I cannot believe I forgot our 11 year houseiversary the other day. Okay, okay, maybe I don’t have to mark every anniversary of every thing that’s ever happened. Yeah, I don’t have to. I just like to.

But wait…I’ve only posted once about a houseiversary, and that was ten years ago! So now I don’t feel quite so ridiculous for posting one today.

The kitchen, back in the day.

Living room, pre-kids.

Old stairs

Love these doors

In the past eleven years, we’ve been through a lot in this house. Engagement, Hurricane Katrina, marriage, and the arrival of three kids at once (as you can imagine, we bought this house on the assumption we’d have one or two kids, max.)

We’ve redone the kitchen, rebuilt the stairs, moved rooms around, built in triple bunk beds, painted the exterior, and added a wall, but I still want to repaint the living room and get new floors downstairs and fix the ones upstairs and redo the totally ’80s downstairs bathroom and finally change the lightbulb at the top of the stairwell that has been burned out for a decade.

One day.

Would I love to have a bigger house? One without so much wasted space? God, yes. The boys won’t fit in those beds forever, and I’d kill for, say, an actual laundry room and a back yard. But I also love the idea of the boys growing up in the same house forever. And I can still remember the knee-weakening feeling I got when we walked through the front door for the first time.

(Of course, the previous owner was an artist, and had one teenage kid. And was more on the minimalist side than we’ll ever be.)