4506 Audubon Way

This is the house where it all started. In September 2002, Gavin and I closed on this house at 4506 Audubon Way the day before we left for Italy. We returned from Italy 19 days later, and moved in the very next weekend. We had been married for just over a year. We did not know it yet, but we were pregnant with Max and Bella. Our family literally came to be in this house, with the birth of our beautiful twins in June of 2003, and followed by Brighton in November of 2006.
We have not lived at 4506 Audubon Way for six months, and I intended on writing this tribute in late May immediately after the move. Nonetheless, and despite the passage of time, I can still see every room (and its tranformations during the nine years we lived there). I remember the slow and steady becoming that we enjoyed there - for it was in this house that Gavin and I were given the gift of our children, it was in this house that we became a family. While I am excited for our new house, the house that we have designed and built together, I will always love this first house and appreciate it for what it is, the home where we became "The Murphys".
The day after the movers had packed up and moved all of our belongings, I spent the day alone in the house cleaning. I was amazed at the emotion that washed over me as I went from room to room. When I was done, I stood in the kitchen and felt as if I were in a movie. The memories that we created in this house flipped through my mind. I watched as Max and Bella began to crawl, to walk, and then to talk. I remembered how Brighton used to put on my heels, tennis shoes, slippers or whatever else I kicked off my feet in the kitchen, and how she would toddle around the house in my shoes when she was barely capable of walking in shoes that fit. I remembered Max's love of shields and knives (and saw again his little four-year-old self with several swords stuffed in the belt loops of his jeans - calling himself attackia spiderman) and Bella's insistence on changing into a different princess gown every 10 minutes from the time she was 2 until she turned 5. I remembered how disappointed I was when Brighton did not adopt this obsessive habit when she turned 2, and realizing that she would grow up much faster because she had older siblings. I remember bringing each of my children home to this house, and how we fit so perfectly within its walls for nearly nine years. I stood there, with tears streaming down my face, and remembered all the good things that had come to us in this house, and I felt guilty for being so anxious to leave it for the two years prior to our departure. I felt guilty for not appreciating it for the beautiful and warm home it was and, although we are moving into a bigger and newer and "better" home, this will always be the house where it all began. 4506 Audubon Way is the home where we became a family.
I hope that 4205 Aspenridge Lane is every bit as good to us.