Home, Smelly Home

“It’s a funny thing comin’ home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You’ll realize what’s changed is you.” – Benjamin Button

“Home” has meant a lot of different things to our family over the last 11 months and it’s definition is different depending on who you talk to. For me, home is where our family is together. For the youngest three in our family, the word “home” has always meant our home in Northfield. We have lived in four different residences over the year, but we were called out if we ever referred to anywhere other than the house on Fremont Street in Northfield as “home”. Leaving school to head to our condo, leaving a day at the beach, a soccer game, the grocery store….”Where are we going now?”, they would always ask. We learned quickly not to answer, “We are going home.”  We had to call it “the condo” or “Vaiven" (the name of our condo) or Grandma and Grandpa’s house. To our youngest three, home meant HOME!

So, without further ado...We are HOME! We are all sleeping in our own beds! It feels amazing. We moved in Friday, July 17, eleven months and eight days after we drove away from this house with nine suitcases and a year of adventure ahead. We stand in a swirl of unpacked boxes strewn throughout the house, curtains that need to be hung, furniture with missing legs, but it feels like we are letting out a deep breath that we've been holding for three months. We can hang our clothes in our closets and settle in. Of all of the homes we have lived in over the last year, this one fits us the best. 

We were meant to move back into our house on the 16th of June. Long story short, our renters had had the carpets cleaned incorrectly and 4 days after we were supposed to move in, the carpets were still wet and the odor in the house was awful. We had experts come and look and they advised that we tear out all of the carpet. So, we tore it out, ordered new carpet and waited a month for it to come in. We will be forever thankful to Kevin's parents for letting us live in their house for three months. We feel very fortunate that they still had their home in the town where Kevin grew up. They were able to live in "The Dome" while we took over their Northfield home. I took complete advantage of the carpet being out and put fresh paint in most rooms and painted all of the trim in the upstairs. Silver linings…we have freshly painted walls and new carpet.  We will probably be eating ramen for the next year, but the crayon marks and dirty footprints have disappeared from the walls and we will have soft carpet to play and relax on. These photos were taken June 16....the day we THOUGHT we were moving in...

The master packer...unpacking his masterpiece. 

"I can't believe we are HOME!"

Finding treasures

Oh, how he missed his castles.

Cleaning

Culver's to celebrate

Kevin and I were having coffee in the living room the morning after we first slept here and I said, "It's so nice that everything feels familiar. I know where things go. We know our routines in this house." Kevin responded "It doesn't feel familiar though. It feels different now." We discussed it for a while and decided that it is somewhat reminiscent of how you feel when you leave the hospital with your first baby. You drive that familiar route home and walk in that same door, but somehow, your world has shifted. That's what it feels like. Everything is the same, but everything is different. It’s because we have changed. We are not the same people that we were when we left 11 months ago. We have all grown in so many ways. Of course, physically (proof being that any clothes I put in bins in the basement thinking they might fit my kids when we got back, are all WAY too small) but also spiritually, academically and mostly emotionally. Here we are ACTUALLY moving in...

Solvei's bed is a tricky one, but well worth the effort.

S

Bunk beds are super fun to assemble!

New bedding for this girlie. 

Places to sit!!

Pizza and a movie in our very own house!

This guy appeared in the kitchen to help out! 

Let the playing begin!

Still haven't found the bed skirt or the curtains, but our very own BED!!

Kevin and I both "suffer" from severe cases of wanderlust😉. We both love the unknown. We love to explore. We love to push ourselves to feel uncomfortable and use our problem solving skills. We love to try new foods, get a little lost, learn new words, new ways, look at things from a new perspective, connect with people who grew up differently, live differently and think differently than we do. We feel it gives us a fresh perspective on the world and makes us evaluate how we live our lives. We have both struggled, especially since we had to cut our year short, with coming to terms with being back. I think if you talk to anyone who has lived abroad, this is a common feeling with "reentry". How do you carry this new experience? How does it fit into our lives here at "home"? What do I do with all of this new information? I often find myself questioning, "Did that whole Mexico thing really happen? Was it just a dream?" because it doesn't fit in to our lives here. I am thankful when I get a chance to reminisce with the friends who visited Mexico while we were there. It makes the whole thing seem real. 

It feels great to be back, to see familiar faces, to know how to get things done when something doesn't go as planned. It's hard to believe that this year has flown by so quickly. Leaving early because of the global pandemic has been a hard pill to swallow, but we have moved past that. We are able to look back on the time that we did get to spend as a family in a foreign country and be grateful for the unique, full experience that we had.

Would we do it again? In a heartbeat. Was it worth it to pack up everything in our house, sell our cars, find renters, and get through all of the logistics to make it happen? ABSOLUTELY! 

If I can speak for Kevin, he would rather still be out exploring. For me, I am content to be here for now. Watching our kids relax into the comfort of being home, seeing them connect with friends and going about their routine is a bit of a relief. I am an emotionally sensitive person. Being the one in our family who had some experience in the Mexican culture and the one who had the language skills, it often fell on me to be the one navigating school, medical situations, friendships, mechanics, and every ordinary and extraordinary thing that came flying at us. It was fascinating and a beautiful, welcome challenge. But I am tired out. Even amidst a pandemic, life is easier here. Kevin and I can split the responsibilities and he can manage his medical care on his own. We have our support people near us. We know who to ask for help and who we can lean on. 

Oh, we will go out into the beckoning world again, for certain. But I think we will settle in here until the kids are at an age where they can fly on their own and make their own choices about where they want to live. There is so much more of the world that is out there to explore. For right now, we will get back into life here, thankful and working on how to apply what we've learned and how we've grown. During this crazy time of unknowns and uncertainty, "home" on Fremont Street East feels just right.