Happy Anniversary Part 3 - Years 10-15

**I would summarize these years as the years we truly learned to live "in community" and "do life" with friends.**

**We had always done life with family, and still do to this day, but we had to do a LOT of living on the phone and on holidays and special occasions because we all lived so far apart.**

We welcomed Luke Franke Brewer into the family on 

July 17, 2001

We had him home for about a week and our very good friends from Charlie's college days came to live in the area and they camped right next to our house for a good part of the summer.

We had a crazy good time.

 We learned to live with open doors and they learned to put up with complete chaos.

To this very day I can't think of anyone else I would rather learn to live with people than with than these particular friends.

We made a lot of memories and learned how to live "in community".  It has been one of my most treasured lessons to this day, that we have carried on with. 

In these years.....we also sold our American dream home because of course we had plans of bigger and better and MORE!  

We were going to build on 40 acres that we bought, but in the transition time we moved into town for 9 months.

 In God's grace we moved just a few houses down from these same friends.

  We saw each other almost daily and did many meals and runs and cookies and coffee together and just plain did life together. 

Talk about "lessons". 

 We learned we DO NOT make good town peeps. 

 But, again, we learned to leave the door open.  When you live in town its very convenient for people to just come by and pretty soon you just GET OVER having to have the house a certain way to enjoy your friends and we learned that they loved us even when we had a messy house and unruly kids and pets.  

We had always lived "off the main drag" in our rural community and people didn't come by unless they called first because it would be a waste of their time if we weren't home. 

 We always had time to stash the mess, or threaten the kids.

  It took some getting used to, to have people just "swing by" and we learned to

 LOVE IT!!!

After nearly driving our "town neighbors" in complete sane, we moved into our " temporary barn house" that Charlie built to get us out on our property and out of town.

We moved our family of 6 into a little part of the barn, that was supposed to be Charlie's tack room, and we built an upstairs right over the alley way of the barn and learned to
 SIMPLIFY.  

We ended up being in that temporary situation for 3 1/2 years and truly enjoyed it!!!

  We totally changed our priorities and we no longer dreamed of a big beautiful house, we learned to enjoy an easy maintenance  house with concrete floors and lots of foot traffic.

It was so kind of the Lord to teach us community living and open door living before we moved to our property.

Our property is in the same rural community, but it is on a pretty main road and it is in the wide open. 

 It has been an awesome

 drop-by

 drop-in

 drop-off 

piece of property, and that is seriously our favorite part of the whole place!

We have a tight group of friends that we DID  A LOT of life together with in those years.  

We, and our kids are all still very close.

We have walked through a lot of life together...good times and bad and I can't imagine my life without even 1 of them.

We don't all get the chance to do as many activities together, we all have busy lives and THEIR kids are all growing up...(so are ours,but we just keep starting over).

 I can say that when the going gets tough... we are THERE for each other and when there is something to be celebrated...we are THERE for each other. 

 When we do hang out...we pick up right where we left off....never missing a BEAT!

I was looking through these years of pictures and it just came to me over and over again how blessed we are to have such amazing people in our lives!
 We have truly been blessed with the best friends in the whole world.

It also occurred to me that Charlie still had mostly brown hair and I was somewhat sane.
Oh well, both things have changed.  :)

I wouldn't trade those years for anything and I wouldn't want to go back.

 It's fun to glance back and keep moving forward!!

Proverbs 27:9The Message (MSG)

9 

Just as lotions and fragrance give sensual delight,

    a sweet friendship refreshes the soul.