The House On Prairie Lane

The house on Prairie Lane has been sold.
Most people don’t know this, but my wife Edie designed the house on Prairie Lane. Twice actually. After she had created the first version, yours truly went in to do some “creative modifications “ and screwed it up. Before I was able to undo all of my “fixes” I somehow hit save. So she had to do it again. From there it was a visit with the architect and a few months later the house on Prairie Lane came alive.

Saying that the house on Prairie Lane came alive is an accurate way to describe our time there. It helped us raise three amazing kids with all the adventures and shenanigans they could throw at it. Over the last few years, it has been a place where our grandkids came to run, play and hang out with Nana and Papa. We spent many late nights on its amazing deck listening to the sounds echoing from the pond or watching the flicker of a fire in the chiminea. At any time of the day, the house on Prairie Lane was our safe haven.

It has been a place of safety for our extended family as well. For a while, the house on Prairie Lane seemed to have a revolving door on it. Young folks who just needed a break and needed someplace to stay would find comfort there. They would stay within its safe walls until they got their feet back under them and then would head out to try again.
And then not all the extended family were humans. There were dogs and the occasional cat. Then there were the critters. There were rabbits, rats, snakes, squirrels, and even a raccoon named Angel. They all spent time in the house on Prairie Lane.

The house on Prairie Lane has been there for our family for going on 22 years. Its sturdy walls held us safe as we lived, laughed, loved, wept, and grieved. It has hosted numerous game nights and celebrations. It has survived nerf gun wars and Hot Wheel races. The house withstood it all. At its core, the heartbeat of the house on Prairie Lane was strongest when it could pull energy from the families and friends safety tucked inside of it.
The house on Prairie Lane was even sturdy enough to hold us together as a family when we weren’t sure, as a family, we would make it. The house on Prairie Lane held strong.

You have probably picked up that I am not referencing the house on Prairie Lane as home. You see once the house on Prairie Lane was sold and as we prepare to hang a sold sign on the realtor's post, It dawns on us that the house on Prairie Lane is no longer ours. It’s tough to put into words the feelings that are going through us right now. We should be ecstatic, but we are not. The house on Prairie Lane has always been ours. We dreamed it. We designed it. We built it. We lived in it. Now we give it up. Putting the sold sign on the house on Prairie Lane will be a lot harder than we thought.

Still, it is time to turn the keys to the house on Prairie Lane to someone else. To let the house on Prairie Lane be filled with laughter, love, adventurers, and memories from another family. For them to be able to listen to the frogs and geese that inhabit the pond. To share a bottle of wine on the covered deck. To run thru the sprinklers and enjoy its numerous gardens. It is time that a new family calls this amazing structure their home and for that new family not to just live in the house on Prairie Lane but to thrive in it.

We did.
The house on Prairie Lane deserves nothing less