So there’s a very good reason I haven’t been blogging. It’s a great story, but might take awhile to tell. Get yourself a nice warm drink and settle in. 🙂

Something you should know about me, I’ve pretty much loved horses since I knew what they were. For some people, I think it’s just written into their DNA, and that is definitely the case with me. When I was in second grade, I made an “I Wish” list. Here is the actual list:

Aside from wishing I was a dog and there were no boys, this list still holds pretty true. 😉

When I was 25, I was able to make the first item on the list come true. I bought my first horse, Maggie Sue. I have always boarded her and held #7 as a wish in my heart, that some day I would be able to look out my window and see my sweet mare grazing in the pasture. My husband and I have talked for years about our farm we will have someday. But until this year, I was traveling so much and so busy with weddings that it wasn’t practical to live on a farm. It’s a different lifestyle with greater day to day responsibilities, so I had it on the shelf as a 5 to 10 year plan.

Then one Sunday morning in July, I had a little time and went to Zillow on my iPad. For a long time I’d had saved searches for “barn” and “hobby” for a nearby radius and price range that would work for us. This adorable little hobby farm popped up, and when I started looking through the photos, I had this feeling that this was our place. I contacted my friend Terri Danielson to see if she knew anything about the property. By Wednesday, we were able to go see it. As we drove out of the driveway at the end, I asked my husband what he thought. He said, “I can’t find anything wrong with it!”

The trouble at this point was, we had lived in our current house for almost 12 years and it was in no way market ready. We dropped everything and for the next 10 days we paint, purged, packed, cleaned, fixed and staged and got pre-approved. The day we had all our ducks in a row and went to put in an offer, we found out someone had beat us to it.

We. Were. Devastated.

For the next week, we just felt numb. We could see ourselves living there with such clarity, that not buying this farm just didn’t feel possible.

After we recovered enough to thing straight, we talked with Terri about what to do next. We were so far into the process of selling our home that we decided, in faith, to list our home anyway and hope another cute hobby farm would come on the market. But we didn’t have to wait long — on the day our home was listed, our dream farm became available to us once again. Our home sold in just 2 days – full price offer! Even Terri, our agent said, “You guys were meant to get this place. Deals just don’t come together like this.” She’s right. I won’t get into the gory details, but there were some big, difficult wrinkles in the process where things almost fell through – even right up to the day we moved. But every step of the way, we felt God was leading this whole thing, increasing our faith in Him and love for Him.

From the day we saw the listing, to the day we moved in was a few days short of 2 months. We are still pinching ourselves that this even happened!

Here are a few photos from around the farm…(most are iPhone photos – haven’t had a lot of time to take photos with my big camera!)

The barn! This is the view from my front door. I love all the big pines. They will be so pretty in the winter.

The inside was all fixed up and like new. We keep the horses out full time, but the stalls are nice for bad weather, and just bringing them in for grooming or tacking up.

The property did actually come with a house. 😉 I’ve always wanted a home with a red door. It has so many things we’ve talked about wanting in a home!

I love the weather vane! The former owners were retiring to another state, so they left some very wonderful things with the property.

The dogs like it here, especially Toby!

Every barn needs kitties, right? Meet Finnick (who was originally Katniss, until we became aware of our inexperience with determining cat gender – oops), Gale and Primrose. May the odds be ever in their favor.

Finnick is a little mischievous! Toby loves to chase the kitties. Arthur is more gentle, and likes to sniff and lick them.

I feel like I’m on vacation almost every day. Except the working part. 😉

We have great sunset views.

It took us a month to settle in enough to bring Maggie Sue home. Horses are herd animals, and we couldn’t have her living here alone, so we purchased a new horse named Fritzie. She is named after the former owner’s grandpa because she was born on his birthday!