Steve and I moved into our first house on Valentine’s Day, five years ago.  I remember that feeling of holding the keys in my hand for the first time and walking through the front door.  Since we had built our home, and they were finishing up the final details right up until the hour before we closed on it…I had actually never seen it entirely complete.  Steve had been on site for much of the construction but other than the initial design work, I had only been present for the various inspections.  Which made that first walk through of our new home both exciting and terrifying all at the same time {please, God…let the back splash we chose look right!}!

Those first few weeks in the house were a bit of a whirlwind…a bit larger than life.  For days on end, we had furniture arriving, appliances being installed, more inspections being done, painting to complete.  Everything about this place was new.  Everything.  And while I was so excited to be going through this new stage of our life…it also felt really foreign.  Really unfamiliar.  Every night, I would resort back to our bedroom, curl up in our bed, and watch tv on the tiny little screen that we had set up on our dresser.  Even though we two other living rooms, with two other televisions, I still found myself going back to the one place that felt like home…the one place that had pieces of the life we had just left behind.  It was a far more challenging transition for me than I had anticipated.

After four weeks of nearly constant work on the house, we decided it was time for a break.  We decided it was time to take the weekend off, go to a movie and just relax for a change.  That same weekend, we had a nearly record snow fall in Ottawa!  Almost seventy centimeters when all was said and done!  The snow towered over everything.  It buried mailboxes…collapsed the gutters…and made it completely impossible to even get our vehicle out of the driveway, nonetheless down the street.  So if we wanted to see a movie {which we were determined to do!}…we had to walk!  So we pulled out the boots, the hats, the mitts…and off we went!  We walked to the movie theatre {saw ‘Juno’!}..had an amazing night…and by the time we made the trek all the way back…something had changed.  When I walked through the front door that night…I felt like I was coming home, and not just to our new house.  We sat on the couch in the living room that night, glasses of wine in hand, and ate far too many hershey kisses!  We talked about the month gone by and the month ahead {we were about to leave for Australia in two weeks!}…and we enjoyed just being…home.

Our house in one of my favourite places in the world to me now.  Always comforting.  Always home.  And every time it snows, I remember that night.  That first night away.  That first night coming back.

This coming year is going to be my busiest year ever.  And among the countless {seriously…countless!} hours of shooting and editing and writing…I am sure that I will feel daunted and overwhelmed and often, in foreign territory.  But somewhere along the way, I will show up at Megan and Darren’s wedding…out along the water…and it will be like that first night.  It will be comforting and soothing and reassuring.  It will be exactly what I need after weeks of being buried in newness.  And it’s not just because Megan and Darren endured what seemed like endless feet of snow for their engagement session…or because chatting with them is like laughing with old friends.  It’s because something about them just feels familiar.  Like everything you crave when everything else is off.

It’s because something about them just feels like…home.

And we all know that there is no better place to go back to.  Ever…