Week #2 Write about the place you call home . . . .

Write About the place you call home . . . .

I've Thought about this topic for over a week now. it's a little complicated because i feel there are multiple answers.

After many years of adulthood and living outside of my parents home, which is the way of life. I learned that home is wherever you create your own personal oasis. My home for many many years now has been wherever my husband and children are. We can walk into any space and by the time we put the pictures on the wall (first day, always on the first day), that's it, it's our home. familiarity helps, seeing your things in a new place, but we have also had enough moving around over the years, to know that our stuff, is still just stuff. We may enjoy it, but it comes and goes and our family is the one constant. My family is my home. But that's also not really the question, because though my family is my home, it's not the place i "call home"

When I talk to people and refer to home I'm almost always talking about Seattle. I wasn't born in Seattle ( i was born in Las Vegas), and i don't live there now, and i won't meet my final resting place (someday hopefully in the far far future) in Seattle. However it is the place i remember my first memory, it's the place i grew up, the place i went to school, the place i got baby sisters, and friends, it's the place i got my first job, had my first kiss, met my husband, got married, and had three of my children. I spent over 30 years in Seattle, and i think that is why when i'm talking to people i catch myself saying things like "back home". When i talk to people in Denver about Seattle, i often refer to it as "back home". Everyone who already knows me, knows back home is Seattle. I used to do this with Brandon and the kids too. Not so much anymore but it still comes out sometimes.

Seattle is also a place i sadly associate with a lot of hurt and pain as well. We did not leave Seattle the way we had planned, or when we had planned for that matter. So though i refer to is as home, it's not. It once was, but that's really just because my family was there with me, (some of it still is there, but as an adult when i refer to my family i generally mean my husband and children and they are no longer there either). So i think the reason i call it home to people out here, is simply because it is such a different area than where we have chosen to settle and grow. So Seattle is part of the answer, and it's a true part of the answer because i do refer to it as home quite often.

However I have another place i call home, and that is Denver. Not only is it the city we currently reside, but it's also the place where our family chose to start over. To do what was in our families best interest and to let go of that old place we used to call home. When i talk about home with Brandon and the kids, it's usually Denver i'm talking about. We talk about what we like about it, and why we are happy to live here, and how long the journey was. Denver may not have been home for long, however it's the place we call home now. It's where our home is, our oasis. It's where we have made new relationships, and friends. It's where we work, where the kids go to school, and for the first time in their lives they have gotten to experience the joy of returning to the same school for more than just a year. Denver is where we completed our family with our final child, It's where we have found hope and excitement for the future. So i think Seattle and Denver are both the places i call home. But in my heart, Denver is home now.

*Because Denver is home now, all of my pictures in this post are from Denver. The top photo is the sunrise just the other morning on the way to work. I took the photo litterally a block in front of where we live, where i turn out onto the main road to head to work. We are a mile high out here, and the sky is always so vivid, we get the most amazing sun rises and sun sets.

**The next photo down is Kira at Mount Falcon. (She drew this photo while we were there) It was the first trip out to the "foothills" (about 30 min. from downtown) and our first family hike we made just 4 days into moving out here.

*** The third photo down is Athena at the Cherry Creek Reservoir, at Cherry Creek State Park. Lucky for us we settled literally just a few miles from Cherry Creek State Park, and it's one of our favorite summer stops for swimming and picnicking. It's also the place Athena had her first field trip. A state park pass is a must if you live in Colorado!

**** The Last photo is the kids playing in the snow (yes we get snow quite a bit, but Colorado still has about 300 Sunny days a year) This photo was taking outside of our complex, at the beginning of a trail we take to walk to the park.