the simple life

Unplugged: no cell phone service, no internet, no tv, - and we LOVED it! We had the most wonderful week house sitting for our friends!  They have 88 beautiful acres including: pastures, a creek, garden, mountain, 5 dogs, 15 chickens and 3 roosters! Their house should be featured in a magazine: it's an old barn that they renovated into a house. They did it all by hand and it is amazing! I wish I could give you all a personal tour and explain to you how they renovated each part of the barn into this awesomely unique house.

We had a wonderful time being with each other with no distractions. We played outside all day unless we were eating or sleeping. Mark and I absolutely fell in love with living the simple life and living FAR out. The nearest gas station is 12 miles away.

Nothing says farm life like this picture of Nate: barefoot. diaper. pointing to the chickens.on old tractor behind him

The chickens were a hit:

Several chickens let Mark hold them

The kids loved being able to pet them

The creek was where Andrew wanted to spend all of his time:

They are clapping because we just saw a frog jump... boys!!

Nate decided to give Mommy some sweet love while taking a break from splashing in the creek

If we wanted to cross the creek to get the other side of the property to hike, shoot guns, or go up the mountain we had to use the cable. It was the only dry way to cross the creek. Mark became a master at the cable. He crossed it about 30 times in 5 days.

 
He carried the kids across one at time in our Kelty backpack. Then he would cross again to get his guns.

 Mark and Nathanael

 

Mark and Andy shot guns across the creek. Andy loved being a 'big boy'. He wore ear plugs and watched daddy! 

Here they are coming back from shooting guns.... getting ready to play in the creek.

While they played in the creek I would walk/jog several laps around the property. Mark would exercise by putting Andy in the backpack and running up the mountain. Not for me: I do good walking up the mountain :) One morning while I was running I saw 2 deer in the garden. They ran off because they saw me - but not the buck. He blew at me and stomped his foot. When he saw i wasn't leaving he blew again and then ran off.

Some afternoons the kids played in the pool while Mark and I read on the front porch. 

The simple life was so nice!!! We took advantage of being close to Rome and visiting with friends while in town. One night we went to Rome for a picnic in the park with our old church. It was nice seeing people we love and planted such deep roots with. A few days later we had a dear family come over for dinner. When Grace and Tom, whom we were house sitting for, came home they took us out to eat dinner at a neat Thai restaurant. We can't wait to go back!!!