Farm life....in the city

This is a picture of a squirrel my Dad caught in their front yard. He is on a daily mission to eliminate squirrels and rabbits that raise havoc in his yard. I am always fairly amused going over there because my Dad is always up to something new and he is a good story teller. He'll say, "Those darn squirrels are so dumb." And than go on to explain how he catches them.

I have always kind of felt like I grew up on a farm in the middle of the city. And I always liked that feeling; I got the best of both worlds. Both my parents are from farms in North Dakota and only moved down to St. Paul in the late 70's. My Dad's house is the actual old 'farm house' on the block. There are pictures of it with cornstalks surrounding the house and ladies in big dresses standing on the porch.

Not only the house, but my parents' habits brought a feeling of country life to our family. They always had a paper route, which meant there were countless times from ages 8-20 that I got at 3:30am to do the paper route in the neighborhood (kind of like milking cows early in the morning!). My parents have a real burning fire place in the house which I love. Many mornings I woke up to coming downstairs to a crackling fire and the wonderful smell. (It is a dream of mine someday to have a real burning fire place - I just absolutely love them.) We always kept the dogs outside in the back yard to run around. Growing up, my brother would take their bb guns to the second floor of the house and shoot coke cans that they had set up in the back yard. We always painted the big story house as a family. Every year in October we changed out the screen window for the storm windows - and there are something like 28 windows to do that for! My Dad has pretty much always had a truck for us to drive; he now has an old Ford (maybe 1980?) he likes. And than we often went back to the farms in North Dakota and hung out there with family. And than the fact that we never ate out as I was growing up, my Mom always had food ready for us and a good meal.

I love that life, and now sometimes I even feel like I could move out to the actual country. That is appealing to me (that is something Mike and I would have to talk about! :). I am thankful for the values that sort of life instilled in me.