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Sometimes my eyes drift to the old, yellowed laminate flooring in the kitchen of our rental house and sigh. The windows in this old house don\u2019t seal quite right, and you can\u2019t use the vacuum cleaner while the air conditioner is running without blowing a fuse. This isn\u2019t the house I grew up dreaming of. I could spend hours listing all the things that are wrong with it. And yet it\u2019s home.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s been home for almost nine years. There\u2019s comfort in that. I can navigate effortlessly to the kitchen in the middle of the night without turning on a single light. I know just how much to turn the shower knobs to get just the right temperature. I\u2019ve fallen in love with the way the light shines through the living room windows as the sun sets in the distance.<\/p>\n
We know we won\u2019t always live in this house. Eventually we will pack up all our things and say goodbye to the orange tree in our backyard that we were married under. We\u2019ll make this next move to get closer to our dream home. We\u2019ll find faults in this house too. And yet, it will be home.<\/p>\n
Last night my husband and I returned from visiting family in another state. On our drive back from the airport, we excitedly talked about seeing our pets and sleeping in our own bed. Once we unpacked, I grabbed my favorite throw blanket, cuddled up with my dog, sank into the sofa, and sighed.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s good to be home.<\/p>\n
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Christen Hammons is editor-in-chief of\u00a0Bella Grace. She lives in Orange County with her husband, two sassy cats, and one scruffy dog.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometimes my eyes drift to the old, yellowed laminate flooring in the kitchen of our rental house and sigh. The windows in this old house don\u2019t seal quite right, and you can\u2019t use the vacuum cleaner while the air conditioner is running without blowing a fuse. This isn\u2019t the house I grew up dreaming of. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}