country roads

We’re moving from 1/8 acre to 10 acres. It used to be a farm, but the barn and silo have been torn down and it hasn’t had animals for over 40 years. It is part wooded, part corn field rented to the neighboring farmer and a whole lot of lawn to mow. (We got the riding mower in our purchase agreement!)

The farm house was built in 1890 and is in impressive shape, considering its age. The owners we are purchasing the house from have lived in this house for the last 40 years, raising their kids, hosting all of the family gatherings out on the front lawn.

Rory has been looking for a rural property for a bit over three years now. When we lived in Nebraska, he would take weekend trips back to Minnesota and scout out the areas he loved the most. He brought me along to see some of these properties and I humored him. I knew he was serious about this dream, but I didn’t really see it happening anytime soon.

We knew when we got pregnant with baby #2 that we would either have to finish our basement and put another bedroom in down there, or find a new home. And after pricing out the basement remodel and then realizing that the basement would just be the start, we decided we probably would have to move…because everything else started to feel a bit cramped when we envisioned another kiddo running around in here.

So we kept looking. Not really expecting to find anything, but hopeful.

We didn’t tell anyone we were looking though. This was mostly because we didn’t know if it would take three months or three years to find what we were looking for. The house hunt felt very casual, very non-committal.

So we took our road trips, visited properties and kept this fun little conversation between the two of us. And strangely, as Rory continued to tell of his dreams for this rural life, I started to feel some of my own dreams come to life as well. I began to envision my days. In February we found a house that we loved.  It had a huge porch and a big sun room. I could see myself living there, content and really happy. That property ended up falling through because of crazy zoning stuff beyond our control, but I told Rory after that visit, “something big just happened. I just became un-tethered.” And from that moment on, I was fully on board with this house hunt. His dream had become my dream too.

I think this is such a crazy and amazing part of marriage: the birth of dreams. It’s amazing, because usually a dream is birthed in one partner.  But to watch this dream grow into our dream might have been one of the cooler things to behold in our marriage.

When we first drove onto the property, we let Ivar out and he quickly ran opposite of the house. We just watched him as we caught up with our realtor. He was giggling and stumbling, and kept turning around to see when we were going to tell him to come back. But we never did. He was free to run in any direction he wanted.

And in that instant, I wanted to live there.  I envisioned a whole lot of our future days running around that yard, exploring the woods and raising our kids with a big garden, forts in the woods and a gravel road.

The next day we bought the place. A week later we sold our place. That felt crazy and wonderful. And now we are due to have a baby in one week, and to move the week after that. Which also feels quite crazy and wonderful...