Come on over...

Oh the plethora of blog topics I have bouncing about in the ol’ noggin! I could write about my new diet with Weight Watchers, the fact that I feel like poop on a stick, depression/worry, and my distraught feelings of having a c-section… the list goes on. Instead of getting all serious and dreary and blah-tastic, I thought I’d write on another topic that I’ve wanted to write about for months now.

My dream home.

I read somewhere that if you procrastinate long enough on a blog post, another blogger will beat you to it. Well, the wonderful Elizabeth at That Married Couple wrote about her dream home a couple months ago. Now it’s my turn.

Come on over to my house.

It will be out in the country. I’ll have neighbors that are walking distance away, but we’re still secluded enough to have some sense of privacy. The driveway is kind of long since our house is a ways from the road, but we can still see our neighbors drive up and down the gravel road. We live on quite a few acres. There’s a pasture so if we ever get horses they can roam. Or if we ever get a 4 wheeler we can ride out there. There’s also a bit of timber to go exploring in.

Out in the pasture will be a pond. Big enough to build a dock and take a little boat on. It’s clean enough to swim in. There’s also a little crick out behind the timber.

Our yard is large with massive oak and maple trees and a few pines scattered throughout. One of the trees out back has a tire swing. Our backyard also has a swing set and a baby pool, 2 dog houses, a sandbox, a big vegetable garden and tons of flowers. There are numerous and varied children’s toys and bikes sprinkled throughout the yard. We have a nice deck with a charcoal grill (not that nasty propane) and lots of Tiki torches.

We also have a huge red barn. That’s where the horses will go. Maybe some milking cows someday. But it’s mostly for the kids to explore.

We also have an old fashioned windmill. Not the fancy-schmancy ugly kind they have nowadays. I’m taking old school. (Did anybody else play the road game Zip?)

Come on up to the house. It’s an old white 4 story farmhouse. It needs some work, but it’s home. There’s a bright red front door to welcome you. There’s a wrap-around porch with a porch swing and a citronella candle. There’s some comfy patio furniture to sink into. We have the American flag hanging and a Blessed Mother statue in the flowers by the porch.

Come inside! You’ll see we have big picture windows that capture the country scenery perfectly. We have a living room with my old piano with tons of family photographs piled on top. Our furniture is not brand new, and might have some marker stains on it, but it’s very comfortable. We have a large fireplace with our family picture hanging above the mantle with a crucifix hanging above that. We light it on cold winter nights and on Christmas morning.
We have a TV room/playroom that looks like a toy bomb went off, but I’m just thankful the mess is contained in there. We love popping some popcorn and watching a movie.

Our dining room is pretty big to accommodate our large dining room table for our large family. There’s a china cabinet that holds my grandparents’ wedding china and another cabinet filled with lots of other breakable mementos.

Our kitchen is kind of small and cozy, but big enough for a breakfast table. There’s a window above the sink overlooking the back yard so I can see what the kids are up to. The wallpaper in the kitchen is vintage… probably the same wallpaper the original owners had put up. We have a nice old fashioned pantry that connects to the dining room. We have a kitchen radio that plays country music while I cook supper or clean dishes. Off of the kitchen is the stairs to the basement. It has that old musty smell of a basement, that smell you smell when you know something interesting is down there. We’ll probably fix it up someday for one of our teenagers to have a bedroom down there.

We have a full bathroom on the main level- nothing special.

As you walk around the hardwood floors you can hear them creak. You can feel the life of the house in the floor boards. I contemplate getting carpet because I feel it’s easier to clean.

We have a very nice, old fashioned staircase. I can’t wait to see my daughters walk down that staircase when they are all dolled up for prom. I’m sure we’ll take a majority of special occasion photographs by the fire place, but most of my special occasion photos were taken at the foot of the stairs, so we’ll have to see.

Come up stairs! We have 4 bedrooms. One is my husband’s and mine, and we have a fire place in our room (ooo la la!) We have a king size bed and many of our children cuddle in bed with us. I wanted to splurge and have our own master bath, but we wanted more babies instead. I don’t mind taking a bath in our claw-foot tub after I dump the 122983th bath toy out. I just scoot aside the Mr. Bubble and pour in my own bubble bath. It’s a pretty big bathroom and there’s room for more than one person to get ready. There’s all our bathrobes hung up in a row. We have a giant mirror for the kids to make faces in.

We have a laundry chute that dumps our laundry to the laundry room that is right off the kitchen. I LOVE laundry chutes and think they are one of life’s greatest inventions!

We have a guest bedroom/office that will one day be Grandma Mary’s room (unless Jamie claims her first.)

The other two rooms are for our kids. Yes, they will share.

Our attic is full of old boxes of mementos from Ryan’s and my childhood. Baseball memorabilia, old Barbies, old journals and photos. Boxes of Christmas and Halloween decorations will also be up there.

I often dream of this home. What it will look like, smell like, feel like. But the bigger dream is the people that fill it- my husband, Joe and hopefully more children in the future. The dream that we are happy, healthy and on track to get to heaven.

Thanks for stopping by!