Obituary to my couches

This is a post about, I kid you not, the love I have for my ex-couches, which we just sold.  Michael has been wanting new couches for a long time and I finally gave in because we found a great deal on a lovely sectional.  However, I will admit to shedding some tears as I watched my old couches roll away on the back of somebody else's truck.

Allow me to reminisce for a bit about why I am so attached those couches, and it will make a little more sense.

These couches are gorgeous, no?  The perfect shade of sage green in microfiber.  I LOVED that the color made them really stand out from all the hundreds of boring looking couches we had looked at.

These couches were the first big purchase Michael and I made as a married couple.  When we first got married, our apartment was partly furnished and we had enough old furniture on our own to pretty well fill our apartment.  A year later, we both spent pretty much the entire summer recovering from major health issues and surgeries, which meant we spent A. LOT. OF. TIME. on the couches that had come with the apartment.  So once we were both recovered, we were SICK of them and got rid of them as fast as we could.  We then replaced them with these lovely sage green couches, which I searched long and hard for and knew I had found "the ones" as soon as I saw them.  Michael was out of town and I immediately sent him a text that said "FOUND COUCHES!!!"  The store was nice enough to hold them for a day so that Michael could come home and see them before we bought them.  They were delivered to our house the next day and we felt like such grownups, with this first big purchase.

We loved these couches.  We were in a student married BYU ward at the time, so nobody in the ward had nice stuff in general, so anytime people would come by we would always get a ton of compliments on the couches, the one really nice thing we owned.

A couple years later we bought our townhouse (which is a much bigger purchase than a couple of couches!) and as our old furniture wore out we've pretty much replaced everything else by now, but I still had a soft spot for these couches, especially as the years went on and we built memories in our new house, and consequently, the living room and couches.

2 month old Pocket napping in her favorite spot

 We adopted Pocket about a month after we moved in.  She was 9 weeks old and only a pound and a half. Tiny puppy = tiny hiding places. She was constantly getting stuck in the corners of the couch cushions and we'd have to help pull her out. I'll always remember the way she thought it was such a riot to run circles around the sofa, wriggling underneath it on one end, army crawling to the other side and popping out, then circling around to do it over again. For some reason she thought it was hilarious. She loved hanging out under the couch, at least until she got too big to fit. After that, her favorite activity was to curl up on the top of the backrest or side arm and take naps. 

Stuck in the cushions

Balancing on the sidearm

 

A year later we adopted Red.  She was an abused shelter dog so we were both nervous for how things were going to go.  As we walked in the front door with both puppies for the first time, the very first thing Red did was to run into the living room and snatch one of Pocket's greenie treats on the ground, then jump onto the sofa and started to "bury" it in the couch cushion.  Michael started to laugh and said, "We're going to be okay."  Red's specialty with the couch was that she would always look for the absolute softest place on it to nap.  The couch was already very cushy, but if there was a pillow or sweatshirt or dishrag even on the couch, she would make sure to curl up on that particular spot.

A year after that, Bennett was born.  I think this is where I started to really get attached to the couches, with this new influx of memory-making moments.  Our sofa is the first place I sat and nursed our baby (well, tried. . .that's another story altogether). 

 

When we brought him home from the hospital, we walked into the living room and put his carseat down between the couches.  I spent that first night home sleeping on the couch with my newborn snuggled in next to me - we started out in the bedroom, but I was afraid that Mike wasn't getting any sleep and Bennett seemed to sleep better in my arms so I took him downstairs and laid down on the couch.  In the morning, I was awakened by my mother-in-law pulling up a chair and sitting down by me asking if I wanted some breakfast.  I remember rolling over to look at her and explain why I was on the couch. 



Mike's parents meeting Bennett for the first time

Obviously, we spent a lot more time on the couches in general those first couple months since we weren't doing much more than cuddling the baby all the time.  At least half of the pictures we have of newborn Bennett were taken on the couch.  There are countless other specific memories I have of my little newborn on those couches but you get the idea.

All the little ones spent a lot of bonding time napping together on the couches.

So farewell, good couches.  Thank you for being the centerpiece of all our family-building moments.