Bittersweet Musings from VA

Well, it hasn't been a full month yet since I've been here at the blog.  I'm on a roll!

We've been a tad busy since we returned from our summer up north, tending to our Oyster Haven rental house and visiting with my mom and other relatives who still live in the NY town where my husband and I grew up and met in high school.  We've been to some grandkids' soccer games since we got back, helped one of our sons with his basement finishing project, done a bit of babysitting...in a nutshell, we are right back in the swing things.  Such is our life here in VA, and it is a good one.

We stay most of the summer in my husband's childhood home just down the road from Oyster Haven, which he and his seven siblings put into an LLC in 2009 when their mom died (their dad had passed away in 2003).  They all wanted to hang onto it, because not only is it a big, lovely house, but Lake Champlain is right out in the back yard.  The location is almost too good to be true.  And it's such a great meeting place for the far-flung eight siblings.  Well, they used to be far-flung...two of my husband's sisters have houses almost next-door to where they grew up, where they live full-time now; and two other sisters have bought houses in the neighborhood as well, which are mostly vacation homes at present.  But I digress.

Anyway, the idea of keeping a beloved home in the family touches me deeply.  Not one of my husband's siblings can fathom a world wherein someone else owns that house.  (I'm a bit attached to it, too, as I can still remember all the time I spent there as a kid, throughout high school, when I was dating my husband.) It was so worth it to them to keep it in the family that they bought an investment property out in South Bend some years back, to rent out for Notre Dame football weekends, in order to have the extra income needed for the upkeep and taxes at the family homestead in NY. (They recently sold that South Bend property and put all the proceeds into the LLC, and just let me put it this way: that house, which was within walking distance to the football field, was an exceptionally wise investment!)

It's easy to fall in love with a house when it contains so many happy memories and reminds us of the ones we love most every time we walk in the door.  We had such a house in NH, a Colonial beauty where we lived for 26 years and raised our five sons.  Our oldest was only half-way through first grade when we bought it, and our youngest had yet to be born.  It was a "forever home" type of house--not on a lake, but on a quiet cul-de-sac street in a sweet New England town, with deer-filled woods behind it and vast green yards in both front and back.  I loved that house.  We all loved that house.

Okay, looking for the above photo of our NH house (I got out my flash drives to hunt it down!) led me to this oldie-but-goodie, one of the pre-digital age grainy snapshots with which most of my photo albums are filled.  These faces!!  [sob]  If only you could more clearly see how ridiculously cute these boys are.

That picture was taken in the family room just a few years after we moved into that house, on the occasion of son #2's First Holy Communion.  Excuse me...now I need a tissue.  Be right back.

Okay, moving on!

Once our boys all graduated from college and went off into their grown-up lives, we still thought we might hang onto the NH house, that it would be our home base when we weren't traveling to see kids living in different states.  After he got his masters, our second-oldest was living about an hour away, working as a high school math teacher, and he had no plans to relocate; we figured as long as we had even one son close by, we would stay put.  But then he met his future wife at his brother's wedding in 2013 (he was a groomsman; she was a former college classmate and bridesmaid), and before long, he was moving to VA, where his wife grew up.  And where he had two brothers who had also settled in VA, about an hour-and-a-half away from his new home.

So--by 2014, we had three out of five sons living near each other in VA, our oldest married and living out in the Midwest, and our youngest still in college (but planning to go Army active duty and be stationed who-knows-where after graduation), and we had no one (not even any extended family) living in NH.  We were almost always on a plane or on a road trip to visit our boys, and we were hardly ever there.  It didn't seem like the place for us anymore.  Where would we end up?

By happenstance, we stumbled upon our Oyster Haven house when we were up visiting family in NY during the summer of 2015 and saw the "For Sale" sign as we drove by it.  We decided we would buy it and rent it out until my husband retired, and then we'd sell our NH house and that would become our new home base. 

But God had other plans for us... 

