love is alive

I've been humming a song from childhood for a couple months: "Love is Alive," by the Judds. These three people who share a home with me - I love them. I love them with an exhaustive (and exhausting), living love. And I am loved too. There is nothing better; I am very, very grateful. 

Love is alive and at our breakfast table every day of the week.

Love is alive, and it grows every day and night, even in our sleep.

Love is alive, and it's made a happy woman out of me.

(after Zoralee's birth)

Oh, love is alive
And here by me.

visit to the new house

Last weekend while we were in town, we decided to drive out to the new house. Too bad we hadn't brought the new key, but it allowed us to walk around and see the property from lots of angles without that backbrain drive to get inside the house. Gorgeous day.

We've owned this place for a solid month now but haven't done much with it on account of J's schedule. That has changed now, and he'll have better times available to start work on the main level - several window replacements, back-filling insulation into the walls, replacing the floor, and painting the walls! He wants to do that before we move, then do the upstairs renovations as we live along. We've got a bunch of boxes packed up and ready for transport, so we're itchy itchy itchy.

See the low spots on that top photo, where water has accumulated and frozen? Jason is thinking of how to work with the natural contours of the land in a Sepp Holtzer kind of way, i.e.; pond-building. And yes, we are going to consider any elevation change of six inches or more a contour. Hmm. Better make that three inches.    

We love the trees!

What, if any, of the big main barn is useable?
It looks like it could slide off the foundation at any moment.
There's something decidedly unromantic about sending the children
out in their hard hats to gather eggs.

our precious Viking child

This is a "garage." Rrrrrrrright.
It will be made into a pile of aged barn wood
that we can maybe incorporate into the house
or make oodles of picture frames from.