Saying Goodbye

God has blessed us so much. We so enjoy this new home we're living in with all the extra space. The kids are so happy here too! To further our blessings, we are closing on our old house next week. As part of the deal, the buyers are having the house completely repainted. We didn't want the kids to be confused by the change, so we spent one evening a few weeks ago saying goodbye. They were pretty confused at first b/c they assumed that we would continue to be able to come over to our old house and play. So it wasn't a fun thing explaining this would be the last time. Thankfully, they were able to make the most of it and we had a really special time as a family in this great house that we lived in for four wonderful years. Anna showing off her room....


This house has three bedrooms, so Collin never had his own room. So I sat him on the floor where his (actually all three of our babies') co-sleeper bed was.


This is our bonus room. We kept a lot of the kids toys in here and they played either in here or the living room. I LOVED the color I painted this room and was sad to leave it behind. I couldn't resist getting all three kiddos in their bonus room for a picture. :)


I really wanted to get another picture of Benjamin in the bonus room.....

Like I did over two years ago. He's grown so much!! (May 2008)

And here's the bug-a-boo in his room. It was green when we lived there, but we painted it white to make it more neutral for buyers. Too bad as that was a waste of paint/time, the buyers painted it a crazy wild orange color. The rest of the house is very wild colors too. We hope this new family will enjoy making it their home as much as we did though.

I was being super sentimental and had the kids sit on the counter in our bathroom where I bathed them as newborns.....

They had fun playing in their old bathtub too.

I thought this was a funny picture of Benjamin dancing in his room.

Anna was cute and all of a sudden declared she was going "night, night" in her room...

All the kids playing in Benjamin's room. We used to do this when we lived here for a change of scenery.

Going out back to play one last time!

We were overjoyed when we got out back and saw how beautiful all the plants were. I used to watch these lilies grow and wait for them to bloom each summer and would get excited when they finally did. They don't stay pretty for long, so I thought it was a nice blessing to have them be so pretty while were saying goodbye! :)

I try to be artistic and get pretty pictures of Anna sniffing flowers, but she always wrinkles her nose into her stinker face. Just goes to show the spunk she has to go along with her pretty/sweet side!

Benjamin next to my favorite tree. I used to take their picture next to it when they were dressed up like at Halloween and Easter.

I had Dave recreate fun he used to have back when we just had Benjamin. (He used to run around holding little Benjamin and they would run through the sprinkler.) This time he was blessed with a boy in each arm!

We had a very fun game of tag! (I thought this picture turned out neat, how the kids are in focus and the background is blurry.)

Run, Benjamin run!!!! This was such a special yard for me and my first born. We have had countless fun times out here over his four years!!

I really shouldn't post this picture, but I couldn't resist. It tickled me so much seeing both Dave and Collin's funny expressions!!! hehehe

Anna all of a sudden sat down on our step and said, "I'm taking a wittle break, Mommy." This concrete step is one thing I definitely won't miss. It always made me so nervous with the kids.

Isn't she so lady like and don't you just love her bruised/banged up legs? She's definitely my adventurous one of the bunch, which results in many owies.

Dave took over camera duty so that I could get in on the tag game. It was so hot and humid that evening, but we still had so much fun!

I was bad and let them each have a flower bunch that normally I would never have let them pick off of one of the bushes out back. Here's that stinker face sniff again...

Benjamin was pleased!

Everybody used to love how Benjamin and Anna would greet them by looking through this curtain at our front door whenever the bell rang. Here they are about to leave their first home for the last time. :(

Saying goodbye was really hard. You can see here that it was starting to affect Benjamin. I went back in to lock up and turn off the lights and say goodbye and he decided to come with me. He ended up crying and was really sad that we wouldn't be coming back. It broke my heart a bit. :( I'm so thankful that we were able to have such a special goodbye as a family to our first house. We so loved it there and shared so many special memories!!!