Here we are in 2017, after we'd purchased our house in VA--taking a tour of it with two of our boys and their wives, who live about 35-40 minutes away from us and only minutes from each other.  We originally thought we might have to rent this house out until we could sell our beloved NH house; but that same day, we found out that our NH house had sold--without ever having to be listed--for the price we were asking. (Everything was falling into place in the most perfect way!  There's a bit of a long story involved, and I don't want to tell it again; but if you're interested, you can read about it here.)

Anyway, I guess I'm feeling a bit nostalgic today!  The whole reason I started writing this post--before going down a rabbit hole of memories--was to talk about how fast time seems to be flying since we've become Virginians, and how in the seven-and-a-half years we've lived here, so much has changed.  We had seven grandchildren when we moved into our new house; today, we have 22 (with another on the way). I believe our daughter-in-law Braveheart (the one in the brown coat in the above pic) had just recently found out that the baby she was carrying was actually TRIPLETS.  2017 was to be a banner year: we moved, and we also welcomed five new little ones, the triplets plus two others.  It was some year indeed.  And the ones following have been very full of grandchildren and other blessings as well--such as having son #1 move to the area, shortly after we arrived, and live nearby for over four years with his growing family.  (For that stretch, we had four out of five boys here in VA, and all of our grandkids!)  It has been a ride, let me tell you.

Sometimes lately, I find myself having bittersweet feelings; I love seeing our grandchildren grow and mature, yet I want time to slow down a bit!  When we moved here, most of them were available to come to Papa and Grammy's house for frequent playdates and family get-togethers, as they were either homeschooled or too young to be in school yet.  But you know how it is once they reach a certain age; the school year starts, and suddenly there are so many activities: clubs and team sports and weekend birthday parties for classmates and so much more.  It has become challenging trying to get all three families that live nearby to our house at the same time, because they've all got so much going on in their lives.  (Which, don't get me wrong, I know is good!  Believe me, we were there once.) 

So imagine my joy this past Sunday, when all three VA families (three couples and their 14 children) were able to come over for brunch/lunch/early dinner.  I was so excited about it that I spent all day Saturday cooking and baking.

My husband started to warn me that I was going overboard and we were never going to eat it all, but then he said he stopped himself because he could see how happy the process of getting ready for our little party was making me.  (He was right on both counts!  I was happy.  And yes, we didn't eat even half of what I set out; but I filled lots of to-go containers and made everyone take almost all of the leftovers home with them.)

This has gone on too long, I suppose.  So I'll sign off here.  But not before I add a few photos from our sweet Sunday get-together. 

You cannot even imagine how happy it makes me to see these cousins hanging out together at our house!

And to see adorable little peeps like this guy eating at our table.

  

And as always, I love it when our grown-up kids can sometimes take advantage of the opportunity to snag a much-needed cat-nap on our living room couch!

Our VA living room is very small, much smaller than the one in NH.  But it's cozy.

I have a few more things to say about our old house vs. our new one.  But I'm going to save that for another day!  (You're welcome!  Ha ha!)

We're Officially Virginians!

Hello, dear readers!  I'm back--after being AWOL from this blog for over a month (the longest I've ever gone since I opened up shop at String of Pearls way back in March of 2011).  Here is a link to my last post, written on March 13 in preparation for the house closing that would take place less than a week later.  In it, I talked about leaving behind a letter for the new owners of what we thought was our "forever home" in NH, but was actually just the happy setting for a really long and fulfilling chapter in the life of the Pearl family.  (If you haven't read it, click on the link--and maybe have some tissues handy.)

Now a new chapter has begun, and as tough as it was to turn that page after more than a quarter of a century, to drive away from that beloved Colonial nestled in the woods and head south to VA, we are already starting to fall in love with our new home and our new town--not to mention our new life.  There were tears leading up to and immediately following the big move, don't get me wrong; but the rewards we have reaped already in the short time we've been down here are incalculable.  Life is always changing, evolving and going through new seasons; and although I've never been all that good at accepting change, I can already see that this is going to be a wonderful, blessed chapter in our family's story.

