Home Sweet Home

We've been in our new house for about 8 months now, and I must say that it feels more like home than our old house ever did. Oh sure, we put time and effort into the old house, we updated the deck, got a swingset, a shed, planted a tree, even fenced in the yard for the dog. But it was always just the house we lived in.

The old house was on a (very busy) street, our new house is in a neighborhood. There are kids riding bikes past the house, adults walking and jogging (with and without baby strollers). Cars drive past slow enough to actually see who's driving and wave as they pass by. There's still new construction going on, so you'll see kids (including mine) playing on the small man made mountains that dot the area. It seems like there's always extra kids in the house, and strange bikes parked in the yard. Since it's a single developer subdivision, a lot of neighbors have similar houses -- if you didn't snoop around the house while it was being constructed, you've visited a similar one during an open house. Everyone knows our house -- it's the biggest one in the neighborhood (oh yeah, you folks live in the big yellow house, don't you). We all try to keep our yards looking good (more difficult to do if the lot next to yours is still undeveloped). Since there are no real trees to speak of in the area, most smells wafting on the breeze are of the delicious variety. It is a stereotypical, middle class, suburban neighborhood...

and it's home.