I never thought I'd say this...

...but Oklahoma is really growing on me. I was driving around this morning with the kids killing a little time while letting Marie nap in the car. We weren't even five minutes from our house but the area we were in was so open and beautiful. Everything's green and there are rolling hills everywhere so that occasionally you get a breathtaking view of the land. People who think the world is overcrowded need to come out here for a while. I've never been surrounded by so much open space in my life, and I love it. We've seriously entertained thoughts about buying a good bit of land out here and having a place where our kids can grow up with some space, surrounded by horses and cows and sheep and alpacas (we have quite a few of those around here too, on our street in fact). A place where they can run around and be kids and explore and still be on our own land. In some ways it's always been a dream of mine. The only thing holding me back is that we're pretty far away from family here. But this kind of land is hard to find back east where my family is, and definitely not for the prices you can find it for out here. Right around the corner from us, there are 98 acres up for auction that we've joked about buying. In fact, a few days before finding out it was for auction, we drove by, stopped and said, this is where we should build our house. It's on a bit of a rise and has a fantastic view of the surrounding land that's just gorgeous. *sigh* It's a dream...