So...we're Virginians now.  And check out the sweet welcome basket our three VA boys and their wives had waiting to greet us when we got here.

I'm writing this post at my perfect little writing desk, situated between two windows in the office my husband and I set up in one of the four upstairs bedrooms in our new house.  An office with two work spaces, two brand new matching rolling desk chairs, two printers, two file cabinets--well, you get the picture.  It's an office for two (a "his 'n hers"!), and before this we really never even had a dedicated office space for one.  I mean, we did have an area of the basement that had a desk and a file cabinet, and that's where our desktop computer and our printer were always located.  But once my husband transformed our old garage into the "new room" (that is, a large man cave/sports room/family room) and the boys stopped using the basement as a hangout, the office down there started to feel a bit like a dungeon, and we started doing our work on our laptops, using random tables all over the first floor of the house.  It feels so luxurious to have a whole room that is an honest-to-goodness office.

By golly, with an office like this at my disposal, I may even start writing again.  (This blog post is baby step #1.  And forgive me if it is disjointed and all over the place--I just really don't even know where to begin, so much has happened since I last blogged!)

So on March 18 we closed on our old house, and that same day we left for VA.  We each drove a car over to Logan Airport in Boston and left one at my husband's employee parking lot, then got into the other one and drove down together to leave it at one of our son's houses.  We got about an hour or two of sleep there, then our boy gave us a ride to the airport in DC, we flew back to Boston to get the other car, and we immediately turned around and made the trip south again, this time staying with another son and his family.  Phew!  That was pretty tiring, doing back-to-back road trips down the East Coast.  At our age, no less.  But we survived all of that.  Then on March 21, we closed on our new house, and that same day, the moving truck arrived with all of our belongings.  To say that it was a whirlwind experience is putting it mildly.

It seems like yesterday that I was painting over the beloved pigs on the walls of my old kitchen

and sweeping up the last traces of Pearl family history littering the floor of the attic, leaving it as clean as a whistle for the new owners.

A quick aside before I go on: I love the random items that ended up in the dustpan that day, because they were such sweet reminders of the boys who'd lived in that house and the memories they'd created there over the years.  There was a dinosaur toy and a Pokémon card; a picture of an NFL player, and also one from a zoo trip years ago; there was Easter grass from their baskets, along with a red Christmas bow and some faux Christmas greenery.  I got teary-eyed when I looked at that pile, amazed that the very last sweep-through of that once-crowded attic would produce such a perfect collection of mementos.

Back to the move-in day now.  I am ashamed to admit that I spent most of it in tears.  Those poor movers--every time they asked me where they should put some piece of furniture, I could hardly answer them.  So many boxes ended up in the basement, because I had no idea where I wanted them to go.   It was all so overwhelming.  The house seemed much too small to hold all the stuff that they'd packed on the truck in NH, even though we'd filled two dumpsters and made countless trips to drop donations off at Goodwill in preparation for downsizing. I was missing my old house something fierce that day.  I was missing that enormous walk-up attic with all of its glorious storage space, for one thing!

But some of my emotional fragility was caused by the stress of moving (it's a thing, I hear) and sheer exhaustion, I'm sure.  Because it didn't take long for my nesting instincts to kick in, and within a couple of days, I was sort of falling in love with our new house.  I was enjoying the challenges of figuring out how to fill in all the new spaces and make it really feel like "ours."

When I packed our two cars to the gills with all of the too-precious-to-go-on-the-moving-truck items (like family photographs, letters that my husband wrote to me when he was in college at Notre Dame and I was at Holy Cross, and hand-drawn cards that our boys made for us in grade school), I included some decorative things that I knew I wanted to hang up almost immediately, so that the new place would feel like home as soon as possible.  I knew that if I let the movers pack them, it might take weeks to find them amidst the piles of boxes.  Among those things we brought in the cars with us were canvases I'd had made from photos of my precious pigs, and the metal star that used to hang on our front door in NH.

