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It’s been a year since we left our home of eleven years and moved to the farmhouse. What seemed like such a long and stressful process to get the old house sold and the new house purchased is just a distant memory now. We have done a lot to the farmhouse over the last year, including our biggest project of adding a second bathroom upstairs and our most recent addition...the screen door I’ve been dreaming about my whole life. In some ways, we miss the house on the hill...living on blacktop, having a shop, and having the fence complete so we can have our cows on the property with us. However, our new shop plans for the farmhouse property are in the works and the fencing supplies have been purchased, so the cows will be back home sooner than later. I suppose the gravel road is just a trade-off for the four bedrooms and basement we acquired when we purchased the farmhouse. We have been blessed beyond measure over this last year and look forward to many more years making memories with our girls at the farmhouse. Just last weekend, we celebrated our first small town Independence Day with family friends at our home. We grilled out, the kids did the slip & slide, and we watched our town’s fireworks from the farmhouse backyard. We’re so thankful for the men and women who have sacrificed for us to have freedom in this country. We’re so thankful to see God’s hand working in all and through all and for the freedom found through Jesus. Happy 4th of July from the Farmhouse, friends. ❤️🇺🇸🏡🇺🇸❤️ 
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Every single year, I take pictures of the girls and purchase Christmas cards in the beginning of December. Every single year, I don't send them on time. Like really... Every. Single. Year. In fact, when we moved out to the farmhouse, I literally kept three prints from the last several years' of cards and threw the rest away. 😫
And in mid-December, I mailed some!
I mailed a whole SIX cards, in fact! I also handed out some cards at church and even gave some to a few of our family members! That is a definite improvement from years past. However, come January 31st, the rest of them were still in a pile in my office...ready to be mailed out. So I set a goal for myself to mail them by Valentine's Day. And this morning, I am dropping them off to the post office. I didn't order as many cards as I did in the past and didn't even get to some of the people on my Christmas card list...so I still wouldn't call it a success. But it was an adequate effort. Maybe 2018 will be the year that I get my Christmas card life together. We'll see. Merry Valentine's Day from the Farmhouse, friends. 'Tis the Season! ❤️🎁🏡🎄❤️ When we first announced to the world (okay, our little world) that we were buying the farmhouse, I posted a picture and a friend of ours tagged Stephanie in it. She said, "This house looks just like the house I grew up in!" And at that moment...the story began unfolding.
She and I have been corresponding since we made contact that day about everything from the wells on the property to the way you have to put your hip into the interior doors to get them to close just right. It has been a joy to have conversation with Stephanie about the home we have come to love and call our own and to get to know her sweet mama through our talks! We have been saying for the last several months that the next time she was in Adrian, she would have to come visit and this weekend we were able to make that happen! Stephanie, her brother Keith, and Keith's wife Tracy came out to see the farmhouse this afternoon. They brought the aerial image you see above of the farm in the 1970's.
Our girls have been looking forward to meeting Stephanie ever since I told them about her several months ago. Today, it happened. She and Keith walked them through the house and gave them a tour, sharing details of what the house was like in year's past. Mattie showed them her bedroom and closet (and offered to show them again at least four or five times). The wallpaper that Stephanie picked out as a young girl is still in the closet! Claire shared the transformation to her girly bedroom from the one that was Keith's bedroom in high school. Harlee's bedroom wasn't even a room back then...but instead a loft area that overlooked the stairwell. She enjoyed showing off her basketball room and reminding Mr. Farmhouse once again that he still hasn't built her a wall. What a beautiful snowy day to introduce the girls to the adults who grew up here. Thanks for coming out, Highley family. ❤️🏡❤️  January 9th marked our six-month anniversary of our "first night sleeping at the farmhouse". Six months. In some ways, it feels like that was ages ago...and in some ways, it feels like yesterday. Over the snow days (and ice day and really cold wind-chill day) that we had off of school last week, I really reminisced about our time here at the farmhouse so far. I started looking through some of my old blog posts and Instagram photos. One of my most favorite memories for the rest of my life will be from 9:00 at night on the first Saturday night that we slept here. Our minister and his wife came out and prayed over the farmhouse. You can read about it in my blog post from that day...Bless this Mess. Since that warm July night, we have enjoyed family movie nights cuddled in the living room, mornings on the front porch reading our books, pick-up games of basketball out to the north of the house, friends over to BBQ, softball practice out in the yard, and for Thanksgiving we hosted our first TWO family dinners out here. We experienced our first farmhouse Christmas with the girls. We have painted and decorated, Added an upstairs bathroom, Tore down a barn, Added a chicken coop, Purged belongings, Purchased furniture. It has been quite the journey and I know we are nowhere near "finished".
Mr. Farmhouse has been working tirelessly in all of his spare time to get the girls a second bathroom. We paid a buddy of ours to do the rough-in work and plumbing (thanks, Brent!), but Mr. Farmhouse decided he could finish the rest out himself. With lots of help from our dads, we have finished the sheetrock, cement board for the tile, and wiring. Next up is paint, then putting in the vanity & sink, finishing the accent wall with barn wood & metal from the barn that is lying beside our house, the tile work, and installing the toilet & plumbing fixtures.
You guys. Something really big happened on Friday. We. Sold. Our. House. You might remember that we have owned the old house and the farmhouse for the last month. We went ahead and purchased the farmhouse so our sellers could move along with their lives and were still waiting on our sale to go through. We knew it was happening, just didn't know when. And then...last Monday, we got a phone call. It was happening. It was time to sign papers and officially sell our house! This process that started last spring was finally coming to a close. It was a long-awaited phone call. A huge relief. A blessing to finally get rid of the feeling that we were holding our breaths until everything came to a close. We signed Friday after school to finalize the sale. Earlier that day, on Friday morning, sweet Dylan & Bailey went and signed the papers (how stinking cute are they???) to start making the house we had loved for so long into their own home.
