Plum Crazy Millers...where purple, passion and peace reside.

End of an Era... That is how one of my best friends, Jill, described the sale of my parents house yesterday. They bought this house, the house I grew up in, for $99,000 back in 1980. It sits on a 1/4 acre of land, backs to woods, has 3 full baths, 4 bedrooms, a deck on the back (that I helped build),is close to the train and metro buses and is 17 miles from the Pentagon, give or take 2 hours for traffic ;0) Our family of 5 had many good times in that house.

It started with rust colored shag carpet, moved to green and then once we moved out, hard wood floors. My Dad tiled the basement, and put in redwood moulding and re-bricked the fireplace. He sectioned off the back 1/4 of the two car gargage and made a craft type room and storage area that always remained locked. Not because we weren't allowed in there, but because it contained all his tools, photography equipment and moms silver. Some dead bodies and millions of dollars..no just kidding... but we always used to pretend that there was secret treasures and untold fortune inside that small locked room.

This was the room that got me when I went back to say goodbye last week. I walked through the house and saw all the things my Dad has been so busy fixing up and it was when I was getting in my van to leave he said "Hey, come here I want to show you something." I walked through the almost empty garage and he opened the secret door. There was nothing but empty shelves inside and it was a lot smaller than I remember. I had to choke back the tears. It was the weirdest thing.

Growing up a military brat, we moved several times, 6 to be exact before I was 13 and finally settled in this house. I was in 7th grade, there were 8 houses on my street and the rest of my neighborhood was dirt. The road that connected my best friend and I (where her parents still live) was only half paved and woods ran along either side. Now there are several shopping centers, literally hundreds of homes, a bowling alley and two pools, that have popped up in that 2 mile stretch. They've even re-routed the road in the past 5 years to accommodate for the excessive traffic that now flows through there. Crazy.

If I've learned anything from my moving experiences, it it that you can't look back. Don't focus on what you've left but what new adventures lie ahead. And with these thoughts come my parents buying a bigger house twice as big actually with 5x's the land 20 minutes closer to us and their grandchildren. My brother is now only an hour away instead of 2 and they have plenty of space to have Christmas at their house again. I can't wait ;0)

They sold their house in a day and half.....for 5 and 1/2 times what they paid for it 25 years ago.