This was a much more relaxed weekend than the last one. On Friday night, I met a friend downtown for drinks and dinner. It was so nice to do something like that again! She was in town assisting a mutual friend of ours, a prolific romance novelist, who was signing books at the Indies Invade Philly convention. My friend sent pictures the next day of lines down the hall, which just made me so happy that people were treating authors like rock stars.

On Saturday, the seven of us plus Max the dog met some of my husband’s colleagues at Wissahickon for a hike. The fall leaves and stone walls and rushing water were just so beautiful. The kids amused themselves by trying to catch falling leaves — harder than it looks, even if there are a lot of them.

On Sunday, I’d arranged a few hours of childcare for the toddler, and used this time to go for a run amid all the pretty fall leaves, and play Christmas carols on the piano for a while. Well, and clean the house because we had another showing this morning.

Then it turned out that schools were unexpectedly closed today, for very tragic reasons. So we all wound up going for one more fall hike this morning. We didn’t know Mr. Hughes (my kids feed into the other high school in the district) but I’ve been pondering a lot since we got the news just the image of him leaving the school on Friday afternoon, and no one knowing in that moment why school wouldn’t open on Monday. Life can change so much in an instant. It’s easy to go about day-to-day life forgetting this, and then sometimes you get a sudden reminder.

The wind has now kicked up a lot and the leaves are falling fast off the Japanese maple in the picture on this post. It turns out that now is the time to plant these trees, though, so we bought some for the new house, so (hopefully) there will be future falls with bright red leaves as well.

After the photographer and real estate team left, I went out in the backyard with the toddler. As we were wandering around back there, I was reminded of how much I love this house. The butterfly bush is still blooming, as are the “pink grapefruit” yarrows. My husband bought mums and planted rows of fall blooming asters. The leaves are starting to change color. The gates and lanterns and wood porch all looked pretty in the waning light.

The house has been a very good home for us. We have been very happy here. I hope someone else will be very happy here too.

We made a decision to purchase this place quite quickly about 10.5 years ago. We were moving from NYC, and knew very little about the area. So in retrospect it is a blessing how well the house suited our needs for a great many years. The mudroom is spacious. The basement is light and since the house is on a slope, you can walk out to a lower level porch. The kids’ bedrooms are reasonably big. We completely renovated the kitchen three years ago and now it feels airy in addition to functional. It opens up to a porch that looks out over the backyard, and makes you feel like you’re looking out at the top of a forest…even if it is suburban PA. I wish our street had sidewalks, but I can run to trails in less than 10 minutes, so that has been a lovely benefit.

Houses become more than just a place to live. They carry so many memories between their walls. There are drawings on the wall that my now teens and pre-teens made when they were little. The stairs are where their little feet ran up and down every morning. The driveway is where they learned to ride bikes.

Our new house is going to be amazing. I am looking forward to this new chapter, but starting a new chapter means you’ve finished another one. So it goes. Time passes. But I’m sure this house has the ability to make many new memories for someone, who I hope loves it as much as we have.

Photo: Staged kitchen. Everything gone from the counters except a plant I got as a baby gift from Anne Bogel — if you’re not reading the Modern Mrs. Darcy blog or listening to the What Should I Read Next? podcast, you should!