the yard

Way back in July, when we were driving around with our Realtor, scoping out possible homes for our family, we drove up to the home that we would ultimately purchase. And as soon as we pulled in to the driveway, before we even stepped foot in the front door, I had a feeling that this house was the one. All because of the yard.



Our yard is amazing. Our yard is what makes me able to tolerate the outdated kitchen and bathrooms and orange shag carpet. Our yard is what restores me to my senses after a long-day.



Our yard is what makes us so glad to be here. (Notice, Charlie tried to rake the leaves once. He spent four hours and two hours later, you'd never even know he did anything. He hasn't bothered, since.)



Our yard is a children's paradise.



Our back yard slopes down to an an ephemeral creek, which the children will spend hours upon hours playing in, on and around.



Even though it was the heat of summer when we first came to visit this home, I could imagine that our children would be outside sledding down the awesome hill with the first snow.





We're situated on just over an acre of land, and for scale, here's a picture of our play structure in our backyard in California.



And here's our play structure in our backyard, here. I'm thinking of installing a zip line between the house and the big oak tree at the bottom, so if I need to talk to the children, I can just grab hold of the line and zip down there. I always wanted one of those as a kid. I will HAVE one as an adult.



While it's nice to have some elbow room, what we especially appreciate is that our lot backs up to conservation land, so the acreage behind our home will never be developed.



One day last week, we took off, as a family, for a nature hike. Our goal was to track the land back as far as we could go. After "hiking" approximately three miles, the children had reached their maximum hiking capacity. As we walked home, we noticed these stands scattered throughout the forest. There was one less than 10 feet from our property line. We thought that perhaps they were for bird watching?



Our neighbors clued us in that a few years ago, the deer population was so out of control, the County was driving around offering hunting licenses to whomever wanted one. It seems those stands aren't for bird watching. They are for deer hunting.



Considering we've got deer IN OUR BACK YARD, notice the six point buck walking past our swing set ...



Charlie and I have decided that unless our children are wearing bright orange flak jackets with flashing beacons on their heads, they're not allowed outside anymore.