Home Sweet Home

I posted a rather long and rambling Facebook status a few days ago as I mourned the sale of our first home. Today I share a bit of history of our new house.

I have a lot of plans for this house, especially for the outside- it is in desperate need of some landscaping, and possibly better exterior paint colors (...eventually...). And at some point I'll post some pictures of the inside, once we get a few more projects done (and boxes unpacked). But, for now, this is what we call home.

And this home of ours has an interesting history. Its former (and only) owner was previously the mayor of Naperville. When I first learned that, I thought, "well, that's neat". But I know there have been many mayors, so I didn't think it was that notable. Little did I know...

Mayor Chester Rybicki, the previous owner of our home, stands on the right in this statue in downtown Naperville. 

In my last post I mentioned the beautiful Riverwalk that runs through the downtown area of our city. Mayor Rybicki is considered to be one of the the men that helped make it happen. Before the Riverwalk, the banks of the river running through Naperville were apparently an unsightly mess- oil tanks, salt piles, trash. But Mayor Rybicki envisioned cleaning up the banks of the river and turning them into a beautiful walking path, and he helped see that vision into fruition. Many today consider the Riverwalk to be one of the town's main attractions.

Enjoying the view on the Riverwalk

He was known for being very active in the community; even after his time as mayor, he continued to serve and participate in discussions and planning. And our neighbors have shared that "Chet" was a very kind and friendly man. You can read a bit more about him (and see video) here.

As I've read and learned about Mayor Rybicki, I can't help but feel a little more attached to our house and the history that it has. It is a modest house (I believe you've seen the pictures of the former kitchen), but that's what I love- I always imagine people in positions of power living in grand, over-the-top homes. Ours is certainly more than sufficient, but it is also simple and homey. The kitchen and some of the upstairs bath are now updated, but aside from a cozy family room addition the mayor added in (approximately) the 1980s, the house is mostly original from when it was built in 1960; no fancy remodels or renovations. 

The former kitchen
You have to admit it looked pretty great for being 50

Mr. Rybicki was mayor during Naperville's largest period of growth, and he was an important part of making this a bright, lively town. I hope we bring life and joy to this house that would have made him proud.

Fun with family, friends, and neighbors

There's been a little delay between installments of my moving update because, unfortunately, it seems my camera may be broken. I was unable to retrieve photos from it until I ordered a new USB adapter. My dad currently has the camera and I'm hoping he'll be able to figure something out, but, as silly as it is to feel this way about an inanimate object, I kind of feel like a part of me has died!

In any case, the adapter arrived, so I thankfully have my pictures. And so begins Part 3: Fun with family, friends, and neighbors.

Drew's birthday snuck up on me only 4 days after moving in. He kept telling me he wanted to play with his friend Ben (from home in Georgia) for his birthday, so, knowing that wouldn't be possible, I wanted to make the day fun and distracting. So, even though I sort of swore off themed birthday parties after his 2nd birthday (until he was in school and really cared about it), I decided to make his birthday kind of fun by surprising him with a "Paw Patrol" party. Paw Patrol is a cute show he likes to watch about puppies that help "save the day" in various ways. (P.S. We did have a fun play date with Ben before we left to sort of celebrate Drew's birthday, but how quickly we forget).

Birthday present from Nonny and Poppy-
lots of work to put together!

As we settled in, we got a chance to meet a few of our neighbors. First we were surprised to find a sweet welcome gift on our doorstep from neighbors across the street.

After some of our last experiences with neighbors, it was definitely refreshing. (And please know, we actually had some awesome neighbors at home, too- they weren't all bad! But having flowers stolen definitely left a bad taste in our mouth).

Later that week we made our way over to say thank you, and Drew hit it off immediately with their 7-year-old son. Even more exciting is that they have another little boy who is only a month younger than James. Though they're not quite at the age where they can play together, I foresee many happy play dates in the future.

Drew playing with his new friend.
Photo taken from our inside our living room

During our chat, the neighbors informed us that the next morning, July 4th, there would be a neighborhood parade. We thought it might be a nice way to get to know the neighborhood, so we decided to join in the fun. We definitely enjoyed the walk around a few blocks while chatting with many other neighbors who have children Drew and James' age. My parents happened to be working at our house and snapped some photos of the parade going by...

