This Land is Our Land!
We've wanted this for so long. After years of looking, hoping, wishing, dreaming, debating, wondering, questioning, rehashing, giving up, and trying again...We closed on our land on March 12, 2026.
The kids were at co-op and at 9:30AM we walked into the office, wondering if we were really grown up enough to do something like this (unrepresented by a real estate agent, at that). And half an hour later, they shook our hands. That afternoon, the sellers signed, and by 4PM, the land was ours. OURS.
We couldn't tell the kids yet. They had been out to see the property once, and they all disliked the tall grasses, the cacti, the prickles in general. We didn't want a negative experience again to kick start this journey.
So on Saturday, Scott went out to the land to clear it all day long. After hours in the sun, he had made several paths and a little clearing in the first tree grove. He hung a swing there to surprise the kids.
Sunday, after church, we took them out to the land. We told them we were going to picnic there. Ellis kept asking why, but I said we just wanted to. I told her we had a little surprise, just a little one. (At this point, I thought they knew about the land from overhearing conversations. We just wanted to make it official.)
When we got there, they noticed the path immediately. And nothing gets past Ellis who started questioning it right away: "Who did that? Daddy? Does he have the right to do that?!"
I avoided answers as we loaded up our picnic and followed Daddy down the path. When we got to the swing grove, Ellis and Bryn stopped in their tracks, utterly confused. I couldn't hold it in any longer! "This is OUR land!"
Bryn lit up like a light bulb and started charging into the woods.
Tears welled up in Ellis' eyes. "Ours?! This is ours?!" Our sweet girl was completely overcome with joy.
Neither of them could believe it. They immediately wanted to get to work, grabbing loppers, making paths. Shouting for joy just because they could. Running down the path because this whole place is our front yard?!
It was utterly magical.
Lucy, of course, was still wary of prickles (especially after tripping on a stump), and mostly spent her time in the swing.
If I worried my kids were getting too old to enjoy growing up on land, I was wrong. They're just old enough to TRULY enjoy it. To appreciate it for what it is.
Ellis couldn't believe it. She said: "You said this was a little surprise?! This is the BIGGEST surprise!" She thought we were just talking about the idea of land, she had no idea we were about to get any. Her wildest dreams have come true.
That afternoon we celebrated with ice cream. And in the words of my wise eldest: "No one leaves an ice cream shop feeling sad."
We went to the land the next two days in a row as well. Monday night, we came home late and stopped at Chick-Fil-A for dinner, where Ellis told me that she realized dreams can come true.
She had said a few weeks before that her dream of being a farmer probably wouldn't happen. But now she was changing her mind. She said she realized that if she worked and hoped and dreamed of something enough, she realized it can come true.
Talk about a tear-jerker moment for a parent.
It's such a blessing to do this with them. To share this dream, to work on it together, and to build this future side-by-side. I can't wait to see what tomorrow holds.
