When I think about the mixed-up bag of emotions surrounding our move further into the wilderness, I find it funny that I ever have thought I knew what the future held. I thought I was rooted. I did.

Living here fulfills so many lifelong dreams. We actively sought this solitude, this woodsy hideaway. I dreamed of a place with year-round creeks, woods, pastures, a big weathered barn. My son climbs to the top of his own personal mountain and throws rocks. My daughters fence-sit in the best possible way: on ranch fencing overlooking their ponies' fields. So you can see, even I can see, why my sadness (grief) in the course of this move has surprised me.

Transplant shock.That's all it is.We spent our weekend in the creek and in the woods and in the garden. Spreading new roots.

The one where the sun came out and we were glad to be alive

Spring break pretty much broke us.

 What with the raining and the flooding and the record-breaking

drench of it all.

 But today we took our barefoot selves down to the still-swollen creekside.

 And we ran through the damp grass in our Easter duds.

(Were you aware boys don't have "outfits?" Me neither.
Alas, after four girls, I am informed of this important gender difference.)

 We climbed the apple trees.

And sat down to soak up some sun.

 Because today, for just today, the sun came out in Oregon.

To remind us of the fleeting nature of any grey mood I suppose.

Building Valentines

Today I made a pile of happy little scraps.

Partly because today I am missing the old.

Isn't it funny how we (I?) so easily romanticize what's left behind?

Beauty is here, and now, and also in remembrance of what was good but is gone.

It's good to reflect on past prettiness and it's, I think,
even better to pick up those scraps and stitch a prettier future.

Fourteen Valentine's Days ago we lost our first baby and the devastation was exactly that -- immobilizing, personally tragic and as heartbreaking as anything I ever care to experience again.

I remember dwelling, then, on our marriage vows and the "for better, for worse" part, 

sure that day and the days that followed it qualified as worse.

Before that Valentine's Day I was in love with the holiday, in love with expressions of affection and the celebration of friendships and romance to which the day lends authority.

I tend to wear pink and red year-round.

But on that day, and for a couple of years after that, Valentine's Day had more than a shadow of sadness.

I know that many people struggle with holidays. I didn't really understand it until then, and I would venture to say that while I'm not going to be glad for that loss I can be grateful for the compassion the pain brought me.

Happy Valentine's Day, Friends. 

I hope your roses are red, your future is a patchwork of prettinesses, and your beauty is true.

Creating coziness

 Our new farmhouse is a little drafty and a little, well, little. 

Real estate agents would call it "cozy" or "charming." On a bad day I call it cold and cramped.

 On a good day I make the best of it and relish the close quarters as we have school and play and craft 

all in the same spaces. 

(See that ironing station there? I am ridiculously proud of it because I whipped it up in ten minutes before my quilting retreat, where they sell the same item, sans vintage linen topper, for $35. And now I see them all over pinterest (That site is yet another way for me to understand that I know nothing about technology.) 

and I want to say, I made one too! For less than $5! From a useless TV tray and scraps of fabric! 

And you can too! (Feel free to shed your punctuation sensibilities at any time.))

Grace continues to work on the timeline that, it seems by definition, never will end.

 Jack Frost visits and I think again about digging up more plants from the old homestead. 

I think about it but I am just too overwhelmed with 

the thought of gathering shovel, containers, gas money to trek back there. 

And then, won't it be nice for the buyers (please, buyers, be gardeners!) to be surprised by the bounty of heirloom planting there in much the same way I am beginning to see some shoots of joy to come 

in tiny green buds and brave little emerging bulbs here at the creekside? It will. 

I am paying it forward in the plant department.

And I'm quilting for coziness and craziness ... and we mustn't forget ... for draft protection.

I also cook too much, but no related photos at this time.

What do you do to up the coziness factor in February?

Seriously. Some insulation would be nice.

Oh. Did you come here for some December prettiness or a farmlike update of how I tackled the trio of ancient apple trees just before it was too late to prune or did you perhaps want to hear all about how 17-month-old Salvador will enunciate "up," "truck," "ball" perfectly clearly for his dad but never pour moi?

Check back later maybe.

Today my inspiration is this: I'm getting real.

Does anyone see the toilet up there? It's supposed to be out of the frame, to the right, where the new Suite upstairs bath will live. And straight ahead? That's the library.

Imagination helps. So would a little insulation.

We are still having fun even if we have to wear outerwear, well, indoors. It's been Western Oregon cold here, in the low 20s at night and high 30s all day. Crispy clear with a side of Jack Frost on the shady side of the house and barn. I have been ever so grateful that our new barn has automatic waterers and heat tape on the supply lines. This morning the big girls ventured to the end of the horse pasture, where we have a boggy little pond that Mr. Suite is excited to return to wetlands. Lo and behold the pond was frozen!