While the movers were busy bringing our stuff into the house, my husband heard me hammering nails into the walls.  He said that for a second he was surprised, and he wanted to say, "Really?  You're hanging pictures NOW?"  But then he realized that this is the way I operate, this is what makes me happy.  And after all the tears he'd seen me cry in the previous weeks as we prepared to move out of our old house, he just wanted me to be happy.  (He's the best, you know.  Absolutely the best.  Just sayin'.)

So within hours of taking ownership of our new home, we already had a few gallery walls completed.

This one in the kitchen--with my pigs taking center stage.

And this one in the family room--it's my little homage to our life in NH.

That's all the home décor I'm going to subject you to right now.  Let me know if you'd be interested in a more in-depth house tour in the future (it has been suggested to me by some people who have seen the pictures I've posted recently on Instagram).

So we're settling in and starting to get familiar with our surroundings.  We like the small, charming Southern town and our friendly new parish.  But what we like best is being less than 40 minutes from two of our boys and their families, and about an hour and a half (soon to be more like 50 minutes) from another.  We have seen them all so much already--and now we can do this without getting on an airplane!  We had all of them over for an Easter brunch, along with a college friend of two of our daughters-in-law, one of my husband's brothers, his wife, and their daughter and son-in-law, and one of my husband's sisters, her daughter, and two of her grandchildren.  It is so wonderful to be able to host a big family holiday celebration that doesn't involve people having to travel long distances!

All three of our daughters-in-law that live down here are currently expecting.  And here is the drawing my very talented fourth son created to announce the impending birth of his first child(ren):

Yes, there are three eggs in that nest.  They are expecting triplets!!  I'd say that we got down here just in time, wouldn't you?  And we didn't even know this was happening when we made the sudden decision to move to VA about a year or so ahead of when we originally thought we might do such a thing.  God was certainly giving us a not-so-gentle nudge in this direction, and now we can see why He thought it would be better if we moved sooner rather than later.  There will be five new grandchildren born here in VA in 2017 (bringing our total to a dozen!), and we think we'll be able to give our kids a lot more help and support with their growing families now that we're all practically neighbors.

I have to think of a way to finish off this post, which could go on forever and ever, I fear, now that I've finally ended my month-long Internet silence!  It's coming to a close soon, I promise...

One of the hardest things about leaving our old house was that our youngest son, who has never lived in any other home and has always been quite attached to that one (as you know already, if you've clicked on that link at the beginning of this post and read what he wrote about it!), is currently stationed in Germany and won't be coming back to the States for good for about a year-and-a-half.  Selling his childhood home when he is living so far away, and isn't married yet with a house of his own, seemed like a rather heartless thing to do.

Not long after we moved in, I was coming back from a shopping trip, and as I drove into our new neighborhood I was struck by how pretty it was, with the outline of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance.  I pulled over and snapped this picture and texted it to him, saying that although I knew it wasn't the same as our old neighborhood, it wasn't too shabby.

He sent a humorous text saying that he didn't like it.  I texted back, "I will always miss our old house.  Always.  And I will miss living in a town and an area I knew really well, and running into people who knew you guys when you were small.  It's hard."  But the flip side, I told him, was that we had seen two of his brothers and their wives that day, we were babysitting two of the grandchildren the next day, and the day after that, his other brother was coming over to visit our new house with his little son.  "Those are the things that make this move all worth it.  But I still get a little weepy sometimes.  Maybe I always will.  Even though I really, really like our new town and the new house, and I think you will, too."  Etc.

Here is the text response my baby sent back.

He is the best.  Absolutely the best.  Just sayin'.  (It's a trait he inherited from his dad.  All my boys have it, this best-ness.)

So that's it from the great state of Virginia (which is for Lovers, you know).  For now, anyway.  And I promise--or perhaps I should say that I hope--it won't be another month before you hear from me again.