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The Beauty of Country Living

June 30, 2013 By Erica Deuel 4 Comments

the beauty of country living

Do you ever dream of a life you don’t live? Maybe you dream of living…

…in the 90’s with big hair again

….or maybe it is early colonial days when big puffy dresses were the fashion

…or maybe it you don’t like big things at all and you are content in this era

you just dream of a different location.

Sometimes a different location can seem like a different world. I love our new house because it is surrounded my cow fields and animals, but we are still in a neighborhood. I often dream of living REALLY in the country. We visited my sister at her home in Arkansas about a week ago. Although it is a good 12 hour drive to get there, it is a trip I will do at least once a year.

Visiting Olivia and her family is like visiting another world. The ways and systems in their daily life are just different from ours. Life is simpler and it is something I dream about. I want to share a few things about the beauty of country living that we got to experience on our trip. Some of these are things we do here, but they may be harder to implement and have to be intentional in my world (living in the metro Atlanta area).

farm funIn the country, you may…

…look out your window and see the Chick-Fil-A cow everyday.

…change outfits four times a day due to sweat, water, dirt, etc.

…start and end your day milking a cow.

…chase chickens and try to catch a baby without the mama pecking you.

farm kidsIn the country, you may get bored and…

…have to find something to do rather than be entertained.

…walk through a field picking grass to feed it to a thankful horse who gets a break from grazing.

…sit on rocks and just talk.

…play with kittens.

…explore old barns.

farm

When you live in the country…

…fire pits can be part of your nightly routine.

…you might burn your own trash.

…you can pee outside.

…you drink from a hose.

…you wake to roosters crowing.

…dirt roads don’t surprise you (so you prob don’t own a mini van).

…you can yell “yea haw” while really riding a real horse (Reagan was thrilled).

…driving to get a sweat tea may take a little longer.

horsesCountry living is appealing to me cause…

…it’s a slower pace to life.,

…the to do lists may be long but the priority of them really seem to matter.

…hard work requires sweat most of the time.

…the natural way of life has you outside more daily.

…experiencing the simple rawness of nature and its beauty is energizing.

…family can stay together easier than all going different routes and places regularly.

family farm funWe had the best time visiting my sister and her family. We are already trying to figure out how we can go back this fall. I love the way of life the country brings.  I probably drive my brother-in-law crazy with all my questions about his lively hood, but it fascinates me and is all new! I could see us moving to have more land and country living someday, but for now I am thankful we can escape to my sister’s whenever we want.

farm animalsWhat about you? Is there a way of life that appeals to you? Are you more of a city, mountains, beach or country lover? Thank you so much for checking in! Tomorrow, I will be back to show you one of the projects we made while at my sister’s!

old barn on farm

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Living on the Road by the Numbers

September 6, 2012 By Erica Deuel 14 Comments

I know you might want to have some more details about our trip across the United States.  We love to talk about it, so there might be quite a few posts about it!  While we were driving and on the road, my husband had the idea for this post.  We kept some tally marks on interesting things that we did or happened to us.  One of my favorite facts is how many times our boys peed in a bottle in the van.  🙂

I hope you enjoy this post with tid-bits of our trip as much as I do!

Facts from our road trip:

