Home Is Where Ever We're Together

Brick, concrete, metal, wood, and dirt. Houses are being built everyday. Thousands of them. In the city, they pop up in a matter of weeks. Amazing charm and beauty and style accompany the house depending on the style of the builder or owner. Marble, granite, two-story, three-story. Amazing houses.

Then there's those homes. Those that have meaning. They have memories. They have years of laughter and tears. Christmas mornings, Thanksgiving dinners, new babies, and birthdays. They may be beautiful and charming in materials as well, but they also have love. They have life pulsing through them filling every square foot; ever more than any expensive furniture or latest updates.

A home is sometimes hard to come by these days. I'm not talking money or ability to own. I'm talking about the idea of home. The family and togetherness. ANY place can make a home. It may take some years to get to feel that way, but with some people who love each other and spending their lives together in this place; that is home.

My family has been blessed to have a place like this for a couple of generations. A place where holidays are spent, Santa always visits, friends come over and kids have grown. My mom and dad were always there.
Our home was where my parents first started their marriage that would last 40 years. It's where my brother and I came home from the hospital, took our first steps, had pool parties, prom pictures and did school projects late into the night. It's the place my husband asked my dad's permission to have my hand in marriage. It's where my mom and I sat in the floor and made the guests favors for my wedding. It's where countless games of tackle football, baseball and basketball were played in the yard and where I learned to ride my bike in the driveway. 
Do you have a place like this? Every family should. I don't necessarily mean an old place where grandma always lived. And it doesn't have to be a place where you grew up. People have to move, no question. But do you have a place like this where you can just feel the love and life in it as soon as you walk in? It's comfortable. It's loving. Family friends come together in this place.

And then families have to move on. Pass the home to another family where all new memories will begin. One has to say goodbye when the other says hello. Life includes change, as much as humans don't like to accept it. Families grow. Kids get bigger. Older ones leave us. People move. But the walls in the home will forever hold the special moments. My first baby steps, turned to my own kids'
first wobbles across the same floor. Holiday decorating when I was little, turned into my kids' holiday
 traditions in this same home. 

Sleepless nights, first days of school, slumber parties, stomach viruses and those special tiny moments, I relived with my own kids in the same home I had as a kid myself. These will only be memories in our hearts now. Not a moment of regret. All amazing memories that we will always have with us.

Where ever you are; where ever your kids are with you and your family is together; that is HOME. Make memories every day and cherish those you love.