I talked with the boys about moving to a new house and what all is involved in that process. (Only two of them were around when we moved here, and they were too little to remember.) We talked about packing, getting rid of stuff, prioritizing what to keep vs. what to give (or throw!) away, etc. I was prepared for some backlash about giving away &/or discarding toys and all the cleaning that they’ll have to help do, but what I didn’t expect was how badly they wanted to keep our garden!

The proposed solutions were hysterical. One suggested that we simply wait to move until our crops come in, so that we can take our veggies and fruits with us when we move. Another recommended selling the house to a friend so that we could come pick vegetables whenever we wanted to, because they would [naturally!] let us. A unanimous idea was to sell the house to Nana & Granddad (they don’t really need a new house, right? Ha!) so we can still access the garden. Even stealing the ripened crops under cover of night (*gasp!) was proposed, as was digging up and transplanting everything to our new backyard.

As a general rule, I try to avoid making outright promises to the kids, because I want to be sure that I can follow through, but I did tell them that we absolutely, positively would plant a new garden at our new house … I promise!

That pledge seemed to assuage the complaints … until we were at the grocery store last night. We walked through the produce section, and my oldest sighed and pointed at the large crate of watermelons: “That’s what we would have had in our garden. Now someone else will eat them.”