Is This Real Life?

Sorry for my absence.  Things have been....busy.

On Thursday October 8th Felix wasn't feeling great.  He had some small stomach bug so I kept him home from a meeting/playdate and we lounged the morning away.  Around 10:30 he got some pep back so I walked him up to our park.  I love going with just him.  I follow him around pushing him on the big kid swing, watching him run and climb and slide.  It's the best.

I was doing just this when I got a call from Ian.

"Hello?"
"PACK YOUR BAGS!"
"What?!"
"I got the job!  We're moving to Minnesota!  PACK YOUR BAGS!!!"

do you need a moment for this to sink in? because I still do.

The next minutes, days really were all a blur.  After so many months, years really, of uncertainty and hoping and waiting and wishing, my man got his job!!! The shock has still not entirely worn off, will it ever I'm wondering?

The next day we drove to Minnesota.  We spent most of Saturday afternoon looking at houses in my hometown of Minnetonka.  Sunday we planned to look in Edina.

On Saturday we walked through our dream home.

I will never forget pulling up to that big blue barn (as we now affectionately call our 1965 dream house) turning right and seeing that kitchen, then pivoting and seeing that fireplace/brick wall/built in bookshelf masterpiece.  Then the powder room with the dutch tiles and the four massive bedrooms upstairs and the MASTER BATHROOM and the beautifully finished walk out family basement with a BAR with HEATED TILE FLOORS and the office room with wall to wall desks with just enough spaces for each and every one of us to do our own special things.  Then the unassuming downstairs bathroom that I walked in and out of in moments because YAY a downstairs bathroom but lets look at that kitchen again then,
"REBECCA!!!!!!!"
I went back to the tiny bathroom to see Ian standing in a SAUNA.
A SAUNA.
What I had thought was a closet door was actually a door to a fully functioning sauna room.  My heart soared because I knew how much this meant to Ian.  It is his lifelong house dream to have a steam room/shower/sauna and mine to have land to plant on and a wood burning fireplace.
Dream house you guys.

So we put in our offer that night, and good thing.  The wait through the night was agonizing to see if they'd chosen us or the the other people who had made a bid or if they forwent them all together.  We still didn't know by 10 the next morning so we forged ahead into Edina.  We saw adorable neighborhoods and really cute houses.  In the second house in the 3 season porch our realtor got a call.  Nodding and smiling while coyly leaning on the doorframe she mouthed "you got the house."

It still doesn't feel real.

We've loved our home here so much and had Ian found something in Chicago we most likely would have stayed forever and made it work.  We love our neighborhood (our neighbors!) so much that I can't imagine another home in Chicago than this.  BUT, we bought this house as a family of three, not thinking long term at all.  This new dream house?  It's our forever home.

It will work for us right now while I'm home with Felix most days, family togetherness all afternoon and evening.  It will work for us when our kids grow and may just want their own rooms.  It will work for us when we need a bit of space from each other after long days or long winters.  It will work for us for slumber parties and holiday parties and it will work for us when Ian and I are all gray haired and worn out sitting by our fire, tending our garden, taking our saunas.
I just can't imagine a better place for us.

The house was such a big deal because it determines everything about our lives in Minnesota.  Where we'll raise our children, what our day to day will look like.  The girls (and eventually Felix) will go to the same elementary school that I went to.  They'll be able to walk to middle school.  We live closer to the bike trail than I did growing up (I am SO excited for the bike trail!!!).  My amazing city boy is giving up a bit to be out where I grew up, but I think the sauna makes up for it (for real it totally does), and we're both so so happy.

So now we're packing and putting our house on the market, and planning our lives in Minnesota.  It feels so amazing and surreal and more sad than I thought it would.  I've been weepy off and on.  We're leaving the only home we've known as a family. Anisley poignantly told us "but Minnesota is your home, it's never been our home."  The kids are excited, but sad too, just like us.  I hate that they can't be in their ballet nutcracker and that Ainsley won't get to have her birthday party with all of her friends here.  But I know we'll make a wonderful life for us there, and just breathing that air and being on that ground, toes sunk into a place that feeds my soul.  I can't even imagine.