Home.

I stand in a kitchen cluttered with boxes, stray dishes and packing paper.  Several boxes are opened, more are still taped shut. Cabinet doors are flung wide, chairs are shoved around and a step stool sits in the middle of everything because I’m too short to reach nearly half of the shelves.  I move plates from one location to another, thinking about the most logical place to keep them. I look for smart storage solutions and realize the house we love, the kitchen I love, has only four drawers, none of them next to one another and I’m so very confused about whether the silverware should be in the far left corner of the kithen or the opposite right corner.

I think about giving up on unpacking. I sigh and wander around the house and the garage again looking for the box marked “wine glasses”. And then I hear a giggle from outside. And then another. And then little girl squeals as the door swings wide open and Chessa runs in with the girls across the street on her heels. As she runs through the house she yells, “I want to show them my new room, Momma!”  Cole trails behind them, trying to keep up but decides to stop for a kiss and a pack of fruit candies.

The wine glasses don’t seem like quite as much of a necessity now and I smile thinking about how lucky we are that a house with a layout and a backyard that we loved, happened to be in a great neighborhood where kids play in the street and run in and out of each other’s houses.

Days later the furniture is (mostly) in it’s place.  The wine glasses have been located. The boxes have been unpacked, broken down and taken to recycling.  The apartment keys are in a pile on the counter, ready for a trip across town to return them.  We still have pictures to get on the walls, we need a rug here, an accent chair there, a new comforter and some odds and ends.

But, we’re home.