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 :)

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

Did you happen to see it this past Sunday, the 24th??? I DVR'd it and finally got to watch it last night and all I can say is Wow!

This is my hometown.....and EM showed off what Buffalonians do best and that's help one another. We aren't called the City of Good Neighbors for nothing. Ty Pennington made mention of this being the most volunteers they've ever had for the show and obviously the producers felt it necessary to extend it's normal hour show to two hours for a reason. There was just so much footage of people helping people that they had to double their allotted time.

I have always loved this area. I was born here, grew up here and I'm raising my family here. For my entire 32 years of existence, I only lived elsewhere for about 8 months time (not including the two years I spent in college). There is an unbelievable amount of culture and history in Buffalo and so often it is hidden behind poverty and unfavorable economic times. Yes, we have our share of run-down neighborhoods (one of which was shown on Extreme Makeover) and no, the job market is not great around here...been that way for years, not just recent times.

But what we do have is amazing. Our people LOVE this area with everything in them and it's quite infectious. And we have many many poeple who have moved to this area for one reason or another and fell insanely in love with Buffalo.

Isn't this a gorgeous picture?? This is Niagara Square in downtown Buffalo:


This is where we often take our kids for walks. It's the Erie Basin Marina:


And this is Delaware Park and the Albright Knox Art Gallery:


My hope for the future of Buffalo is for the world to know how wonderful it is here and hopefully Extreme Makeover helped with that!!