Small Places, Big Adventures.

This last weekend we were able to go out to Locust Grove (which is about 17 miles southeast of us) to spend some time with Kelly's family. His aunt and uncle own a beautiful piece of property in what I fondly refer to as "the middle of nowhere". You take a couple dirt roads to get there. But it is SO worth the bumpy drive.

Whenever we head out there, I know whatever meat we will be eating for lunch/dinner is most likely going to come from their front yard. And this time, we had Bambi for lunch. Bambi was not a deer. It was a cow. Normally, I'm a little iffy about the whole eating-animals-that-lived-in-the-front-yard-thing, but Helen calls it "organic" meat. And organic means healthy to me. So I ate it. And it was DELICIOUS. (Note: If you are a vegetarian, Oklahoma is not the place for you.)

After lunch, it was time to explore. Because it is hunting season, we could only explore in the afternoon. Hunters generally hunt in the mornings and evenings. Since deer over-populate the area, hunters are allowed to come in and hunt. I'm not a fan of hunting, but deer are everywhere. And they will total your car. Instead of trekking up hills and rocks, we walked on a path (for the most part) around a portion of Helen and Paul's property. And then on the dried-up river bed. I collected rocks, Kelly shot a handgun, and Steven (my brother-in-law) swung on vines that come up out the ground and attach themselves to the trees. My mom was able to come with us and it was nice to have her there. I've been telling her about Helen and Paul's property for the last two years. She loved it just like I thought she would.

There's something really relaxing about being in the open space. We have open space in town but when you get out into the country (for lack of a better word), you don't have the hustle and bustle of traffic. You don't have the general city sounds. You just have wind blowing through the trees. And the occasional bird chirping.

When I look at the life that Helen and Paul (originally Californians like me) have built for themselves over the last 30+ years, it gives me a lot of hope about what Kelly and I can do. They started in a mobile home on their property and built their house over time. If you ask Helen, she'll tell you it wasn't easy. She'd probably do a few things different. But the hard times made her truly grateful for the good times.

So, like Kelly's aunt and uncle, our first home is small. And maybe it's not ideally what we had in mind several months ago when we made all of our plans. But the great thing about living in the smallest places are the big adventures that come out of them. We've learned how to live together--how to share. We've learned how to prioritize our time and our money. Nothing lasts forever. Everything is just temporary. And simple. There's no room for complicated when it comes to us.

I took some pictures. If you want to take a look at them, check out my Facebook Oklahoma-Fall 2011 album.