever you like.  Just note that on your form.

Home is where you hang your hat or where you heart is.  Yes, both can be true but to me home is not a place as much as it is a feeling.  We’re in the final throws of moving to our new ‘home’.  This will be the last move for us.  That is until the kids force us to move into the retirement community, hopefully, when I am over 75. 

After days of frenzied packing and labeling, the house is mostly empty.  This has been a good house for us for the past 18.5 years.  It has seen events in our lives that will never be repeated like the birth of our two youngest children years after we thought our family was complete.  It has witnessed our two older children growing up and attending the local school, colleges and University.  It has seen my oldest son becoming a handsome man with a career; the oldest daughter a successful teacher, wife and beautiful mother.  I am so proud of them both and forget to tell them how much I love them. 

This house has seen storms, both of the weather and personal type.  We’ve experienced electrical outages, bears in our trash, falling trees, a neighborhood fire and a few police calls because of neighbors. It has seen pigs, chickens, ducks, dairy cows, cats, dogs, fish and ginny pigs raised, cared for, loved and in some cases, buried in the back yard.

Even though this house has been witness to the past 18+ years of our lives, I have not considered it my ‘home’.  I know it is home for our kids but not for me.  I’ve felt like a visitor, that it has not been really mine.  This will be the 18^th move for me.  But I consider my home the house I grew up in on Crescent Ave.  I lived the first 11 years of my life there and every time I visit my parents I drive by the house and remember.  I wonder if my kids will do the same with this house?

I’ve lived in many types residences; houses, manufactured homes, apartments, a condo, upstairs, downstairs, next door to a pair of murders who were arrested at night, in an apart with no water or sewer because the landlord died and no one knew; an upstairs Victorian (try moving a piano and water bed up 2 flights of narrow stairs), on the good side of town, on the bad side of town; with boyfriends, husbands and alone which was the most difficult of all.

 Will this new house be home?  I’m thinking so.  It is the move I’ve always dreamed about.  Living on the outskirts of a town with nature all around it seems like paradise.  At 53 I’m starting over with a pretty big mortgage and 6 acres that are brush, Foxgloves, wild turkey, deer, elk and lots of pokie bushes.  I’m excited about the possibilities but am a bit sad about moving farther away from our adult children and the new grandbaby.  Some days I think if I had it to do all over I may not have made this move.  Only time will tell.  And, as my good friend tells me, it is only a 2+ hour drive to see the Grandbaby and a 40 minute drive to see the son;  basically a commute in the ‘real’ world.

So today we’ll move the last of our ‘stuff’ and I’ll clean the rooms.  I’ll help the kids carve their initials into the backside of their closets (a tradition I’ve done since the first move, 18 times), I’ll take that final picture as we drive away, ignore the neighbors as they have ignored us for the past 18 years, be oh so glad to be gone from the trash/doggie poo burning and bitchy San Diego transplant neighbors and make that final drive down the steep hill.  As I turn left onto Parkway and the rest of our lives I’ll look back fondly on the past and gaze to the future and all the possibilities that come with creating a new home.