One Year Anniversary

This is a day late, but one year ago yesterday, I was 38 weeks pregnant, huge, and probably would not have been advised to leave the vicinity of my hospital.  But I did just that to travel to the farm to watch the home of my childhood face the wrecker after a long life of 120+ (no one knows for sure) years on that spot.  It had a good run but after overcoming a fire in the 40's, standing empty to the point of having ceilings falling down in the 50's and undergoing a totally wrong 1970's first floor remodel it was finally time for it to go.  I wrote a pretty extensive post back in October of 2015 about it so anyone who wants to (I'm sure no one) can refer back to it but I felt compelled to mark the date. 

That was a strange weekend, with Friday night being a frantic last minute clear out of the last minute things.  The morning of the tear down came early and reality came when the man doing the demolition decided he was worried about the brick chimney that ran from the basement to the attic toppling over on him so he and my dad decided to try to pull it down before the major demo started.  My dad and Justin went in there and somehow put a chain around the chimney so it could be pulled down.  Seeing the roof sink as the chimney came down was the point of no return and it got weirder from there.

Here are a few pictures of my room from before the tear down with the morning light shining through which was my favorite part of my room.   It looks pretty but under that wallpaper the plaster on the slant was cracked beyond repair and probably would have crumbled if the paper was removed! 

That gold patch of paint is where the radiator was.

Now you would not know a house had been there.  That spot is my parents' new front yard.  They planted grass this spring and it grew in very quickly so they have a lawn again.  My prediction that a ring of 50 year old perennials would be growing there forever did not come true.  I think about the house a lot and miss it around holidays but I think what I am missing is the carefree days of my youth and not the house itself.  I don't miss the spiders and ladybugs that always seemed to infiltrate, the heat in the summer, or the windows that you had to practically wrestle opened with a hammer which then had to be propped open with a book or something (what was that all about anyway?)

Here is something else I don't miss...these pictures seem appropriate since Halloween is coming...the basement from h#ll...

How would you like to go down there every time you wanted an ice cream treat from the freezer? 

A weird pipe coming from the wall...that seems normal...or not...

And...the weirdest...a blocked in doorway.  What?  Doesn't everyone have one of those in their basement?  Seriously, it was just the old entrance to the basement/cellar from the outside door like you see on many old houses.  When the excavator dug out the foundation the old staircase was even there.  My dad remembered it all. 

There were a few cute pictures of Tessa in my album from that weekend.  She was so cute and babyish still with her beloved pacifier! 

Milo wore that shirt this weekend!  He is a whole year younger than her when she wore it!  She's so tiny.