Saturday, April 9, 2011

A-Z Blogging Challenge Day 8: H is for Home

Before you read today's post, please stop by Sondrae's Corner! We're giving away TWO copies of Paradise Cove, my latest release!!!! And follow her while you're at it!! She's awesome!!!

Okay, on with today's post!

They say "Home is where the Heart is". Home can be the physical place you live...home can be your family...home can refer to the city or town you live in or grew up in.

Home is all those things for me.

I consider several dwellings "home". The house I grew up in will always be home, even though my parents no longer live there. The neighborhood got pretty bad and they decided it was time to move out. My brother does live there now...just so the place isn't empty (plus he was out of work for a while, and a free home was ideal). That house is where I lived from the time we moved in in early 1980, when I was 2, going on 3, til I got married and moved out in 1998. More than 18 years that was my home. And even after that...we'd visit my parents and it still always felt like home. They moved about 2 years ago and I have to say, as inviting and homey as the new house is, it doesn't feel like home to me. It feels awkward to walk into the house without knocking.

Hubby and I bought our first house just after we got married. We closed 2 days after returning home from our honeymoon. We loved that little house and really thought we'd live there forever! But then we had a child and the house got really, really tiny! But we lived there for 9 years...and that place will always be special to us.

When we were ready for baby #2, we knew it was also time to move. We found a house that was a little bigger than our old house, but the set up was also much better. And as weird as it was at first, trying to make this house into a home, we eventually did and now there are so many things I love about it and still so many more things we want to do with it in the future.

My city is also my home, though I don't live within it's borders anymore. I live a few miles outside the city now...a suburb. I have never really living anywhere else and I love this place. I'm proud of my city, and so often it gets a bad rap and people underestimate it. There's so much here that people don't even realize.

And of course, my family is my home. I'd be nowhere without them :)

10 comments:

  1. I love how you wove us through all the places you call(ed) home. Sweet post!
    My Blog

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  2. Great word. Even though the home where I lived is no longer standing, I still about it and have the images strongly in my mind.
    A sad note: My mother's funeral was April 6, and we closed the door to her home one last time. I think that was the saddest door sound of all.

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  3. I used to associate places with people to feel like I belonged. Now, after many years of living away from my home country - I totally understand that home is being with the people you love! And it doesn't matter where you are geographically in this world. ;-)

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  4. Home is anywhere I'm at alone with my husband and kids whether it's at our house or up in the mountains when we're camping.

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  5. My parents moved out of the old farmhouse a few years after I married and moved away. Their smaller house never did feel like home.
    Like you we moved from a small house to a huge one when our family grew. The memories we've made it makes it a home.
    Great post.

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  6. This is a wonderful post and I love how you find "home" throughout your life :)

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  7. I'm feeling weird about home this year. I've officially been living in my new home for 18 years - the same as my old (well, not quite yet, but this summer). The question "Where are you from?"

    I hate that question!!
    erica

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  8. Aw! Home is definitely where the heart is. I have several 'homes' as well.

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  9. Growing up in a military family, I never stayed any where long enough and always lived in base housing.So I don't have fond memories of any particular house but I do agree home is with family. Even today, as long as I'm with my family, I'm home.

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