My husband has always (sOo fondly) referred to our apartment as a cubby hole. It is small - we have been in our one bedroom apartment for two years. Adding a crib, changing table, and a now mobile baby to the 605 square foot space was really pushing it. All of our major pieces of furniture were given to us by family. It scares me to death to hear people talking outside my door, even though our middle apartment is right beside a set of stairs. Absolutely no apartment complexes in our city offer a single bedroom with washer/dryer hookups - using the apartment's laundromat is no fun and I will leave it at that. I'm also super vain and hate our walls and flooring and appliances.

Yesterday, I turned in the 30-day notice of intent to vacate the cubby hole that we consider our first home. Dylan and I began renting this apartment one month before we got married. We struggled hard for a while (Fun fact: we didn't have cable or satellite TV for one year! However, we have acquired a great little DVD collection from those times) We worked long hours at crappy jobs, counting down the hours until we could be home with each other. We found out we were expecting Easton here, we brought him home from the hospital to here, and he has had all of his milestones to date in here. I put so much effort into accessorizing our apartment with throw pillows, rugs, and wall art. And really - we are safe here. We accidentally left our keys in the front door overnight once (Thankfully, no one came in to steal anything or worse) but a neighbor we didn't know did notice the keys and knocked on our door bright and early to tell us. I have nothing bright, though, to offset the major first world inconvenience of paying $1.25 to wash a small load of clothes and another $1.25 to dry.

In less than 30 days, our family will be moving into the home that I grew up in! A house down a long, deer-laden dirt road, surrounded by National Forest that my parents built pretty much by hand (no mortgage = no rent!) when I was really young. We have to help them do a good bit of updating, but at 2,000 square feet and no rent to pay, I really can't ask for much more!