Happy New Year and Saying Goodbye to our Farmhouse

I hope you and your family had a most wonderful Christmas!  As the year draws to a close, I feel thankful looking back and thinking of sweet memories made. Yes, there were difficult moments too, but how would we grow without them?  There's something so hopeful about starting a new year, thinking of the things I'd like to be better at, as a wife, a mother, and a friend.  

We said goodbye to our sweet farmhouse just a couple days before Christmas this year.  I realize this may come as a shock, and honestly, it doesn't feel quite real to me yet either as it happened so quickly.  Justus and I have periodically dreamed about building a home, always with the thought of it being sometime in the "future", and we've spent time off and on looking for land for sale in the area the past couple of years.  Unfortunately, very little is available, especially in smaller acreage amounts, and we did not want to leave this area.  But just a couple months ago, my parents sold us a couple acres in their lower pasture land of their farm, and we went through a rather arduous process of getting the small division approved with the city.  After it was approved and we had a deed in hand, Justus and I stuck a for sale by owner sign in our front yard, thinking it might be a while before we had any interest. Five days later, we had a signed contract and we could not have been more shocked.  

We finished packing and moving out of our house right before Christmas, and as you can imagine, there were bittersweet feelings.  That little farmhouse was my haven... we put so much time and effort into fixing it up the past six years and from the first moment I walked into it, I loved it.  But after the house was empty, I looked around and realized that without my family in it, and our belongings, it was just a house.  A precious house, yes, but nonetheless, there weren't any feelings of regret or unhappiness in leaving it and moving forward.   

I have to tell you that we sold it to the sweetest couple.  They are young, and recently married.  They grew up in this area, and she had memories of spending time in the neighborhood as her grandmother's house had been just down the road. I felt so thankful for the contentment in knowing that they loved the house just as much as we always loved it.  Probably the hardest thing about leaving was saying goodbye to our chickens.  But these sweet new owners also adopted our chickens, as we no longer had a home for them, and I know they, and our neighbors, continue to love and care for them.

The day we closed on our house, we also signed a contract with a general contractor for the building of our new home.  So although there were bittersweet feelings leaving our old house, we also had/have so much to look forward to.  

More than ever, I'm thankful for all the moments I recorded on this blog of our farmhouse and the memories made there.  I will treasure them. And now, as a new year begins, I'll begin recording our new adventures as we move forward.  Thank you for being there with me from the beginning, encouraging us as we made slow progress on our farmhouse.  You'll never know what that meant to us!  

Happy New Year!