In less than 48 hours, we’ll be on our way. We’re moving almost 1,000 miles away.  Our stuff is all packed up–well, almost, and our house looks a little like this:

This is the inside of a doll house that my dad built for me when I was about 5. It is a replica of the house where I grew up: 1818 Leslie Lane, in Richmond, Virginia. I’ve always loved the details of the house–the matchstick windows, the hand-carved brick on the outside, the yellow-ish seventies carpet that ran throughout the house. Even the little closet under the stairs is a tiny copy of the one where my sisters picked on me and shoved me in there with the vacuum cleaner once. No hard feelings, guys..really 🙂

When I lived on Leslie Lane, it was hard to imagine living anywhere else, and I didn’t until I went away to college. I had a couple of other apartments after college in Virginia, one housemate in Georgia, and I was even lucky enough to live with my in-laws while my then-fiance finished up his final year of college.

After we got married, we lived in a tiny apartment in the basement of someone’s home. Some “ONE” doesn’t really describe it so well–the people had EIGHT children. It was noisy pretty much all the time, and it seemed there was always someone breathing on the other side of the door connecting to our place. But it was home, because I was with the one I loved the most.

After about 8 months, we bought a little house in Powder Springs, Georgia. We were blessed to live around the corner from a dear friend of mine, and we had some great neighbors. At that house, our sweet daughter joined the family, and my Dad planted a maple tree in the front yard on her first birthday. There were more of us to love–and it was home.

A few years later, we moved to Conyers, Georgia–next door to my husband’s parents. It is here that we’ve lived for the last 12 years. Here is where we celebrated birthdays together with our children’s friends. Here is where our precious son joined our family–all the way from Guatemala. There were hard times, too. Here is where a dear friend gave us a maple tree–just like the one my Dad had planted years before–that we planted in our backyard after he died. We can see it from the kitchen window, and one day, it may cast a shadow on the playhouse he built for our kids–and on the swing set my father-in-law built.

Here is where a turkey knocked with his beak on the glass of our front door–he thought his reflection was going to steal his girlfriend. Here is where our kids learned to ride bikes, use pogo sticks and skateboards, listen to coyotes at night, and to be very still when watching deer and birds.

Here is where my son lost his first tooth, and where my daughter told me about her first boyfriend. In this home we have sung and laughed and prayed and danced and clapped and cried and grieved and rejoiced together.

Here is where I taught myself to make pie. Here is where I have made several HUNDRED pies in the last couple of years–each one a delicious contribution to somebody’s life–mostly mine. 🙂

And today, I made The Last Pie of Honey Creek Road. It was nothing elaborate, because we’ve packed up so much stuff that I had to go buy a whisk and a bowl. I had a graham cracker crust in the pantry, along with the other random ingredients we’ve been snacking on for the past week. In the bottom of it, I dumped some white chocolate chips and attempted to melt them for a few minutes in the oven.

They did not exactly melt, but instead took on the look of toasted marshmallows. Hmmmm….we’ll see how that goes. Anyway, I let it all cool for a few minutes and then added chocolate pudding mixed with Cool Whip. Do not ask me how much of anything I added, since the measuring cups have been packed for days.

I added that yummy pudding stuff on there and then decorated the top with a few white chocolate chips and the last of the Cool Whip squeezed from my favorite pastry tool: a zipper baggie. So here was the result:

I just ate a slice of it, sitting alone in my office upstairs. The slice was messy and disorganized, but it tasted great. Much like our life here, it was full of love and flavor, and I don’t have a single regret about how it turned out.

Yes, here is where we have lived, and after Saturday, we’ll live somewhere else, but we will be together. We will laugh and love and dance and pray and celebrate and cry and sing and work and play–together.

And wherever we are together, we are home.

See you soon, pie lovers, and I sure hope Yankees like to eat pie!