House for Sale...Memories Not

Alleluia, we've got a buyer for our house in Port Neches. The market died right as we listed it. Well, nearly nine months later, we have a match. I'm so excited to get rid of the house note, but get a little melancholy as I see the pictures. We lived there for twelve years. When we moved in Kristi was six, Shea was twelve and Dustin and Kayla were in between. We had a lot of fun in that house and entertained a lot of the kids' friends, however we discovered after arriving in Qatar that home is wherever you make it. We may no longer have the house, but we have all the memories of the times we shared there. One memory that comes to mind is David and I in bed sleeping one night and smelling strong smoke coming through the air conditioning vents. We flew out of bed to find that Shea had vacuumed fresh ashes from the fireplace and the vacuum cleaner bag was smoldering. At least he had the sense to throw it out on the deck (which did leave a nice burn mark). He's in the "Army of One" now, which is kind of scary. How 'bout when we paid a fortune to get our Hurricane Rita damaged fence fixed and a week later Dustin drove through it. He pushed in his clutch, started his car and started rolling forward staring at me blankly as I was screaming at him to stop. What could we do, but laugh. We never could keep a straight face with that boy. There was the time I saw his head bobbing up and down in our hot tub. The tub sat in the middle of the house with glass windows all around it. I walked by to see Dustin's cousin, Bryan, holding his head under the water while Dustin was trying his darnedest to get free. Then there was the girls huge bedroom that you could access by two different doors. When Kristi was younger and still going through her terrible twos at ten, she would storm up to her room whenever things weren't going her way. Shea would always smile at me waiting for the doors to slam. Timing it perfectly, he would raise his fingers...one, then two as the doors would slam. I would just shake my head in exasperation. Then there was Kayla who was just even keeled. Not too hyper, not too mellow. David would take her upstairs to our balcony area to practice her softball pitching, because they could get the distance they needed up there. I think they did it just to get a rise out of me and hear me scream. So, we still have the memories...who needs the house.