A year ago, Matthew and I pulled out of our church parking lot on Mother’s Day and started our 11 hour drive to NW Arkansas. We knew we only had a few hours the next morning to find a house (before we spent the rest of the day driving back to Georgia).
And within a few hours of our house hunt, it quickly felt like we had seen it ALL…
We walked into a new home with the unmistakable smells of brand-new carpet on the floor and fresh paint on the walls.
We walked into another home with a kitchen island bigger than the bathroom in our first house! (But, the island, unfortunately, was also bigger than that house’s backyard.)
There was even a fixer-upper with the most beautiful, winding staircase. (The kind of staircase that, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit, I had already envisioned my girls walking down together on early Saturday mornings.)
But, somewhere before we drove “forever-away” to see one of the last houses on our list (and somewhere after we stood in the middle of the same house that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in several years), we found ourselves standing in the BACKYARD.
And, instantly, we KNEW we HAD to have THIS BACKYARD ‘house‘.
I saw a pool!
I saw trees!
I saw a trail that led down to a creek!
I saw more space than what we’d been able to have in the past 13 years of marriage.
But, most importantly, I saw a big, blank canvas for SO many memories that I knew our family would be creating there together…