This world is not my home...

But oh, look at this beauty.  This is where I grew up.  My earthly "home".  With moving so much in the military and other circumstances, I've not been able to get home as much as I'd like so that our children can enjoy God's amazing beauty that is the KJB Ranch.  This IS beauty.  Mom and Dad have worked so hard overhauling the place since they retired and have done an amazing job.

(photo credit: Doug Williams)

THANK you, Doug, for taking this picture today and sending it to me!  It brought tears to my eyes.  He was passing by out there today, thought of me and took this picture just for me!  Can you stand it?!  He thought of me and did this, so kind. I went to Kindergarten with Doug's son.  He's known me since I was knee-high to a grasshopper (as they say in my neck o'the woods).  I used to stand right where this picture was taken to catch the schoolbus those dark mornings. 

See where that white gate is?  My grandma, my dear, sweet grandma would walk right to the white gate with an umbrella when it was raining and wait for us to get off the bus.  And the stinkers that we were, we didn't want to walk under the umbrella!  Oh that sweet lady.

(Grandma and Rachel sharing a secret.  Baby Connor just a week and half old.  This was 5/3/99, the day of the "May 3rd Tornado" in Oklahoma)

This road is where I learned how to drive a tractor.  That field is where we baled hay and when I was 15, I drove my 61 Ford Falcon out to the middle of it with my friend Belinda and we got S-T-U-C-K, Stuck in the mud.  Apparantly the old Ford Falcon couldn't handle the mud like the 4 wheelers could.

(Not my actual car.  photo credit: http://bridgetownblog.wordpress.com/tag/cars/)

Oh!  See the bright blue thing on the middle right?  The big two trees just to the left of there was where I spent much of my childhood.  We had a tire swing there in the left tree, and my cousin Stacey, my brother and I built a playhouse up in the right tree.

And the pond.  Uh-mazing.  It's full!  Do you know there's been a drought down there?  God has blessed abundantly and kept that pond full this year.  One year, Dad wanted to expand the pond.  So, he bought-yes BOUGHT, on credit-a bulldozer.  His plan was to use the bulldozer and then sell it for profit before the first payment was due.  Really, people thought he was bonkers.  Then, when working on the pond, he got that thing buried in the pond.  Up over the tracks, it was not budging.  Again, people thought there was no way he was going to dig that thing out, get it cleaned up and sold before that first payment came due.  But we did!

No family is perfect and ours certainly wasn't.  Nor is ours now and we would never expect perfection.  But there are so many positives and memories and wonderful lessons I learned right here in this picture.  Good and bad, love and healing.  Thank you, Lord.  I believe through all the craziness, His Hand was on us all and His Providence led us through.

I love you Mommy and Daddy.

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

James 1:17