Someone else's trash

 

 In our case someone else's trash is not our treasure.  It is a LOT of our hard work.  A mobile home used to sit at the front of our land next to the trees below.  I am thinking the owners of this mobile home did not have trash cans or did not like to use them.  There was water bottles, beer bottles, food cans, etc all over the place in this area.  When they moved the mobile home they did not bother taking their trash with them.  Guess they were never big into Girl Scouts..."always leave a place cleaner then you found it".  We've picked it up and loaded it on a trailer for the dump.  The trees also need some shaping up so we are in the process of doing that too. 

Off to the left is an inset next to the creek.  I see a picnic table and a fire pit in its near future...and SMORES!  And once we have electricity I plan to string a few clear globe lights in the trees.  I'll get pictures of the inset the next time I am there.  It will be something we can enjoy on the property while the house is coming along.

Now, to buy a tractor?

Trailer pulling

The ladies in my family are known for their strength.  Most of you may think emotional or motherly strength.  Well, they absolutely have that....but something more surprising is their physical strength.  The ladies above me can turn circles around some women.  They pump their own gas, can rearrange a room by themselves (even with stairs involved), will drive a tractor, motorcycle, bobtail all in a day, and will haul all the kids across the state by themselves if need be.  My point is they are beautiful women who love to dress up, fix their hair, and make up their pretty faces, but they will also get as dirty as any man.  They don't limit themselves because a task may be considered a man's job.  So, when Joe asked me to drive his truck with a teeny tiny trailer attached and pick up a load of gravel for our driveway...I jumped at the chance...

(and while I was saying yes I went through the route I would have to drive a hundred times in my head making sure I could do it all without backing).   

 

PS, I know there are many women out there who pull horse trailers or drive 18 wheelers like they have been doing it since birth and can probably back into the tiniest spots...but not me...NOT YET :)

 

I think I see horse trailers in our future.

A country porch.

So serene, so peaceful, so homey.

To shift of not to shift?

The dirt work has started.  Yay! right?  Well, if this is a sign of what is to come I need to get better at making decisions.

 

 

 We are trying to decide if we should rotate the house about 10 feet. This would allow our back porch view to miss the neighbors house, but it allows for the evening sun to set almost directly in our front yard. With the tree cover and what not we may be ok, but we had direct evening sun at our old house and it was not fun.

We were out here for about 30-45 minutes lining ourselves up a few degrees this way and that way.  The kids were having a blast running up the little dirt hills.  This one joined in on the fun.  I think she took the saying "playing in the dirt" a little far.  #countrygirl

Its really ours.

When I first came up with the idea to do this blog I had thought things would have moved along a bit more by now.  We closed on the land yesterday and began the construction process today.  Our construction process includes clearing out about 800 feet of thick trees and tall grass just to make a path for the driveway.  This big guy here did just that in about 4 hours.  Add an hour more to that and the area for the house was cleared too!  To finally see such progress was a breath of fresh air.

The trees behind this tree with the string is where our house will sit.

Love the feeling of these flowers....

My little buddy that I went to kick out of the way today...only to realize it was not a twisted tree root but what looks like a Copperhead.  Yikes...nothing says "welcome to the country" like a good 'ol poisonous snake!

And the house site.  The kids loved watching the bulldozer knock over some of the trees.  We kept as much as we possibly could.  The only trees we knocked down were mainly locust and mesquites.  Everything else we worked around.

And final thought for the day.  This little girl right here and her horses have truly guided our decisions.  I am so thankful that when we were at a crossroads of what we envisioned for our living (city or country) she spoke up.  I believe without a doubt that a love for animals lives inside you from birth.