It's a joy to see these "kids" who share so much of our story jumping in and making our old house their home.
We are excited for them to finally be through this process, even if they are having to keep Harlee's LeBron James cutout on the wall for a few more weeks until we can get her wall built and move him to his forever home! Thanks for sticking with us through this process, faithful readers! Can't wait to share the future of the farmhouse as we start to transform the upstairs with a few extra walls and a bathroom! Coming soon! ❤️🏡❤️ About a year ago, I received a text message from Logan's mom. She wanted to know about doing a six-month session for their sweet boy. Of course, I gave her the information and we set up a time to meet. Since that meeting, this boy has stolen my heart! I can't even believe that we are now to the point where we have completed his 18-month session! Isn't he handsome? 💙 I can't even believe I'm saying this. It's done. The closing papers are signed. We have a new address. The farmhouse belongs to us. Yes, we have been living here for a few weeks now. Almost all of our belongings are already moved over and put away. It has felt like "ours" for a little while already. But this long process of inspections and appraisals and repairs and painting...it is over. We bought our forever home today. And soon, we will sell our home of eleven years. It didn't happen like we thought it would. In fact, the sale of our other home isn't even complete yet. In May, when this whole process started, if we had known that we wouldn't be closing on the farmhouse until August 2nd, I would have laughed and said, "No way." If you would have said that I would have to reschedule my very first teacher meeting for the 2017-2018 school year to go sign papers, I would have said, "Not happening." But here we are. In a few days, we'll build a wall to create an official fourth bedroom. We'll add a second bathroom upstairs. We'll tear out and rebuild Mattie's closet. But not yet. For now, we'll just enjoy today. The day that the farmhouse became our home. Farmhouse, sweet farmhouse. ❤️🏡❤️ Home, sweet home.
I know, I know.
I'm not in control. God is. I can't change things by worrying about them. God's plan is better than the one I have planned for myself. Let go and let God. I get it. I say these things to other people. I say these things to myself. I use these phrases in my daily prayer time. I know. But sometimes, when things don't go the way I planned, I forget. I forget that although things don't always work out the way I had planned, they do work out the way God has foreseen from the beginning. I forget that when I spend my time fretting on the inside, my family gets the raw end of the deal on the outside. Because I'm kind of cranky. Kind of unsettled. Kind of irritable. Deep down, that Polly-Hannah that I wrote about a few days ago is still there. Polly-Hannah knows that God's got this. She knows that He can keep the world on its axis spinning at just the right speed. She knows that He already has divine appointments lined up to make specific things work exactly how they need to work out for His glory. She knows. I know. But that doesn't mean that there aren't days that I'm frustrated with the day-to-day moments in life. When my plan doesn't work out the way I had pictured it all even though I am confident that this is the plan God has for us. You see, last Friday, we were given the impression that all was good to go with our closing date. God came through and that one piece of paper that needed to make it to the lender's office made it! But Tuesday we found out that there was another piece of paper. And that paper is still sitting on someone's desk at the USDA office, just needed to be sent over to the title company. So we didn't close yesterday. And we won't close today. Hopefully we will close tomorrow. And even if we don't, I know that we will close eventually. We will sell our old house. We will buy the farmhouse. It will all work out the way God intended it to. I know this. But for now, "I like things to work out the way I had pictured in my head-Hannah" is trying to find "Polly-Hannah". I'm trying to put on that smile and enjoy the journey. To remember that someday, I will look back at this time in life and say "that was a long eight weeks, but we grew during that time...we learned to trust God and enjoy the little things in life." For now though, I will just breathe deeply and pray that our closing date comes sooner than later. ❤️🏡❤️
As I shared a while back, the thought of leaving our current home is bittersweet. We have so many memories in this home. It's strange to think of passing the keys over to someone else and moving on with our lives in a new home. We are excited and sad and overjoyed and even mourning a little bit. As we walked the property yesterday, Matthew and I visited about all the things we could do to the outside of the house. We were planning on new siding and windows right away, but due to the fact that we are wanting to add a second bathroom upstairs and still keeping on the straight and narrow with Dave Ramsey, we might have to put that off for a year or two. After we discussed the changes we needed to make on the outside of the house, we took his parents through the inside of the house. This was the first time we had walked through the house since the owners moved out. It was a blank canvas. Empty rooms. Empty cabinets. Empty closets. Empty. Mr. Farmhouse and my dear teaching partner worked to bring the very first load of our belongings in. We had been filling up an enclosed trailer with stuff ever since we thought we would be closing and moving on June 16th. While they delivered tubs and boxes, the girls and I worked to scrub the main rooms down.
The men left to go get another load and the kids and I started sorting the tubs into the rooms they will be going into. Mr. Farmhouse, along with a few of his friends, brought in the Craigslist farmhouse table I had been waiting for and brought a load of outside items. Our friends left and the five of us shared our first meal at the new table. Casey's Pizza. It was spectacular. Harlee prayed for our new journey in the house and for the pizza and for the appraisal results we are still waiting on. We stayed until 12:30 this morning, working and painting and enjoying each other. And when the girls get up, we're gonna go do it all again. After 11 years in one house, it's kind of difficult to think about filling a different house with everything you own. Difficult and exciting and fun. It's a blank canvas and we are already working to make it our masterpiece. |
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