New Life

My favorite Halloween was the first Halloween my family and I spent in our new house.  I remember it being so fun and laid back.  It was a perfect beginning to our fresh start in a new place, new house, new school, and new friends.  The only thing that wasn’t new was my crazy, loveable, and tight knit family.  We had spent months trying to find a house we all liked and that was in our price range.  Although we found plenty of houses we could never find the perfect one.  The way my family works is we have to all agree on something if it’s something that will affect every one of us.  Before moving to Missouri we considered moving to Kansas.  My dad hated the job he had and needed one that paid more.  After searching for a job that better fit him in our area of the Salt Lake City Valley for a while we decided we needed out, away from the enclosed valley, away from the busy city life and most of all away from the critical, judgmental people of the valley.  We all agreed we needed to move.  But we didn’t all agree on moving to Kansas.  So we didn’t.  Then my dad was offered a job in Missouri.  One that paid a lot more than the one he had in Utah and one that better suited him.  After he got the job we all started to work.  Going away party planning, packing, selling the house, garage sales…we got rid of just about everything we had.  Stuffing everything we had left into a small Pod and truck.  We wanted a fresh start.  Go somewhere nobody knew who we were and start from the beginning.  And that’s exactly what we did.  A three day road trip and we were beginning our new lives, remembering the old ones.  We lived in an apartment for 6 months when we first moved there, but waiting to start our lives until we moved into our house.  Everything good happens when you aren’t looking.  After looking through countless homes with my parents and brother, we found one.  Coming home one day to my parents telling my brother and I they had bought a house was a shock and I was honestly a little upset to find out they bought a home without my brothers and my opinion on it.  But when we arrived at the house to look at it we instantly fell in love.  A medium sized house with a beautiful rock exterior and neutral colored interior giving it a relaxed feel it was the perfect house for us.  And the biggest surprise is when we opened the back door to the large covered deck overlooking the pool surrounded by concrete and then an area of grass for our two dogs.  This was the perfect house that popped out of nowhere.  We moved in immediately and got to spend Halloween in our new house.  I remember getting the strobe light out and putting it out in our garage while my brother scared the little kids coming to get candy, my parents sitting on the front porch with the bowls of candy laughing and giving the frightened little kids extra candy.  I was sitting with my dog in the front yard watching everyone, storing this feeling in my memory to later remember what it felt like to have a crazy family who loved you, remembering the feeling of knowing nobody knew who I was.  I could be whoever, whatever I wanted to be.  The feeling of starting a new life was the feeling I wanted forever, feeling new and fresh, mysterious and secretive.