This never happens here. So the girls decided to ice skate in their boots and of course you know what happened next. Luckily it's all of a few inches deep at the edges.

So, in slightly warmer news, the new library will be about 12x12. One wonderful feature of this new old house is its decent room size, by "old house" standards. The master bedroom is 14x13 and boasts a 9x9 (!) walk-in closet. Of course to continue with the "getting real" theme of the day I have to tell you it is currently doubling as Salvador's bedroom. Each of the other two bedrooms houses two girls currently and while a new dormer bedroom is planned for Salvador, it's out there in construction phase eighteen or so. After a lot of discussion we decided turning the current attic space into a library is priority number two, right after finishing safety issues including the open staircase.

My "dining room" is a pass-through that houses what used to be my kitchen table... because my dining table doesn't fit. My "office" is an unheated back porch that used to be a laundry room. My laundry room is also a bathroom in the shop. My "family room" and "formal living" are one and the same.

The creek runs crystal clear under deep cover of fir, cedar and maple trees. A spring high on the hill feeds it. The apple trees and cherry trees are neglected but charmingly gnarled. The girls' rooms are paneled in 1970s paneling that they lovingly and happily painted Martha blue and sea glass green. Because new drywall in the bedrooms? That would be phase twenty-nine of the remodel.

And it's my dream. That's getting real.

The redheaded boy, the family tartan and the backward sweater

We don't have a family tartan (that I know of). But of course if we did that'd have to be it. The girls have been doing a month-long research project on immigration and we are learning that we, as a Suite family, came over on the Mayflower and in a roundabout way from the halls of Napoleon and the pyramids of Aztec fame and other less-lofty but still fascinating paths to find ourselves on this little new farm in Western Oregon, where even the clouds are sunshine to my soul.

(Okay. That last bit was a bit misty but you get the idea.)

I am not yet wearing my cardigans backward and, shocker, that is not me in that photo.

But honestly I'm having a lot of fun here on Geranium Lane, where the internet doesn't reach us and the UPS man honks his horn outside the gate. All of our critters are now settling in to the century barn and the chicken chalet and the bunny hutch. I'm campaigning for a Jersey cow but so far Mr. Suite he is resistant.

I'll keep you posted.

Stairway to ... construction

A little glimpse of the c-clamps that hold my life together these days.

Or that, at the very least, keep the babies off the staircase.

In house after house we renovated, remodeled and renewed and then we moved to the little church on a hill that was completely, beautifully redone and, if not exactly how I would have done it, it's important to note that it was not done by me. We moved in to finished floors and refinished wainscot and, you know, we just started living there. I didn't realize how beautiful that could be.

So here we are as in olden days, only a few children further along, renovating an old house and making it ours while living in it. Someone should make a reality television show out of the hilarity that is my day-to-day existence shuffling bins of school supplies and books with stacks of two-by-fours. Feeding animals and babies and wondering when the construction crew will show up.

Wait. I take that part back about reality tv. I just don't look that good in the morning.

More packing, more playing

I not only feel as though I owe you, dear friends and readers, an update or a dozen. I feel as though I owe it to myself to chronicle a fraction of the beautiful craziness that has been this move.

If you had told me six months ago that I'd be planning a new garden, tearing down nasty 1970s paneling, leaving my 1890s country-church-turned-farmhouse for a cottage of indeterminate history and a century barn that's better built than the house, well, this sentence clearly cannot support the number of clauses needed to describe my surprise and delight (and everysooften horror) and peace that has blessed us on this move to more acreage and more adventure and what we hope will prove to be an even simpler life than we found for five years in the tiny village we loved and left.

The all-new farmsuite is a mere 30 minutes from the former (still sweet but no longer the object of my hermitlike homemakery obsessions) farmsuite. The new place may be named Hoot Owl Hollow, if it's up to my children, and since (let's face it) I like to choose my battles, HOH it is for now. The circular drive that sweeps past my new little farmhouse and curves before my big antique barn I've tentatively named, optimistically, Geranium Lane.

While there are many charming plantings and outbuildings here, there are even more projects and situations the optimist in me calls "possibilities."

In fact this blog may go the way of a remodelaholic in place of its overly introspective writing ramblings, mommy musings and the like.







My husband, the dear engineer, has his work cut out for him at work and at home.

But, you know, as long as I have my barn.

Just short of a month into the move we still don't have phone or internet at home. But thank goodness for chocolate. (That and the red hair makes me know Salvador was surely not switched at birth.)
And the new house has nearly as many big leaf maples as the old house.

Just as many dogs and babies.

You know you're still reading the same blog because the pictures are ever so random. That's Josiah, one of my very favorite people. Too bad his family loves him because I just want to snatch him. Seriously.

