getting gone

Dear Mom & Rod,

Thank you for welcoming us into your house for eight months.
Thank you for putting up with all our messes, literal and emotional.
And all our noise.
Thank you for living with couch cushions on the floor and cartoons on the television.
Thank you for sacrificing your dining room table to serve as our command central.
Thank you for making extra bacon and extra space in so many rooms, for sharing the washing machine and the apple cider.
Thank you for taking the big kids to school some days, and for keeping them all here so many times when we needed to run out for cabinets or grout or door knobs.  Or sanity.
Thank you for raking leaves and ripping out honeysuckle at the new house.
Thank you for taking care of all the grocery shopping and so many of the meals.

Our boys have benefited so much by living with you.
You know the Dorothy Law Nolte poem, If children live with this, they will be that...?
You guys are solid examples of good humans, calm and flexible, optimistic and patient, persistent and curious. Thank you for sowing seeds of peace and love and kindness, and even scattering a few that look like People get mad when you bite them and kitchen drawer handles are not ladders, too.

This has been a bonus year.
And we all love you both so much.