a happy home

Since becoming a mom I have often reflected on what type of home I want our children to be raised in.   Of course a home full of warmth, love, acceptance, safety, security and happiness.  I am blessed to have a wonderful husband who shares the same vision of creating a happy home for children.

My childhood was great.  There were some rough times for sure but we made out okay.  We moved around a lot, lived overseas several times which afforded me tremendous growth and opportunity.  But I always longed for a place that I could always call home, even now as an adult I yearn to go back to my childhood home, accept I don't really have one.  The one place that I consider to be home is my very best friend and basically sister, Em's house.  

I spent 3 summer's at Em's house and many sleepovers, picking blackberries off the bushes in their yard, swimming, playing, creating, working, imagining, and exploring.  There were big brothers that beat up on us, little siblings that followed us around.  Em's parents, Greg & Teresa, have lived in the same red farmhouse their whole married life.  They have raised all of their 7 children in the same house.  They taught me how to work, how to be a child, how to honor and follow God, how a family is supposed to be.  

I want to create that sense of "home" for our children.  Our next house will be our last, it will be our "forever home".  A place they can always return too and remember their happy childhood.  

I love farmhouses.  I think I am drawn to them because Em's house was a farmhouse with a lot of land around it, maybe a few acres.  They still had neighbors but they had a huge backyard, lots of trees, grass and room to explore.  I equate farmhouse with happiness.  It is not hard to see why, they are gorgeous.  One day when we build our "forever" home I think it may look similar to these homes.  There will be some land, lots of privacy, blackberry bushes, a million lilac bushes, hydrangeas, tree houses and forts.  I want to have a big front and back porch to sit on and sip homemade lemonade, color, blow bubbles and watch my children play in the yard, read.  Maybe some chickens and a dog but not too many pets.