Cleaning house

Did you notice I rearranged things on the blog again?  It just wasn't sitting right with me.  I have never been 100% in love with the name after my Picking Patricks got hacked.  I've been thinking about it a lot lately and what the blog portrayed of our family.
I am 100% in love with Ree Drummond.  If you don't already follow her here you need to.  You.  Need.  To.  I love her cookbook - waiting eagerly to get her second one.  I know it is out, just haven't been able to get it yet.  I love her show.  CR and I watch it together.  Their life is so similar to ours (well, except for all of the glamour they get with having a TV show).  Ree and I are like this - if you could see me I am doing the eye thing.  We are so very similar in personality, our passions, and our story.  I have been blogging just as long as she has and have been taking pictures just as long (she is a lot better, and actually since she is older probably has been doing it longer).  I am not comparing us in any way - she definitely far exceeds my talents, but its just so fun to read along with her story and think, "there is someone just like me out there!  There is someone else who feels like they were uprooted and placed out in the middle of nowhere!"  When I first read her book I said, "Ugh, someone beat me to writing my story!"  But then I began to really think about it ... our stories are very much alike, however, I know mine was on purpose.  She says on her show and in her book, "I'm an accidental country girl!"  I loved that.  It rang so true to my heart.  This morning as Kirby and I were walking and I was getting to see this  

 it occurred to me that our stories may divide there.  I know that God purposefully planted me here in Bishop, hence the new name.  I know God "has plans for me ... plans to prosper and not harm, plans to give me a hope and future.  Jeremiah 29:11 (paraphrased)  He knew that this girl who grew up with a golf course as a backyard would end up playing hide and seek with cows one day ...

 do you see her?  We do this every morning.  He knew that I could trade my four iron in for a shovel to help feed the cows cotton seed.  He knew that the thorns in my side would no longer be sand traps, but these beautiful things that most people would call flowers ....

This one, my dear friends, is a weed.  Funny story, when we first moved down here my mother went out and cut a handful of these off of our fence line and put them in a vase on our kitchen table.  Within a day CR had to throw them out because he was sneezing and getting all kinds of allergy mess going on.  He had to explain to momma that these weren't the typical sunflower; they were weeds.  Who woulda known?  

God knew that I would get excited when I started to see this in the fields

 The touch, the feel of cotton.  The fabric of our lives.  Literally, the FABRIC of our lives.  We raise this stuff.  How cool is that?  Sometimes I have to remind myself how amazing it really is what my family does for a living.  We farm.  WE FARM.  It isn't a hobby.  It is a living, breathing farm.  When I met someone a few weeks back they said, "You mean, like, doing the big tractors and everything?  You mean like having crops right there in your backyard?"  Yup, I mean right there ...

 This is a picture of our garden.  The tall stuff on either side of the short rows is corn.  The crops in the middle are green beans and I think black eyed peas, too.  Kirby calls all of the crops corn.
God knew.  His loving, gracious hand has been upon it since the day I met CR in 2004.  His hands were holding me tight as I fought hard and dug deep to stay in College Station.  His loving arms embraced me as I cried many mornings and nights our first year of harvest.  And His hands are upon us every moment of our lives here.  As fun as it sounded to be an "accidental country girl" ... that is Ree's story.  I am an on-purpose farm girl raising another one as we speak.

 Her newest thing is to take her daddy's old remote control and pretend it is a camera.  Here she is taking a picture of me, taking a picture of her

 And of course she had to bring it along for our walk so she could take pictures of everything just like mommy.  Every time I stopped to snap, she did too and said, "Cheese".  Yes, the John Deere boots had to be on today.

 My beautiful view on our walks.  Wouldn't trade it for anything.

 The dogs decided they wanted to ride instead of walk.

This is our home; this is our story.  This is our journey with God as our tour guide and His Word as our map.  I hope I never forget that.