I Won't Miss . . .

As we are winding up our time here in Madison I find myself periodically thinking about things that I won't miss. So here goes:

• I will not miss raking all the leaves, leaves, leaves. As fall is starting and I see the leaves beginning to fall I don't envy the people buying our house. Not only will they have to rake the minute they move in, they will have to continue raking until the snow falls, when it melts, and probably into April. The leaves are never ending.

I will miss . . . all of our beautiful trees. The forest behind us and all the creatures we've seen. It's going to be hard to leave that behind. Our new home has two scrawny little trees in the front yard and none in the back but a spectacular view of our neighbor's house.

• I will not miss the dogs next door. They bark. All. The. Time. This might surprise Clark because every time those dogs bark I tell him how much I love the sound of dogs barking. Nothing like waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of dogs barking. I think those dogs have woken me up more than my kids.
  

I will miss . . . some of the great neighbors we have around here. I'm hoping that our new neighbors will have a snow blower (if it even snows enough down there) and will be willing to bale us out.

• I won't miss how Russell's door sticks and squeaks. It gets challenging to sneak into his room or just peek in to check on him when his door loudly announces our entrance.
  

I will miss . . . our house. I love our little house. It's not perfect but it's been great for us! We truthfully still have lots of space to grow in it. Yes, there are a few things I would change about it but I love this house. This is where we started our family. We brought our two beautiful baby boys home here. It's hard to think of calling any other place home. Just tonight I was telling Clark how I'm going to miss how they can run around a "track" in the house.

• I won't miss how long it takes to drive any where around here. Pretty much any time I get in the car to go somewhere it is a 15-20 minute drive. It's just the challenge of our location. Bartlesville is small enough that we will be with 10 minutes of most everything.
  

I will miss . . . one of the only things close to us, our branch library. It's less than 5 minutes from us. It's a great little library. I've gotten to know quite a few of the librarians. I'm going to miss talking to them. In fact, it was one of my librarians who told me about the recall on the wooden Thomas the trains a few years back. If he hadn't said anything, I think Russell would have been gnawing on lead trains right now.

I've been sitting here pondering what else I could add to that list. Not much else. I love it here. Sure, it's got it's crazy, ultra-liberal progressive side but it makes life interesting. It gets boring if everyone always thinks exactly like you. And I'm not going to even get started on how much we are going to miss all the great people around here. That's another post when I can finally get myself to come to terms with the change that is about to happen.