Here

 Today Nora and I woke up hours before the the two big kids. We ate our breakfast quietly at the table so we wouldn't wake anyone and then headed right out to the garden. We spent the next hour and a half gardening together. I pulled weed after weed and thought about the beginnings of this garden, way back when and how much it and our little "farm" has grown over the last several years.    


Before lunch I walked outside to find my two big kids high up in the pine trees. So high they needed me to hold a ladder to help them down.

Tonight after a full day of tree climbing, playing with neighborhood friends, a visit from Papa, and a baseball game Ryan overheard Grace say to Jackson, "let's go outside and pick a bedtime snack of black raspberries and jump on the trampoline". Again I can't help thinking about the beginning of here and them and how very lucky we all are. How very lucky they are, to grow up here.


 Of course there are the things. There are always things here. Today it is a broken washing machine, a broken door, and a broken lawn mower. Soon all of that will be fixed and new things will need tending in their place. These days I'm in a pretty good place about all of that.
 Today we officially closed on our farm. It feels strange to say that because I've never once thought of it as anything but ours. Then again, that's not to say I've never worried about it. While I'm feeling overwhelmingly grateful tonight, I'm also having unexpected feelings of excitement mixed in with a tiny splash of disbelief. It's that same feeling of "WOW, we really did this!" I had the day we moved in here.

Tomorrow I will wake up to the beginning of my new-old life. It feels so good to be here.