Oh hai!

James in awe of the fire "f***"

Look how big the wheel is!

All the kids

July 4th was certainly a busy day because shortly after our parade we had our first "guests"! Friends of ours from Georgia moved to Michigan last winter, but ended up moving from there to Chicago the same weekend Jason and I arrived! Kevin and Chrissie (and their 1.5-year-old daughter) live only 30 minutes from us now, so we thought it would be nice to get together with some familiar faces. They came to check out the Naperville "RibFest" for lunch with us- an annual festival where contestants compete to serve the best ribs.

I didn't get any pics of the delicious ribs,
but here are cute kiddos waiting in line

They stayed through dinner and fireworks. We had plenty of fun in the backyard, enjoying Drew's birthday trampoline. Adults included! Fireworks weren't so much of a hit- James screamed until we hid inside, and their daughter fell asleep within the first few minutes, but being able to view them from our front yard made all of that so much easier!

Adult fun until the kids crashed our party

Though we're still working through unpacking (and missing our friends back home), having so much fun with family, friends, and neighbors has really helped us to feel at home quickly here.

Since it took me so long to get this part posted, I've built up another stash of photos to share. Next up will be our adventures exploring what Naperville has to offer.

Road trip

It's funny how time works. It's been three weeks since my last post. In some ways I can't believe it hasn't even been a month- so much has happened! In other ways, I can't believe almost a whole month has passed! My last post feels like just yesterday! I guess we have been working so hard and have been exhausted for so long but things are moving so fast it's hard to keep up with. I'm at the point that I barely know what day of the week it is anymore (don't even bother to ask me the date).

But we're doing well. We've been slowly settling into our new home and our new routines and enjoying ourselves at the same time meeting neighbors and seeing old friends. We're probably about 70% unpacked (though I'm probably being generous based on the amount of work I feel like I've done); I thought we'd be farther along, but, life.

I'd like to share some pictures and updates from the last couple of weeks, but I think I'll break them up into a couple of posts, both for my sake and yours.

My last post left off with Jason and I staying in Georgia for a week to get some work done on the house while my parents took our moving truck and the boys up to Chicago. I shared about our incident with our neighbors. Well, I ended up having to buy new flowers as the returned flowers did not survive. Jason and I tried to enjoy our "kidless" time, but we found our to-do list rather overwhelming. It seemed that for every item we crossed off, two more filled its place. We did enjoy one evening out at this fancy restaurant...

Kidding. Though it was right beside Melting Pot where we ate, and I just thought it was too funny.

Dark lighting= bad photo, but that cheese was GOOD!

We celebrated our last night in Georgia with an appropriate meal- fried chicken, biscuits, and macaroni and cheese.

We finally finished up the house and hit the road early Friday morning for a long 12-hour drive to Chicago. Here are some last pictures I took for our listing:

For anyone that would know- look at the paint!

And one last selfie "usie" in front of our house.

Though we initially thought we'd break up the drive over two days, with pets in tow we decided it was easier to push through and do it all at once rather than trying to find a pet-friendly hotel. Here are our road trip buddies for our 13-hour drive:

I have to tell a story about Rico. First off, you should know that he does not travel well. He howls the entire time he is in a car. This included a 2-hour drive when we moved from Hartwell, Georgia to Atlanta. At that point we already knew he was bad in the car, but we thought he would settle down at some point in the 2-hour drive. He did not. In fact, it became a game. I would see how high I could count between meows; I'm pretty sure I never got higher than 10 in the whole 2-hour drive. So... for a 13-hour drive we knew we needed a little help, so we called our vet who gave us a prescription for a light sedative to make the trip easier on all of us. 

