The Box: Part I

Well, the batteries in my camera are dead, so I have no new pictures to share.  Instead, I thought I’d share a story that goes WAY back to before Ryder was even conceived.  I want to tell this story on here because it’s one of those memories that we will carry with us forever, and that we want to make sure Ryder hears about one day.  It’s a story about…The Box!  If you’ve known us for a good length of time then you most likely know about The Box.  You know where it is, what it looks like, you might have visited it, and you probably laughed when you read the title.

Alan and I started dating my senior year of high school, I was 17, he was 20, and we were on the fast track to falling in love <3  Fast forward a few years, we were ready to move out on our own, so we crossed a bridge, over a River, and into another state to settle into our 2 bedroom apartment.  Except we never really settle.  So we lived there for a year, with big plans to buy a piece of land in this new state we lived in and eventually build a log cabin on the land to make our forever home.

Driving around one day, we saw the tiniest little “for sale by owner” sign pinned onto a humungous tree, that sat on the most perfect piece of land that we had driven by hundreds of times and had never taken notice.  But this time, it caught both of our eyes at the same time, so we pulled over and called the phone number.  The sweetest older couple owned the land and wanted to help make our dreams come true, almost as badly as we wanted them to come true.  Within three weeks, we stood on that piece of land, so proud, and took the tiny sign off of the tree, because we were now the owners, and we couldn’t have been more excited.

The first thing we did was call Alan’s Dad to come take a look.  This is always Alan’s first instinct when something big (or bad) happens, so Big Greg headed to the property to check out our find.  They walked the property, talked about the perfect place to put a house, and the perfect place to put a deer stand, of course!  But the interesting conversation started about the time they made their way back to the front of the property.  It must have gone a little something like “Son, what are your plans for this beautiful cinder block building that sits on the property?  You know this used to be a crab shack in the 70’s that people would just drive through, pick up crabs, and head on their way!”…”Oh, that run down, dirty old building, we’re just going to knock that down Dad.”…”But Son, look at all of the potential, why pay rent AND a land payment, when we could fix this place up and you could live here!”  That’s probably when I started listening.  Wait…what???

And so the work began…about 10 family members, a lot of hard work (which we are SO thankful for), a few trips to Lowe’s and 3 weekends later, that run down crab shack was turned into our new home.  A home that we would forever refer to as “The Box”.  Because that’s what it was, a 15x15 box.  It had a kitchen big enough to hold a sink, refrigerator, and small countertop, a bathroom just big enough to hold a toilet, sink, and stand up shower, and a living area that held, Alan, Me, Beasley (and eventually Bentley!) our bed, tv, dresser, and clothes.

More to come…