Home Sweet Home

Throughout our journey we have lived in several different states, climates, and altitudes...and in a house we called HOME!! I never lived in a house that was a mansion, or a house that I built, or a house I dreamed about as a child, but I do live in a house full of LOVE!! Today, I am going to take you on a journey of the houses we have called HOME!!

I grew up in a small rural town in New Mexico.....My Mom, Dad and I moved into to a newly built house in 1976, three years after I was born. It was a very beautiful home with a large front and back yard. My Dad planted two trees in the front yard and too many to count in the back yard...he also had immaculate grass(my Mom still says to this day, that my Dad was very proud of his grass and would not let anyone walk on it). After my Dad passed away in 1985, we built on to our house adding a den and fireplace and an upstairs bedroom and bath for my Mom...this allowed my sister and I to have our own rooms! Our house was across the street from the High School football practice field...my friends and I spent many days watching the the young football players from our window, sometimes using our binoculars. So many wonderful memories of this house. I was so lucky as a child to grew up in the same house and never have to move from house to house! This is the house that built me....

Glorieta Baptist Conference Center....while I was working as a nurse at the First Aid Station I also lived in a very small efficiency apartment on campus. Certainly not the house I had dreamed of as a child. This was my first experience of living and working at the same place, the beginning of many actually!! Some days I never even left the campus as I had no need to go anywhere...not even to do laundry as there was a washateria right on campus!! After falling head over heals with a summer staffer at Glorieta, now my husband Matt...he did all my laundry as a love token!! He is so sweet!!

Our journey took us to the Panhandle of Texas...to a 90 thousand acre ranch to work as ranch caretakers. Our house was right next to the "BIG" house, a stones throw away. This house was a cute house...small of course and it didn't have a kitchen. We cooked all the meals on the ranch so we ate what we cooked for the family...in the "BIG" house kitchen standing up not dareing to sit to enjoy a meal. This was a very interesting experience for Matt and I, we spent the first year of our marriage with each other 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and I wouldn't change that for anything!! There again we lived and worked at the same place, often getting cabin fever!! We had a great adventure living on this ranch!

A house is a house is a house...in this small oil town in West Texas not much to choose from. Matt and I rented a duplex in the heart of town while he went back to college. This was really our first home since we got married, we were able to decorate and use all our kitchen items we received at our wedding shower. This house was just that... an older, cozy house serving a purpose while Matt was in school!

A long journey to our next house....in Utah County! Our house in Utah was a cute, two story two bedroom townhouse! We made this our home for 5 years...the longest we have lived in a house thus far, well...maybe! My love for decorating exploded to levels I didn't even know I had living in this adorable house! Utah has some of the cutest little shops filled with home deco...oh, how I miss those great shops! Looking out our upstairs bedroom window, we had a gorgeous view of Mt Timpanogos....snow covered most of the time and breath taking! The beautiful landscape and scenery sure does beat anywhere we have lived and that is for SURE!!

In the White Mountains of Arizona...Our house was a beautiful log cabin in the secluded Apache National Forest at an all inclusive luxury guest ranch.  I would have never dreamed of living in log cabin, but we made this house our home for a short time! It was very nice, but very cozy at times! Our house was included in my salary, so there again Matt and I found ourselves living and working at the same place. Matt worked in town at a golf course so he had a short drive each day as I rarely left the ranch for weeks at a time....now talk about cabin fever, it was for real here! We loved living deep in the mountains amongst all the wildlife, we often saw elk grazing next to our cabin, and wild turkeys in the meadow. This was an experience we will never forget!

  

Our journey led us back to New Mexico where the dust and tumbleweeds blow every day! Our house, not your common neighborhood home....nope, we live in a very small house on a city park by the golf course. I could have said....we live in a beautiful home on the golf course and you would have thought, "Wow", that sounds really great. Well, this is a house built in the 1960's for the Park Ranger when this park was a State Park, now the City owns the house and we live here so Matt is close to the golf course for work. Once again...we live and work at the same place.  As strange as it might sound this house is our HOME, and it will be until God has another plan for us!

I truly believe it is not what your house looks like on the outside, but what makes your house a HOME on the inside! Some day we will have that beautiful house we always dreamed of and we will be able to call it Home Sweet Home!!

Vintage Momma