Monday Morning Packing Reflections

It's been a fairly sentimental time for me this weekend. We have officially given our notice to move out of our rental. I have lived in this house longer than I've lived in any home, my entire life. See this beautiful doe? She is getting ready to have a baby. Its that time of year around here, and for seven years we've welcomed lots of tiny, baby, spotted fawns at our house....and little baby turkeys and bear cubs. We wake up to deer in our yard almost every morning, and go to bed with them in our yard almost every night.
I watched Superman mow a bit tonight with Miny on his lap, and it almost made me cry. We will no longer need a riding mower. We will no longer put kiddos on our laps to mow. We won't have a two foot deep sea of golden leaves to wade through in the fall or our own snowboarding hill in the winter. The kids can't just "go for a hike" and catch snakes and lizards by walking out the backdoor. There won't be a fishing pond a bike ride away. I will miss my morning walks with God up and down our secluded driveway. Buddy will not have the run of the mountain to his heart's content.

Neither will I surrender my garden to grazing deer or need a flashlight and bear spray to take the trash out at night. We won't need a tractor to get out in the winter or deal with flooding in the basement. I won't worry about bear dropping out of trees by my kids or eating all the apples off my porch and leaving their diarrhea in the place of the apples.

It will be different, for sure. I will miss our little slice of Idaho here. However, there is a bit of joy that comes with home ownership (at least that is what I hear). Plus, we're not real fond of the idea of living in our kids' basement when we're too old to work to pay our rent.

So here we go. We have three weeks to remove seven years of our life from this home, a barn, and two other out-buildings. Not an easy task. So if you want to spend time with me in June, bring coffee and boxes! :)

I often feel that the things in my storage areas don't reflect anything of who I am today. You'd never know this girls' style used to be Victorian.  Its handy having an entire room that you can store boxes and close the door and forget about. I've spent so much time this week packing crystal and china and silver. Sometimes I wonder what people do with those things, and how on earth I ended up with so much. Maybe some day I'll do fancy entertaining .....but then again maybe not.

It leaves some reflecting to do about the amount of baggage we carry through life - whether it is emotional or  physical, are we carrying stuff around and hiding them in storage rooms in case we might need them? or because we don't want to deal with them yet?  My friend Shelly Blank just spoke on this at our women's brunch on Saturday, while I was taking a packing break.

Anyway....just a few reflections this morning. Happy Monday!