When we moved to the Kansas City area, it didn’t take long to figure out that we might be able to afford a house. Coming from the outskirts of D.C. this was a crazy concept, but we crunched the numbers and started our search.
We’d go all over the area on Sunday afternoons, and nearly always end up in an argument. I liked older homes. The Big Daddy liked the newer neighborhoods. Once we looked at a new house that had the kitchen on the second floor, and I asked if I really was supposed to haul four gallons of milk and all the groceries up the stairs every week when I came home from shopping. We looked at older homes and The Big Daddy said they smelled like somebody died in there and they buried the body in the basement.
One day, I was reading the classifieds and saw a house with four bedrooms in our price range. As in low. We drove over and walked through, and when we were upstairs, I looked at BD and said, “I love this house. I crazy love this house.” And he said, “I think I do, too.” We knew nothing about the area and asked the single woman selling the house if the schools were good. She said yes and we took her word for it.
The day we looked at the house was in October. This was in the front yard.
I have nineteen years of pictures of that tree. Every year I tell the kids that this is the best color our tree has ever had, and they sigh very deeply and say, “Mom, seriously, you say that every year.”
I know, but did I ever tell you about the day that Dad and I took you guys to that open house? Did I tell you that when we saw that tree we knew this was exactly where we wanted you to grow up?