30 Day Photo Challenge: Day 2

Day 2: A picture of my very first home

(Please ignore the letters on the front of the house.)

I bummed this picture off of Google (my go-to source for many of the other pictures yet to come for this challenge). I'm sure I probably have at least one picture of this house somewhere, but there's no telling where right now, so I figured it would be easier to find a picture of it online... and I was right, because the house is actually on the market right now. Granted, the house looked pretty much nothing like that when I lived in it from birth to late 1997 (I think it was yellow at one point, and then blue... or vice versa, and the landscaping wasn't as nice as it is in the picture), but nevertheless, that's it - my first home.

Back in October 2010 when Jordan, Rylee, and I were down in Florida visiting my daddy and family (mentioned briefly in one of my previous posts), we drove by the house (one of our "traditions" with my daddy when we visit), and the current owners were sitting on the front porch. We stopped in front of the house, and I rolled down my window and waved to them and told them we were just looking, because I used to live in the house. Immediately, the woman perked up and asked, "Are you Penny?!" I got a little tickled by that and replied, "No, but I am her daughter." The next thing I knew, we were parking in the driveway, and the woman and her husband (I can't remember their names) were inviting us in to look around. It was a dream come true for me. After my parents divorced, my mom got a new job here in Alabama and sold the house. When we pulled out of that driveway for the last time on the day of our big move, I thought I was never going to be in that house again. It was so surreal to be able to walk through it 13 years later... with my husband and baby girl. I'm sure it was pretty surreal for the owners (the same people who bought the house from my mom) too, to see me grown up with a family. The last time they saw me, I was a 7-year-old little girl. Just like the outside of the house, the inside looked basically nothing like it did when I lived there, but it was so neat to see how they have modified it over the years. It really is a beautiful house. I am so thankful they allowed us to come in and look around that day... they will never know how much that meant to me.