The House That Built ME.

So here i am, finally sitting down to type my very first blog entry.  After months of questioning what goes into this blog thing (will I have enough time? will I keep up with it? will I suck at it?), I finally decided to stop being a chicken shit and do what i usually do with most things, dive in head first!

After imagining and racking my brain, for weeks, on what my first blog post would entail, I decided to start from the beginning….my beginning. 

So this little jewel of a picture is actually the house where i grew up, in rural Kansas.  It was built in 1905, by my Great Great Aunt Ann and Great Great Uncle Ollie, they were brother and sister.  With no power tools and no heavy machinery, they built the 2 story house with their bare hands!  Bare. Hands! 

Back then the house was part of a town called, Franklin, Kansas, I actually found it in a Kansas history book.  Our unfinished basement back in the day was the general's store/post office, and our barn used to be the school house.  No, Im not kidding!

The house remained in my Dad's family for years, then Dad came to own it himself in June of 1987.  He knew it wasn't going to be easy keeping up with a house and 97 acres, but with the help and courage of my Mom, he moved us out to The Farm and they began "fixing it up," a task that he did most everyday of his life until he passed.  We would haul water to the well, feed the animals, and live off the land.  This is where i learned the significance of hard work and determination.

See the little girl in the white dress on the front porch above...thats my Grandmother, Dad's Mom. I never met her, but knowing she stood on the same porch that was right off my little sister and I's bedroom, made me feel closer to her.  That porch was where i spent a chunk of my childhood days raising baby skunks, litters of kittens, and storing wood for the winter.  Things Im sure my Grandmother did when she lived there.  My little sister was named after her. 

My happiest times, and most favorite adventures happened at The Farm house, when we were dirt poor and living off the land. Experiences and lessons that will carry me through the rest of my life.  From collecting driveway rocks to learning how to drive....from laying with my baby sister in her play pen under the stars while my parent sat by a fire....to throwing parties of my own as a teenager.  From writing my first song, to waving goodbye for big songwriting dreams in the city of Nashville.  I know as I get older I will continue to learn just HOW much that house molded me.  It will forever remain in my heart! 

I owe it all to these two (below)....Thank you Mom and Dad for being courageous enough to raise us on The Farm!!! LOVE YOU! 

"I thought if i could touch this place or feel it, this brokenness inside me might start healing, out here its like im someone else, i thought that maybe i could find myself, from the house that built me." -(written by Tom Douglas and Allen Shamblin)