  • Travelers: 5

  • Days on the road: 25
  • Miles driven: 5,904
This is the path of our travels!
My job, as the passenger, can be heavily described as “toy retriever” to keep the kiddos happy.
He is so cute!!
  • Hours in van: 95 (**this is not including time at each destination driving to different activities, etc.)
Overall our lil 19 month old babe did FANTASTIC!
  • Galloons of gas: 289.80
  • Quarts of oil: 10
The driving time was so gorgeous! It was one of my favorite parts of the trip! I loved seeing the different landscapes.
  • States: 13
  • Hotels: 9
We got two double beds at our hotel stops. The boys LOVED sharing one, and Reagan was in her pack and play.
There were quite a few meals where we got food to go & took it back to the hotel.
  • Number of bags packed: 19
This is just a small sampling of our luggage pile.
  • Number of bags to still UNPACK: 4
  • Pictures taken: 793
  • Family members/friends seen: 34
Poor Grammy Pammy can’t have a cute picture with her grandkids while everyone is looking at the camera at the same time. 🙂
Our “family -best friends” in California have some of the cutest kids. Our kids alternate ages, so they are really close in age and were raised together most of their lives! So special to spend time with them in their new home!
  • Superheroes seen: 27
In Hollywood, people dress up as Superheros and you can give them a “tip” to have your picture taken with them!
One of our favorite “guys”!!
  • National landmarks: 3
I had never been to the Grand Canyon! I was giddy and soooo excited to be here!
  • Oceans: 2
Having my daughter and sweet niece experiencing the ocean for the first time together was such a gift!
Caleb has no fear of the ocean! He LOVES the waves and even did a jet ski ride!
Reagan and her BFF, Kendall, are two of the prettiest girls I know!
  • Crabs caught: 37
We had a cooler filled with these guys after our beach night walks. Yes, I screamed every time one ran across in front of me. After the fun of rounding them up the boys would walk back down to the beach and let them all go.
  • Starbucks stops: 13
  • Times the boys’ LeapPad’ batteries needed changed: 10
These little “i-pads” were worth every dollar spent for our trip. They were AMAZING in the van!
  • Stomach viruses: 1
Caleb woke up throwing up one day in California. Praise the Lord no one else got sick. I think he drank too much salt water the day before. He is a beast at “body surfing”, but it did change our plans with our dear friends on our last day there. 🙁
One plus to having a car seat that needed cleaning was discovering an awesome laundromat to explore and spend a lil time in. For someone who might actually like laundry (crazy I know!), this place was gorgeous!  Did you notice Caleb’s throw up bucket!?  Nothing like a multipurpose pink sand bucket!
  • Stops without a sweet tea to be found that was not fountain or canned: 14
  • Tweets breaking my social media silence: 11
  • Ways to get Reagan asleep in the van: 1
Reagan would only fall asleep in the van if music was playing and playing loudly!
  • Pools swam in: 9
  • Broken bumpers: 1
  • Zip ties required to hold a broken bumper together: 3
Turns out Waco, TX has some pretty steep curbs and driveways. Oops!
  • Horse rides: 5
My sis, Olivia, and her husband have horses in Arkansas. We got to stay with them for almost a week. It was a BLAST! The boys loooovvvveeeddd the barn and land!
She could barely wait for her turn to get a horse ride!!
My boys would move to the country in a heart beat!!
  • Immigration checks: 3 (Odd, right!? Even though we never crossed the border, driving close to Mexico had checkpoints.)
  • Van vacuumed:  1
In the top picture that might be a spilt/dried chocolate milkshake from an In-N-Out in California. It is getting cleaned tomorrow! Yes!!!
  • Target runs: 6
These girls are the cutest Target shoppers!
  • Drives in the rain: 4
  • My longest drive stretch at one time: 3 hours
  • Pees in a cup or bottle in van: 19
  • Times I went for a run: 2
  • Theme parks: 2
We went to a water park with friends in TX, and it was so fun!
We went to Disneyland’s California Adventure in Anaheim, California. It was awesome! Where else do you see live Lightening Mcqueen and Mater driving around!?!
This rocket ride was one of our favorites! Reagan even got to go on it!
  • Blog posts written: 0
My only “to do” was to enjoy my family, and I did!! Isn’t it crazy that we are home all together and I miss them?? I’m still with them all day/everyday but so distracted by life and house up keep.
  • Memories and laughs together: millions

Thank you so much for reading this post!!  I have some more posts coming with the “how to’s” of traveling with kids and how we made this insane trip possible.  This is not our first BIG trip on the road, so we have learned a few tricks along the way.  Please feel free to ask any questions about our trip or how we did something.  I will respond!

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My Grandparent’s House-an ode to a place I love!