Well... in the chaos of trying to get everything packed up and out the door on our last day, I grabbed the sedatives and quickly gave one pill to Rico. Jason caught me mid-act and asked if I'd broken the pill in half. Ummm... no. Was I supposed to? I quickly let go of Rico's mouth hoping that, as usual, he had managed to sneakily avoid swallowing the pill. Of course I wasn't so lucky this time. Thankfully Rico's a big cat, and at first we thought that maybe the whole pill hadn't even done anything anyway as he howled and panted, but after a while it became evident that it had when his eyes started pointing in opposite directions. It really did make the ride easier as once he finally fell asleep, he did not wake up until we were almost done. But the pill was supposed to only last 6 hours. Not 13. And at the very end of the ride the effects finally started wearing off, which seemed to leave Rico in a worse state than before. At one point we heard Lucy growl (she hadn't done this the entire ride). Assuming she was just tired of driving, I said, "yes, Lucy, I know. We're ready to be done, too" and gave her a pat only to find that Rico was latched onto her back- teeth and claws! I had to rip Rico off, only to have him do it another 4 or 5 times. We finally had to pull off the road with only 30 minutes to go just to get him into his carrier. Poor Lucy. And poor Rico. What an adventure. (As an aside- we kept a harness and leash on Rico the entire time. We thought the ride might be easier if he wasn't in a carrier, but we didn't want to risk an escape-kitty at any pit-stops. We kept the leash tied to a chair in the back, which gave him some room to get comfy, but kept him relatively safe.)  

We did finally arrive at my parent's house safe and sound late that Friday night, tired and exhausted. But we weren't awarded much rest as the boys were apparently eager to see us and woke far too early Saturday morning.

Tired as we were, it was great to be reunited at last, ready to begin our next big adventure.

Next stop: Settling into our new home

What a weekend

What. A. Weekend.

We packed up our entire house (and life as we know it) and sent it to Chicago in a truck. That included our most precious possessions- our children!!

Sitting where our couch used to be

Enjoying some lunch, then hitting the road!

Saying goodbye was so hard and I was left with so many mixed emotions.

But there wasn't much time to attend to that. Jason and I have lots to do to get our house ready to sell. This week we have painters, house cleaners, and carpet cleaners scheduled. And we ourselves will be doing little things here and there as well.

One piece I thought I had checked off my to-do list was the gardens. I knew they needed one last clean-up, the bushes need a trimming again, and I knew I'd have to pull some grass and weeds as well, but I'd already done the majority of the work, cleaning up the beds, setting a new border, and planting beautiful flowers. Little did I know I would be revisiting this task yet again.

Last night, after the moving truck took all our furniture, we decided we'd stay at a friend's house (who happens to be on vacation) instead of trying to sleep on a blow-up mattress on our floor. We returned home this morning, ready to work, only to discover a neighbor boy dragging our lawnmower from our (fenced-in!) backyard. Upon seeing us pull into the driveway, he set the handle down, and walked off. We were completely stunned and puzzled, but began unloading items from our truck, before it occurred to us to check what else might have been taken from the backyard. Upon entering the backyard I found two teenage children (one boy, one girl) trying to climb the fence, presumably to escape. I was so shocked I barely managed to choke out, "what are you doing?". The girl told me that a "neighbor" told her it was okay to come get some compost. I am not good with confrontation, and I do not handle stress and adrenaline well, so all I could manage to think to say was simply, "we live here. We did not give anyone permission to take anything. You need to leave." The teens quickly (and probably happily) complied, and ran from the yard.

It wasn't until after they left that our senses came to us to really check what had happened. After inspection we discovered they had taken my gardening tools (two small shovels, a small rake and a larger one, two pairs of hedge trimmers, and four pairs of gardening gloves), they had emptied mulch from our wheelbarrow (dumped it in the middle of our yard) and had filled the wheelbarrow with soil from my raised garden bed, and compost from our composter. When I came around the front I discovered they had dug up a good portion of my lovely petunias and impatiens. The strange thing was they took the flowers from such random places- entire sections in some places, groupings from other places, then single flowers here and there (instead of taking an entire grouping of a pink, purple, and yellow flower, they instead took single ones from separate groupings).

Half of the flowers are missing!

I was so angry. So much hard work (and money!) and been poured into those flowers. And I was SO pleased with how it had turned out. I was quite happy with the way the flowers around the tree had really filled in, just in time for listing the house, and everything else was colorful and thriving.

