A Fresh Start

Yesterday felt like the beginning of something great.

PJ’s accident happened one week ago yesterday, and every day since I have found myself at various points throughout the day imagining what he went through as it was happening, and my heart sinks into my stomach thinking about how scared he must have ben. I keep thinking about how quickly our entire lives could have been shattered, how life as we have come to know it and love it would’ve been changed forever. I can’t wait until this harrowing feeling fades.

The day after the accident, we went shopping for a new truck. PJ had actually been looking at getting a new, bigger truck for some time now, since our family of five had quickly outgrown his Tacoma, and this seemed like a good time to finally make that change (considering we were kind of forced into it). Well, after a week of looking and test driving models, he finally found the one! It fits all of us perfectly with room to spare, and there’s so much more storage! We’re not used to all of this space, both in the cabin and in the truck bed.

I feel so much better knowing he’ll be driving this big ole truck instead of his smaller one. It feels a lot safer. I know driving this back and forth to the beach will be a lot more enjoyable, too, since we were all crammed into his old truck every time we made the trip. Truly crammed and squished in every sense; it was not a comfortable drive, so we are all looking forward to this new truck. The kids ooooh’d and ahhhhhh’d when we showed them yesterday, and Anna kept saying, “I love your new truck papa!”

There’s also been a lot of progress happening at Holiday House this past week. Our siding guy started and added trim around some of the windows on the exterior and it completely changed the feel of it. Suddenly it is starting to look more like a house and less like a construction site.

And then drywall started yesterday and they hung almost half the house! They got so much work completed in such a short amount of time that we think it’ll be completely hung by the end of the week. The rooms have actual walls in them for the first time in over a year. You finally can’t see through the whole house while standing in one room.

And you know what? The rooms feel surprisingly bigger than I thought they would. It’s not a large house by any means, and is actually a lot smaller than our house in town, so I worried it was all going to feel too small, but it doesn’t. It feels just right.

Anna’s room with her vaulted ceiling above where her bed will go:

With the new truck that will better suit our family and the needs of the farm, and all the updates being made to Holiday House this week, I am starting to picture our life out at the farm more and more. It’s all becoming real and I can envision us spending our mornings, days, and evenings out there full time. I know we will find a rhythm and routine that feels right, and I find myself getting ecstatic at the thought of the farm no longer just being somewhere we return from, but a place we call home.

It all feels like a fresh start, a new adventure that is so close I can almost taste it. It won’t be long now.