Goodbye, Massachusetts...

Oh, Massachusetts, how I miss you. It's been six months, but I still think of you often. Other than San Diego, where I lived for 18 years, you were the place I lived the longest. Seven years. You'll always be a second home to me. 

I moved there right after graduating from college. It was there I had my first apartment all to myself. It was a tiny shoebox of a place, and I loved it. (I didn't love the mice, but hey... we worked it out.)

I moved there at the end of Summer, when the heat and humidity made me second-guess my life choices. But then came the Fall, and I truly fell in love. I crunched each vibrant fallen leaf with the joy of a little child. I tried to take a mental picture of every firey tree I passed.

Then came my first Massachusetts winter. I didn't know what to expect. Holy crap, the wind was awful! But again I found beauty.

I also found history. Our country is young; its history is short. But man, is it cool. And so much of it happened in Massachusetts. 

Even the homes are historical (and beautiful)! Case in point: Emily Dickinson's house.

No discussion of Massachusetts is complete without Boston. As the song goes, "Boston, you're my home." The skyline!

Fenway park!

The food!

The country's absolute best 4th of July celebration!

I mean, really, what's not to love?

Speaking of love, I found it in Boston. It's where I met Daniel. Here we are in our first-ever photo together, taken on one of our first dates (to a BU hockey game).

And shockingly soon after, we were engaged. It all happened in Boston.

Massachusetts is where we made out first home together. It was a piece of crap one-bedroom basement apartment with exposed pipes and leaking windows. The woman above us was inhumanely loud at 6:00 in the morning. We had the sewer main back up into our shower on a Sunday morning. We lived next door to the missionaries (that should tell you a lot about how nice it wasn't). But it was the first place we lived together. It was home.

Still, we moved after a year. Our new place was better, but it was still a basement apartment. We lived right by the (extremely loud) front door of the building, so we heard every resident's (and visitor's) comings and goings. We lived on a loud, busy street. We had mold. But again, it was home. And best of all, it was the home in which we discovered that our family would be growing by one little person.

And then she came. She was our first Massachusetts baby. 

We kept the big life events coming. A few months after Aubrey was born, we bought our first house. We felt like real Massachusetts residents. It was the perfect first house for us at the time. I still miss it.

While we lived there, we experienced our fair share of snow.

But then we also experienced some wonderful spring weather. Picnics in the front yard and neighborhood walks were favorite pastimes.

When summers rolled around, we had the beach! We didn't go too often, but it was nice to know we always could. 

Then, every Fall, we got to experience one of my favorite East Coast activities--fruit picking. Peaches, apples, strawberries, blueberries. Massachusetts had them all. 

As time went on, our family grew a little more...

... and a second Massachusetts baby was born. 

We continued to enjoy all Massachusetts had to offer us, this time as a family of four. We visited beautiful farms...

... and enjoyed the wonderful New England Fall. I tell you, it NEVER got old.

Things got even better when Pam and Javier moved to Boston. We got to see them nearly every week! It made Massachusetts even more wonderful.

We were happy there.

But, of course, there were some tough times, too. Our poor Carter was pretty sick that first year of his life. Thankfully, he received wonderful care, and I never worried he wouldn't make it (even when he was admitted to the ICU).

And with times like that--when we needed our families but they were all so far from us--it was hard to be in Massachusetts. It was hard to have our kids' grandparents a day's travel away. And so, for the sake of family, we decided to leave.

And that, too, was hard.

These are the last photos I took of Boston, on our last family trip to the city.

We sat in the Common and tried to soak it all in. We lamented that our children won't even remember Massachusetts, their first home. So I took this photo, in hopes that I'll always remember what it felt like to live there.

Massachusetts, you're my home.