I’m writing this note from a cozy chair in the kitchen, surrounded by moving boxes and paint fumes, and feeling oh so thankful. We’re so glad you’re here!

In case you missed it, I should start this story with – we sold house number 8 less than a year ago. It was the home we bought sight-unseen in our move from Chicago to McKinney, Texas in 2020. We loved the neighborhood, our community, and the wonderful people around us, but the house was just more than we needed and didn’t feel like it “fit” in the ways we had hoped. We had an opportunity to sell it that we couldn’t pass up. So we sold most of our stuff, put the rest in storage, decided to homeschool, and hit the road on an open-ended adventure to explore more of this dreamy country we live in.

We could have kept driving, sightseeing, climbing mountains and swimming in the ocean…but at some point we let fear (and real life) reel us back in, and bought another house. We thought we wanted land and privacy and another complete gut renovation, (spoilers ahead: reality looked more like isolation, overwhelm, and loneliness). We knew we had made a mistake when on the last night of our family roadtrip, none of us wanted to go “home”. We had almost immediate buyer’s remorse with #9, only it wasn’t a superfluous pair of shoes, it was the biggest investment of our lives. So naturally, an insurmountable amount of dread and guilt ensued. I couldn’t stop crying when we pulled in the driveway. There was no excited carry over the threshold. We were all pretty quiet. And then Jon looked at me and said, we will fix this mistake. We’ll learn every lesson from it, and we’ll be ready for our next move, because we can do anything together.

And so we did. Every spare minute we weren’t working or homeschooling or loving on each other, we worked tirelessly to mend each and every square inch of a house that hadn’t been touched in twenty years. Jon stayed up nearly every night for six months to paint each wall, renovate every bathroom, replace every window, chandelier, switch, and outlet; and his hard work paid off when it sold the day we listed it. We cried different tears that day. I can’t wait to tell you the story of house #10 (you’ll never guess where we ended up and the synchronicities that led us here), but I’ll save that one for next time and leave you with a slideshow of our March joy jolts. I feel a deep, guttural gratitude for every single experience this past year, and for this study triangle that weathers every storm:

I hope you find joy in the tiniest moments today. You are a joyful human who deserves all the wonderful things coming your way 💙.