It’s been exactly one year since we moved out here. Since I told the kids this bedtime story.  To the big yellow house at the end of the road.  The one I’d bookmarked as a “dream” on my computer that for a year I would compare every other house to and come up lacking.  The one with space for kids to run and gardens to grow and goats to graze.  The one with the “revolving” front door that welcomes a couple dozen people on a weekly basis.  Not into perfection or Martha Stewart life but into our mess.   On our knees as we scrubbed blueberries out of the off-white carpet two weeks ago, he said to me with a smile “You know, not too many places could withstand this…”.  True.  But that’s our life in a picture….loving people and blueberry stained carpet instead of pristine spaces and no one to share them with.

I don’t know when I won’t drive down our county road and not marvel at the mountains God moved to get us here.  Hopefully never.  Forgetting the goodness is a such critical piece of what makes me forget to be thankful.

There have been countless “firsts” here.  Today was our first farm picnic next to a big John Deere tractor:

And the first time we watched posts get slammed into the ground for our fence:

As well as the first time I caught all five of our kids on a tractor…

But the favorite first of all is this one:

First farm baby, due mid-September!