I gotta tell you, I love this time of the year down South. The temperature is perfect. The leaves have changed and are nearly falling. It’s just a wonderful season.

This past weekend, the hubs, kids, and I toured yet another piece of property in our effort to vacate suburbia and move out to create our own little haven. The suburban lifestyle isn’t exactly settling with us like we thought it would. We feel cramped, like we can’t breathe. At times, thanks to our HOA, I feel like we’re constantly under the microscope, being spied upon. And while we don’t have a lot of yard to maintain, I’m stressed about making sure it’s perfectly manicured so as to avoid the unwanted letters and comments. The best way to eliminate all of that is to just buy a bunch of land, build a house, and make a cozy home.

I know a lot of people think we’re nuts. “Why would you want to move further away from work?” and “We won’t be visiting you as often if you move that far away,” are the comments I’ve heard most. My husband’s content with driving a little farther to work, especially if he gets to appreciate the rolling hills and beautiful farmland of God’s country. As for the second comment, I usually respond with, “you don’t exactly come visit us now.”

I grew up in a small neighborhood, in a part of town that wasn’t fully developed yet, of course that’s changed. We had pastures and woods around us, lakes and streams. My brother and I would spend our summers outside until it was literally too dark to see anything. Davey’s the opposite. He tells me it’s boring outside. Well, that could be because there’s nothing to explore in our backyard or in our surroundings.

I have this dream for my boys of having so much land to explore that I don’t see them for hours! I have this romantic idea of them being able to camp whenever they want and far enough away from mom and dad, but still in our backyard. I dream about the boys hunting with their dad and doing so in our backyard! We’d have our own garden. There’d be no 45 year old drunk neighbors driving home at 3 in the morning, or a neighbor’s home improvements commencing at 6 on a Saturday morning. There’d be no snide comments about our garage not being clean and therefore making the rest of the neighborhood look bad. There would only be us and the great outdoors filled with the sounds of God’s many delights.

I can’t wait for this day to come. I’m so intoxicated with the idea that I can’t seem to function. I’m up at night looking at land for sale, contemplating how we can afford it, trying to make lists on what we need to do to our current house, looking at floor plans for potential houses, and pinning ideas on Pinterest.

Saturday’s land tour was magnificent and I really wish we could just write a check and say, “we’ve found our new home”. Davey loved it. There were mud puddles, sticks, leaves, deer tracks, a running stream, the sounds of birds, and the occasional lizard. It was a little boy’s dream (and the dream of mom with little boys)