And the whole things was just perplexing. There were numerous items they could have taken (a full propane tank for grilling, a DVD player, empty storage bins that were in great condition), but all they took were gardening supplies and flowers (and they tried to take a mower and some dirt). I mean... who does that??

After calming down a bit, Jason and I took a drive around the neighborhood. We went in the opposite direction that we'd seen the children go, because that made sense, right? Wrong. We ended up heading down the cul-de-sac where we'd seen one of the children run, and immediately I spotted my flowers. Planted in the garden!

Pink, purple, and yellow flowers around
their mailbox

Jason asked if I was SURE they were my flowers. I was positive. But still, how could I prove they were MY flowers? But then... then I saw MY shovel. My shovel my sister gave me as a housewarming gift when we first moved in. Just lying in the yard.

I yelled at Jason to call the police, or ring the doorbell, or something! So we parked the car in our driveway and walked over to the house. I laughed to discover that the "culprits" had not covered their tracks very well...

Hard to see in the pic- a dirt trail

An adult answered the door (well... not really... no one answered and we were about to leave when the garage door opened). Jason tried to ask about the flowers and the guy just said, "my kids...". He explained that he woke up and saw all the flowers and asked the kids where they'd gotten them. The kids told them we'd moved out and "left all this stuff behind" so they took it. He also explained that they'd told him that we'd come home while they were there. He said, "you're welcome to take your flowers back" to which I replied, "your kids can dig them up again and return them." (actually, me being me, I actually said, "can you please have your kids dig them up and return them?).

We left for Home Depot and returned to find a pile of sad-looking flowers on our front porch along with our large rake and hedge trimmers. When I went to re-plant the flowers I noticed I was still missing a shovel and my gardening gloves. I had specifically left these items here so I could work in the yard and wasn't going to be able to without them. I told Jason he was going to have to go back and ask for them, which he wasn't happy about, but I wasn't about to buy new gardening supplies to replace our stolen ones. He returned with the small rake and the gloves, but still not the shovel I wanted. I sent him back once again. This time he met with the grandmother of the house who also explained that they'd woken to flowers and the kids said they'd gotten them from our house. She said she'd been saying she wanted flowers, so the kids must have wanted to surprise her. All three kids were there this time and even claimed there was nothing else left until Jason said I was adamant there was still a shovel. Only the youngest apologized.

Of course I'm angry about the whole thing. Angry that someone would steal flowers, angry that I had to replant them, angry that they look awful now after all that hard work and money, angry that I have to deal with this at all. But do you want to know what makes me the MOST angry? It's not the kids and the fact that they stole our stuff. It's the parents and the fact that they did absolutely nothing.

If my children told me they had taken flowers from someone else's yard, house empty or not, I would have demanded they return them. If they told me the people who owned the house had returned, I would have immediately sent them to apologize and return the stolen items. If the people whose items had been stolen showed up at our house?? I wouldn't have even thought for a second of telling the owners to dig up their own flowers. Without question, my children would not only have dug them up and returned the flowers, they would have replanted new ones, and they would have mowed the yard, swept the driveway, pulled weeds, until they wished they'd never set foot in that yard in the first place.

But these adults stood there with their kids and didn't say a thing. Never asked for an apology. Never really apologized themselves. And I'm starting to wonder if they were actually the ones behind it. I just can't fathom teenage kids being that desperate to garden. And really, how can you demand your children apologize (or force them to work in repayment) if you were the ones who put them up to it in the first place? The idea that these children were possibly encouraged by adults to do this infuriates me even more.

So, tonight I will say a prayer for the family. I will pray that the children will find guidance from someone who will teach them right and wrong. I will pray that the family will overcome whatever monetary shortcomings they have that cause them to need to steal dirt. And I will pray for God to help me to forgive them, because I am finding that very hard at the moment.

At least my day ended well with a Facetime call with my boys as they got to see our new house for the first time!

Drew immediately recognized his room and James' room (my mom painted them the same colors they are here) and he loved running around and playing "echo".

My emotions are riding roller coasters right now, but in the end, I know this is what our family needs, and in spite of all the hard work, and the harder goodbyes, I am excited about our journey.