July 25, 2012 By Erica Deuel 5 Comments

As you know, last weekend I went to Ohio for my grandparents auction.  They have lived in Farmersville, Ohio for the last thirty years in a log cabin that they built.  I grew up visiting them at this house.  There are so many awesome memories of family trips and family reunions here.  At one point they owned lots and lots of acres, but as they have gotten older they held onto only six acres and sold the rest.  These acres have a creek and open field with a closed in gazebo that has been called the “campground”.  There are corn fields all around them.  As city kids, my siblings and I loved visiting them because it was a kids paradise.  There was always an adventure to be made and things to discover.

Recently they bought a smaller house in a retirement community.  It is a really cute brick house with neighbors and a cul-de-sac.  I’m excited for them as they are excited about this change, but it is very different from the way of life they have lived.

(My boys here are attacking my 15-year-old brother, Gus, in the front lawn.  They were some kind of superhero here…aka..getting energy out after a nine-hour drive!)

As my grandparents have gotten older, it has been harder for them to keep up with such a big house and large property, so they decided to downsize.  My grandparents are some of the hardest working people I know.  They owned and ran a drug store for a long time.  My grandpa has always run his tractor and cut the fields/grass at their place.  He is an amazing wood worker.  His work shop and collection of tools is a craft-er’s dream!

Although we (the family) all knew it was the right thing and time for them to sell, it is still hard to say good-bye to such a special place.  Isn’t change hard!?!  After we got in town and saw the new place they bought, we drove down my favorite roads to their old house.

There is something so simple and beautiful about country roads with corn fields on either side of you.

I think it is stunning!

Now, here is your tour of the house I love and keep rambling about!  You pull in this long driveway and pass a huge barn that at one point held their motor-home.  That has long been sold, but it was they way they traveled to Georgia to visit us for many years.

I am so thankful that I got to go say “good-bye” to this place and also share it with my boys.  I wanted them to see a place I love so much.  It’s so hard to get so far north with three kids that we haven’t been back all as a family since Caleb was about 16 months old.  J and Reagan weren’t even here yet!

When you walk in you are immediately on a long screened in porch, that leads into the kitchen.

It was so weird to see their house empty.  All the furniture and items that didn’t go to the “new house” were already set up in the barns for the auction the next day.  I love this light fixture they had above their dinning room table.

The family room is open and was full of couches and chairs that we all hung out in.  In the winter ,they always had the wood burning stove going.

When you looked the other way in this room, you saw the exposed loft.  It is HUGE.  It held like a king size bed, a queen size bed, and a pull out day bed.  This is always where we slept.

Haha my mom would say it was always hard to visit because putting nine kids to bed here was well hard.  (Yes, I am one of nine kids…all from the same two parents!!)  As kids, we loved it!  We would peer over the railing and listen in to the “adult” conversations below.

My grandparents have kept their bed at this house and still have been sleeping there up till the auction.  That bed is  the only thing in their room right now except for a small dresser.

Here you can see the back of the house with the long screened in porch.

In the basement, was two rooms that were my grandpa’s wood working area/shop.  It’s so weird to see this empty.  It was his hobby/love to work and create down here.

I Love the huge deck they built!  We ate out here a lot.  There is also a hot tub around the corner in this picture.

The deck over looks the creek where we spent lots of time wadding in and throwing rocks.  My boys fell in love with this spot…just like I did.

My Jeremiah is a nature boy.  He would spend all day, everyday outside in the woods.  He couldn’t get enough of this creek bed.

Following the creek to the right you go into the back field “camp ground area”.  One of my best recent memories of this house is a bottle rocket war, at a family reunion, about six years ago.  It was Matt’s first time to my grandparents.  There was a mad football game too.  We got home from this trip and found out a week later we were pregnant with our Caleb.  We had no idea while I was out there running around and being rough and rugged that I was carrying a baby.

These pictures will always be special to me.  This post might be more for my family that weren’t able to go and say good-bye, or maybe just part of my processing that another phase/season in life is changing.  Trips to Ohio will not be the same, but I am so thankful I still have my grandparents and family there.  That love is stronger than a love for a house.

Thanks for checking out a place I love so much!  I will post #2 of this weekend showing the auction soon!

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