Flashback Friday - (Not our) Foreclosure

Before we bought the house we currently live in, Sam and I lived in a lovely starter home in the town just north of here.  I loved that house.  I still love that house and I think of it fondly whenever I remember it.  It had all the charm a home could have.  The previous owners had loved it and filled it up (with 6 children in 1180 square feet).  They begrudgingly sold it to us and we lived there for nearly three years of chaotic bliss. 

We lived there until we got jobs in a nearby city, at which time we opted not to commute and put the house up for sale on Easter weekend 2003 (knowing we were also a growing family, expecting Abby).  We sold it for an excellent profit at just the right time prior to the housing market crash to a young couple who for various reasons never moved in.  The couple re-listed the house for sale by owner to no avail.  It sat there for months.  The housing market crashed, they listed it with a realtor.  It sat there for years.  Finally, it went into foreclosure and went up for sale by a bank.  (We know these things through various contacts, and also through plain old-fashioned stalking techniques.)

It finally sold this fall after over three years on the market.  The final sale price was $63,000.  That is half of what we sold it for in 2003.  HALF, folks.

So, while I sit here thinking, "Shoot, I'd have bought it back for that price", I remember with warm fuzzies the memories we made in that home with Ben (who doesn't remember living there).  I remember the cozy living room with a wood-burning fire place, the blood, sweat, and tears that Sam put into installing the glass french doors in the dining room, the amazing backyard that we sodded ourselves, the landscaping over which we agonized, the awful red color of the laundry room that I was never motivated enough to paint over.  I remember taking down our neighbors fence while they were on vacation and putting it back up so there weren't big gaps at the bottom of it, and how I broke my big toenail doing that project.  I think about the invisible line in the front yard that Ben couldn't cross to prevent him from getting too close to the road.  I remember coming back from the FE Exam, and just swinging mindlessly for hours in the backyard.  All of it. Every bit of it makes me smile.

It was a good home, and while I love the house we live in now, that little house in Macon will always hold the title of "most special" in my heart.

At the end of the day, I have to remind myself that it was "just a house".  I sometimes regret that I let myself feel so deeply about such insignificant things.  I am not exactly sure when I became my mother, but here I am...an emotional basketcase...lamenting the foreclosure of a house I haven't lived in for three years that I only lived in for three years.