And speaking of children I love... Sarah had an incredibly moving flute recital three days after we, a-hem, moved. Way to practice, honey. And to not lose your music in the packing boxes.

AND, since we're on the subject of performances, all three big girls are dancing in the Nutcracker this season. Because we have nothing else going on, that's why. So four rehearsals a week? No sweat.

Whenever I'm not wandering the propery, picking up heart-shaped rocks in the creek or tracing the square-headed nails in my barn walls, I'm stitching day-of-the-week towels. You know, when I should be unpacking. Or teaching geometry. Or taping drywall. Or driving in to cell range to make a phone call.

I miss you all! Please keep checking back... farmsuite is still here... just not as frequently.

Stretching, stretching

So as soon as I'm all bloomwhereI'mplanted, I kid you not, as soon as I had the conscious thought that everything is okay, right now, right here, in this place I didn't want to move five years ago but which I have grown to love love love, just then, just now, actually, I am getting to fulfill some new dreams.













I am choosing flooring and considering dormers and skylights in my new pre-1930s cabin on a creek. I am dreaming of vintage feed store signs for my century barn. I am doing a happy dance (in between seemingly endless bouts of the dread packing) over my father-in-law's gift to us of a hay elevator.

I am making furniture charts, people, in earnest attempt to simplify and still have a place for everyone to sleep, study and eat while renovations, in their many stages, will take place around us. (They oughta give me my own Discovery show. It's gonna get wild.)

And I'm purging schtuff. Of course you know there's schtuff. And I can blame it on the five kids all I want but you and I know different. (None of them has a debit card or a driver's license, now do they?)

So I'm stretching. And it's good. How about you?

If I think too hard about this

We have lived and loved here for more than five years. It was our move to the country that turned out to be a Total Lifestyle Makeover, a journey 23 miles from town but worlds away from what I now see was a relatively materialistic existence.

I've never thought of myself as loving the mall, per se, but the allure of spendy coffee shops and the urban thrill of a great antique find or of an amazing night at the theater... these are in my blood as much as the ponies and the garden (again, this year, with the 'kick me off the homesteader show' garden) and the free-range children.

I wrote a bit about the move here and its shifting of our resources, to put it plainly, to more time spent on fencing and more money spent at the feed store. We drank fewer lattes and the pricey children's boutique owners can hardly remember my name anymore. We brought home two babies to this house. We baked bread and we homeschooled and we started a little bunny business.

Living in this little, tiny, unincorporated rural village has been an enormous blessing. Living in a restored heritage church building has been a dream realized, even in light of the spotty heating and the all-too-open-while-tiny floor plan and the propensity of ranching old timers to stop for coffee as they used to do when the home was owned by a multi-generation founding family.

We have learned to make do, to make the best, to make joy and realize it.

We have walked to the post office, to the wood-floored, wood-heated general store-slash-deli, to the school, church, grange, to neighbors' barbeque parties, to rural art center events and to the abundant blackberry patches. We have spent entire weeks without opening the Suburban doors. We have loaded the shop and the barn and the entire small acreage with memories.

We have watched the fire hall's weekly training sessions from our front yard. We have watched Cycle Oregon's two thousand participants gather and marvel at our front porch. We have watched weddings at the next-door B&B and we have given countless directions to wine country tourists.

And now we are moving again.

My father-in-law gave me a little bit of wisdom that I want to share even though it's not fully sunk in. Yet.

Even in the face of exciting new adventures, it's okay to take a moment or two to appreciate what's passing, to mourn the loss of the known, to recognize what's been good before planning the new. In fact, it's probably counterproductive to start planning before recognizing that this change, though welcome, is hard.

Our new home, also a century or so old but without the known history of this place, is a grand gift and a new chapter to be sure. I just have to finish the last few pages of this one before the story can move on.

If wishes were horses

Writing, like playing, is daily. Change is not as predictable but it is inevitable.The odd drive to clear one's head.

A trip to campus to goof off in the halls of learning.

A lifelong dream - a century barn - within my reach. Written on my calendar no less.

Grace, as my friend Heather put it, can really rock a hat.

"Millions" of crawdads at our new place.

More University photos with our two exchange students... borrowed from down the road for the period of 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. or so, every school day.

Just one funky sign on my fantastic new barn.

While we lived a little bit of a dream here in this 1880s church-turned-farmhouse, it turns out there is a surprise chapter to the book of my life. (What? I don't control everything? And, furthermore, God's plans are better than mine? Whodathunk.)

So November first we will turn the page and move to that three-story barn (well, into the creekside house, which is at this point not so picturesque) and to that creek and to a mature orchard and a little more remote rural existence.