It's getting real.....

  As of 8am this morning my dads house has officially been put on the market. I  never in my wildest dreams ever thought this would happen. Im sitting here bawling my eyes out because I just realized that after this house is sold, there is nothing to call "dads" anymore, and its kind of  like a chapter being closed. Joey can't go ride his bike over there and shoot hoops while his grandpa critiques him and helps him get better, alex can't say "I wonder what grandpa wilder is watching on tv at his house", and I will no longer be able to go over and just plop in his chairs and watch bonanza with him. That house will be gone. Someone else will be living in there, making their own memories in that house.


  My parents bought that house in 1987, I was 5 and my brother was 2. So for my brother that's pretty much the only house he knew. Granted I don't have a whole lot of memories of both my parents together in that house, but that house was ours and it stayed ours all the way into our adulthood. While my mom and us moved a couple times, dads house always remained. He never left, which in a way was always comforting for myself. I just remember when I started playing softball, and I would be at my dads house that weekend I had a early 8am game, he would put my uniform in the dryer to make it warm. He would lay it on my bed while I was still sleeping and it helped me get up. He used to have a hot tub in the back yard, and my brother and I used to swim in it like it was a pool. Dad would let us bring our sodas in fancy glasses out to the hot tub and act like we were sophisticated adults. Lame I know.  We used to sit at the dining room table and go through TONS of baseball cards, and also roll coins.


  Im still not ok with my dad being gone. It still doesn't seem real.  It was heart wrenching having to go through his house and see what he chose to keep. He kept all the birth certificates for my cabbage patch dolls.  He kept every Christmas card I ever sent him/made him. He kept all my softball gear, and the line ups from when he managed my teams. Talk about great memories.


If there is one positive thing that's come out of all of this, is the bonding time ive gotten from my brother. My brother and I have always been close, but this I think has brought us closer. He and I grew up in that house, so we share the same memories. So being able to go through dads house and be like "omg remember this?" has been amazing. We cleaned out that house together, we gutted the garage together, we did it. Together. And on Saturday when we went over and mowed the lawn and finished up in the garage, the house was all locked up and we were standing there watering the lawn we knew this was it. The house that we've called our own for 27 years is no longer "ours".


To the next owners,


I hope you enjoy this house as much as we did. I hope you make lots of memories, and I hope you treat this house with extra love and truly appreciate it as much as I did. I hope you enjoy the hand made cupboards in the garage that my grandpa built. I hope you take pride in the yard and keep it up, because the outside of the house was my dads pride and joy. I hope you buy patio furniture and get to sit outside and watch your children/grandchildren play in the backyard like we did as kids.
  Just love this house, treat it well and just appreciate it and know that 27 years of love and devotion and memories still lay in that house.