We are alive...

We are alive but our old laptop is not, which is the reason I haven't been posting anything since the first of the year.  Although that laptop lasted a long time, it has been officially retired.  We now are the proud owners of a fancy smancy computer that I'm still learning how to use but it's great (and by great I mean, it doesn't take 20 minutes to check kids quarterly grades.)  I have low standards in the technical department.
A lot has happened since the first of the year, that I'm going to go back and post, but for now the big news is that we are leaving Chicago in a few days and we are sad about it.  If you asked me three years ago if I would be sad to leave Chicago, I would have laughed, but now I am.  We have such great friends and memories here, and its just plain weird to think that we won't be here next week.  In fact, this is the last night we are staying at the house.  Tomorrow morning the packers will arrive bright and early and tomorrow night we will be staying at a hotel.
I don't know what it is about houses for me.  I love them!!  Love them like a member of the family.  It's probably weird and sentimental, but it's true.  I still think about our first apartment in Salt Lake City and wish that I could go back and take a peek inside.  Our house in Chicago is a great house.  Its beautiful and has been perfect for us and I'm sad to leave it.  I guess I get sad about leaving houses because it's a backdrop of all those good memories that you have had in the house.  When you see the stairs, you don't just see stairs.  You see the kids coming down on Christmas morning on those stairs.  Those memories are great ones and I don't want to forget them.   The memories of pushing the kids in the swings in the backyard, the exact spot in the kitchen where we were standing when we found out we were having another baby and reading kids books at night to them in their rooms, all good ones.
The kids and I decided to sign the inside wall of Will's closest with our name and years we lived here just for fun.  I don't know think we will ever get to see the inside of this house again after this week but I'm taking lots of wonderful memories with me.
I think Olivia might have the same love for houses as I do.  Tonight when I was tucking her in she started crying.  She said she was really sad to leave our house.  I asked her what her favorite place in the house was.  She said the she didn't have a favorite because she just loves it all and wants to pick it up and take it to Georgia with us.  We then started talking about how that just couldn't happen because (in her words) it "would just be too hard to dig it out of the ground."