What a difference a year makes!

It still amazes me sometimes, how did we end up here? This time last year I was packing up all our belongings, unsure were we would be moving to, and nine months pregnant with Colin. Let me back up a little, to two months before. Everything was going well. We lived in a beautiful home, that we custom built, in a great neighborhood, filled with great neighbors and lots of kids. Brian had a great job with a top Lumber Company and I, a stay-at-home mom, had a growing childcare business, which I ran out of my home. Hannah (our daughter) loved playing with the other kids, and with my new before/after school kids joining the mix, I was on track to be making an extra $1,500/month or more when the following school year started back. Things were going great and we had No intentions of leaving our home or Texas for another 5-7 years.

That all changed one night when Brian came home from work, my mom was in town, so we went out for a very rare date night. Rather than dinner and a movie, we went to a park. Sitting on a bench, overlooking the lake, Brian told me that he was ready to go back home to the southeast. He had no idea how we were going to do this, no job transfer was lined up, no houses in our neighborhood were selling, no clue how to make this happen. We figured this was more of a long-term goal. We prayed and decided that we would just leave it up to God. His timing, his location, whatever was meant to be will happen, when the time was right. So that is how we left it.
We got the ball rolling, but realized that it would take a miracle to actually make this happen. Every card was stacked against us. Two realtors told us we would have to pay a Lot of money at closing to sell our house, no job transfers were available, three houses, all next door to us, have been on the market for over a year with no offers, oh and I was pregnant with Colin.

We just prayed, honestly that’s about all we could do. One by one things started to happen. We found a realtor, a great realtor, who said that she Could sell our house and she could do it without us paying anything at closing. We got an offer, but with a very heavy heart we had to decline it because we still had no job transfer. Would we get another offer? Yes! We got another offer, but it was for less than we needed. This went on and on, each time we wanted to accept the offer, but something just didn’t work. Four different couples made offers and counter-offers and after only five weeks on the market, we sold our house for Full asking price! Our neighbors were shocked, to say the least! (we lived in a cookie-cutter neighborhood, so it didn’t make sense to us either). We sold our house, but with only four weeks until Colin was due we still had no where to move to. Brian’s company had agreed to help him get a transfer back to the southeast, we just didn’t have a location yet. So we started packing.

One week before Colin was due Brian got a call to come to Morristown, TN for a job interview within the company. He flew out on Friday morning (Colin was due on Sunday) and flew back that night with a job! What a relief! Four weeks after Colin was born we packed up the U-haul (which Brian’s Uncle Jerry thankfully drove), our dog, a one-month old (Colin), and our 22-month old (Hannah) and headed to Tennessee!
We loved living in Tennessee, but after only six months in a rental house we decided we wanted to move to the country and start a farm. Which brings us here. So, now we live in the middle of nowhere, with no T.V.. We spend our nights moving cows and chickens or just talking.

The no T.V. thing started as an attempt to have one free summer on the farm enjoying nature, rather than just watching T.V., but much to our surprise we found that we LOVE not having the T.V.! The kids don’t miss it and honestly Brian and I don’t either. It is definitely going to be a permanent change in our house, so sorry for any people who come to visit who may have an issue with that.

It fun to see life as an adventure! I think when you follow your heart and really listen to where God is leading you it’s amazing the places you will go! Brian and I love Tennessee, we love farming and we both feel very strongly that this is exactly where God wants us to be right now. I have a very strong feeling that this is the beginning of something bigger than I can imagine right now, bigger than our little five acre mini-farm. I don’t know what the future holds for us and our farming venture, but it is a very exciting time in our family. If things can change so drastically in one year, I wonder what next year will be like? I guess we will have to wait and see.