Do Not Try This At Home

We've traveled to Georgia and back. It was quite the experience to return to home and home not be home. It gave us perspective. Georgia air. Georgia roads. Georgia people are the things that have made it home for us and those things are still there still being air and roads and people and we are not. Those lives go and grow and change. We can come back to them and visit, but interacting, living life with them is over and that is hard. It is the community that made it ours. It did help us to see that Florida is already offering us community and a home with our chickens and our home and neighbors and friends . 

And while we were in Georgia we played perfect with Jack and Esme and Clare and Josh. We dug in sand, made owls with toilet paper rolls, ate great food, laughed, climbed high into the trees, took walks, talked, talked some more. It was glorious. Then family reunion. Such fun for the children and I know that grandmother and granddaddy were filled up big. And we were as well with yummy food, swimming, horse back riding, a garden with veggies to harvest, the Olympics to watch, such fun.

Gainesville. My dear Emily lives there. She married Mark in June. A tight Emily hug felt so good. To be with a friend that knows and loves and just soaks us up. The kids swam themselves limp in the lake. We fell into Emily's adorable house and ate grilled cheese before heading to Justin and Marci's an hour up the road. We missed some important hugs from the Taylors but we just ran out of steam. I loved being with Emily. She fills me up. She makes me laugh. She is a great cook, a great learner. She knows how to speak into my life. She doesn't like to hear that she is young, but she is 10 years younger than I am and way wiser in so many many ways. I love to learn from her.

Athens. Fun with Hilda and Justin and Marci and chickens and goats and dogs and cows. Fun with good food and music and drink. Then off to town to see neighbor Bill and Iain and Rebecca, Jack and Donna and Jazz with a fun tail and sweet friend Paige.

Paige is a creator. She creates beautiful bags and shirts and ideas. She takes space and makes it light and pleasant and peaceful. She is a gift. She knows God and life and light and shares it. Visit her and her goods at Lightnest Collective. It was such a good collection of love.

Rebecca is busy with bees and the children licked the combs and decided then and then there we should have hives.

Donna and Jack let the children roll around the floor with dog Jazz and have a sip of water and cool off in the middle of the day.

Visiting ended to an end with a perfectly playful day with Becka and Carpio. They didn't stop. They kept right up with the children. Park play, sand play, run play, yogurt play, TreeHouse Kid and Craft Play. William and I just were there along for the ride.

Finally, we went and collected Mittens. Mittens the sheep. This is the don't try this at home part. We looked like the Clampets. We actually looked more like the Clampets than they do. We had a gate and two rolls of fence on top of the car. In the back of the car, we had Lucy and Mittens. I took a picture. It is on my phone. I'll share when I can figure out how to download.We drove all the way from Georgia to home with this get up. It was furiously wild. We had to reroute from a bad wreck and a man (why he thought we looked normal enough to escort) took up on a back road to get us on the right path. How gracious.

We made it home. Mittens is here. The fence and gate are up. Problem: Mittens has major separation anxiety. If she doesn't have a human or Lucy within three feet of her, she cries terrible cries. So far this means that George has spent the last two days outside and Lucy spends the night with her.

The yard, as a result, looks great, we have a zip line up and running, and we've enjoyed outside more than ever!

Oh, so much life. Besides crummy colds, we just keep on moving. Black beans boil in a roll on the stove. Off to finish dinner.