Casa de Lego

Backstory: Building the home of my dreams out of Lego bricks was only the beginning of the dream of home ownership, even if I didn’t know it at the time!

When I was a kid, I loved Legos.  Until I was thirteen (yes, I admit I spent the summer between seventh and eighth grade enjoying occasional relaxation time with my colorful bricks), I used to let my creativity run wild, building cars, trucks, and especially houses.  I loved building houses.  If I was feeling a bit quaint, I’d construct a small house with a flower in each window, with a flat roof and a green square for a yard.

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Built by yours truly a few days before closing on the house, in the exact same style I always built my “tiny homes” – multi-colored and with a flower nearby.

However, if I was feeling the constraints of a tiny house (of which my childhood was anything but!), I would take one of those big screen squares and create a mini mansion, complete with bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and yes, a bathroom.  My Lego people would have their dream home, no matter what size it was!

The houses were always multi-colored bricks with a front door and a flower.  The requirement was always a flower had to be seen.  Ironically, I don’t have the best flower-caring skills, so flowers will never been seen in front of anywhere I live.  But my Lego People were world-class horticulturists with the greenest of thumbs!

All this time spent building houses for Lego People, and years later, I always wanted a house.  I loved the one I grew up – a two-story colonial with four bedrooms, a red front door, and a red garage door.  A pool in the backyard, bushes in the front yard.  It was on a cult-de-sac we used to ride our bikes on.  Until I was twenty-three, it was home.  Home then became townhouses, a huge downgrade from an actual home.  I knew I wanted to have a home someday, whether it was by myself, with my parents (if I never got married), or with perhaps that special someone that I would marry.

2019 was certainly the year of big things – first the marriage part (after living in a townhouse we both leased for several years), and then something else.

On November 15th, my dream of having a home of my very own was realized, when my husband signed the mortgage on a home – our home.

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Image: Realtor.com

Nestled in the quietness of a tree-filled suburban neighborhood, where houses are settled into and roots are planted (the next door neighbor said they’ve been living there for 40 years), the home has everything we are looking for, inside the bones of a place that has been called “home” for 43 years.

Obviously pre-move in (which happened on November 17th).

It needs (well, requires by us) a few things – a dishwasher and a microwave, but will also get some cool additions that my tech-loving husband wants.  As I’m writing this, he just finished putting up motion-detecting lights.

Far from the restrictions of a rental townhouse (our first home together), and spacious enough for two thirtysomethings and their dogs to really enjoy life (my dogs especially love the backyard), this home is everything we wanted, and after the necessary things are added, will be the perfect home.

The boxes are almost unpacked completely, the house is set up the way we’d like it for the moment (the downstairs is, at least), and this day before Thanksgiving, it is one of the many things I’m grateful for.

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Who would have thought all those years of building houses for my Lego people, that I’d get to have what I wanted for them?

Happy Day Before Thanksgiving!  What are you grateful for today, tomorrow, and always?

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