I think this is very likely the last blog written from Tampa where it all began. The house is mostly packed up and the last day working from home has been put into the books. Tomorrow we have professionals coming to crate the TVs, aquarium and stuffed trophy fish. Carrie and I will put the last few items into their respective boxes and we will get ready to load the truck on Wednesday. I put Quinny to bed tonight for the last time in his crib in Tampa. That thing is brand new. He hardly used it. Tomorrow it will get taken apart for the first time since he was born. He'll sleep his last night in his pack and play before catching a flight to his new home state on Wednesday.
There has been so much to do that we haven't had a lot of time to reflect on actually leaving. It's going to be hard to say good bye with so many firsts taking place in this house. Carrie and I bought the house during our engagement. And, although, the house is worth half as much as the price we paid for it our family has doubled in size and our marriage is twice as strong as the day we moved in. The Luckster was chosen from more than 20 puppies (Lucky dog!) and came home for his first night of wailing away in fall of 2007. That was about the same arrival that Q-dog came home to in fall of 2008, wailing away and hasn't stopped since. When we moved in we didn't own a table or a couch to sit on. We resodded the lawn three times and finally figured out sprinklers are what makes a southern lawn green. The third time is the charm I suppose and we are leaving with a very green lawn. We have replaced nearly everything that costs money in this house, our personal lovely first money pit; the washer and then the dryer, the air conditioner (that was a biggie!), the water heater, the patio and the stove. We fixed so many leaks and toilets I lost count. I just fixed another toilet this past weekend. But with all the repairs we will always have our special memories of our first house.
Our realtor was first home-buyer savvy and for our first gift upon moving in commissioned a painting of our house. She said that way if we ever moved we would always have a painting of our first house that we could take with us no matter where we moved to. We appreciated it at the time but I think will cherish that painting more and more as we continue to grow up and older together as a family. People keep asking me where all the gray hairs came from. Clearly they didn't have their first child in their 30s. As we move into a new house up north maybe another smart someone will buy us a snowplow.
We will miss the exotic wildlife. Seriously how many people can say they had snakes n' gators in their backyard? Come on, that's pretty cool. We've seen deer, armadillos and wild peacocks. I saw a snake eat a frog right outside our back door! We had a chicken roam through our yard for a couple of days. Well, I guess you can get plenty of that on the farm. Our cockroaches are massive. Our spiders and insects are the size of legend. The lizards are a family favorite. Quinny loves em' almost as much as the pooch. You should hear Quinny say lizard. It comes out something like lizzathardizzarths. It's awesome. The dog keeps his boyish 100 pound figure chasing them around all day long. I'm going to miss Lucky during the day sitting beside me in my office. You should've seen the time, shortly after moving in, Carrie and I had crawled into bed and noticed something on the ceiling. It was a spider as big as my hand when I flicked on the light. I was swinging that broom like Babe Ruth. Carrie was screaming. Oh, the memories! That spider could move, but Babe blasted that thing out of the park (and house).
We'll miss the visitors that were always happy to come down to the Florida sunshine and spend a weekend. We will miss the beach. I'm so happy Carrie convinced me to do the last Christmas card at the beach with the family. It's such a great photo people think it's fake. I'll miss Key West only a beautiful coastal drive away. Irish Kevin's! Sloppy Joe's! And the Hog's Breath Saloon! Jimmy Buffett lives here for crying out loud.
As we close a chapter in our lives, one might say the first, we look forward to new adventures and future chapters. As we prepare for our first in a long time, hopefully mild winter, we appreciate our flip flops one last time and look forward to building our first snowman with Quentin. That morning coffee will take on greater warmth and importance. Hot chocolate will be chic again - with marshmallows. A campfire will actually be worth having as opposed to making you sweat more. The beer selection will undoubtedly improve and a basement will exist. Ah, Mr. Man room finally will come to fruition. Big Ten football will be back and hearing about the speed of the SEC will become a thing of the past. And god knows we can't wait for the corn. Oh, glorious corn here we come. Let the jokes commence about the crazy people that left Florida to move to Iowa right before winter takes hold with its icy grip. And of course new memories will be formed as we await for the birth of our second child feet first or not. Ready or not shorty number two is coming. And ready or not we are moving to Iowa. We look forward to our arrival in a few short days.
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