april 18th of this year was our one year anniversary of moving into the home of our dreams, on the lot of our dreams, at a fairly early age. we couldn't be more thankful for such a fun thing to celebrate without an actual party-celebration (we were brand new chicken parents on april 18th, having picked them up at the hatchery just two days previous!).

when we first moved here, i was sad a lot. i cried a lot. it probably had something to do with the fact that i was 33 weeks pregnant, had a baby, and went through my third bout of the "baby blues" post adam's birth. i thought it was because we had made the wrong decision moving to the country. away from the city. away from people we loved. away from people in general! i was given the "it takes you about a year to settle in properly" advice from several people and i found comfort in that. i knew that in a year, i'd feel more settled. i'd feel more like this was my home, and not just a place we were "trying out" for a few years.

after a year, i feel settled...and not so settled. i think it's because i will always have a bit of "the city" pulsing through my veins. i'll miss the city-smog smell when i have nothing but fresh air to breathe. i'll long for sidewalks and "block parties" when i can't even see my neighbors' house from my front yard. i speak only for myself because the boys don't know any difference (rowan can recognize a picture of our old house, but he wouldn't recognize it if we drove past it), and kenny is totally at home here (i won't go past the garage once it's dark out. we've got woods all around us, and bigger-critters still make me nervous).

and it's not that i don't consider this to be my home...it's just i think it's going to take me a lot longer than a year to truly feel settled. because i get giddy when we have a trip planned into "the city."

i have a list in my mind of what i miss the most, or what i don't like about country-living and one of what i love about living here, and what i don't miss at all of city/suburb-life. ironically, the "pros" of living here outweigh anything negative.

what i miss

• taking walks. tonight, we took a walk through our yard, and through a 6-acre field near us, up a steep, country road (speed limit is 35? 40?). we didn't pass one person. i miss our old neighborhood for walking and chatting with neighbors; spending time in the playground behind our house, talking to neighbors, other parents, new neighbors. being able to push the stroller without "four-wheeling" it.
• a sense of community. mabye it's because we had great neighbors in the city. or maybe it's because all our friends and family were within a 15 minute drive. we had and incredible church family (who won't let us go, thank goodness!) that we got to see weekly.
  
• good food. we always joked about how we had the pick of the best indian and thai restaurants a few minutes' drive from our old house. we're saving a lot of money not eating there, but i'm missing them. AND...good grocery stores with decent hours of operation. organic, whole foods? gotta drive into the city for those.

what i love

• the space. i know it's ironic, but i love the space we have here. the rolling hills and valleys we see and run along every day. i love seeing the boys run and run...chasing fireflies, chickens, rabbits. and i don't have to yell constantly to keep them from running into the road.
  
• our house. it's a dream to be living in a house big enough to house your entire family for holidays. we had 17 here for a few days over christmas. i love to be able to offer hospitality to friends by offering a guest room, a meal. we did this in our old house, but we have room to do it more here. i love that this house has been sitting here on this land for over a hundred years.
  
• the quiet. it's so quiet here, that when a car drives by, it actually wakes you up. which makes it hard to sleep with the windows open.
• our chickens. i love those 15 cluckers running around our yard, free-range.
• our future. we have so many great conversations, kenny and i, about what we want to do here. what we want our boys to be able to do, to learn, to experience. it's not that we couldn't do that in our old place, it's just a different way of letting them experience the same things. we have the best of both worlds...living in the peaceful, quiet, big, starry sky boonies, and able to get into the culture of the city in under an hour.

i'm almost embarrassed to admit the things i miss, which make me feel unsettled. but as i look at the above lists, i know that my "pro" list will overcome the "cons" list in no time. maybe i'll include a blog post a year from now and i'll laugh that it ever took me so long to be settled into what is our home.

and maybe i'll be walking farther than the garage once nightfall hits.

(the beginning of the "moving" series starts in april, 2006)