When I was young, I never thought that at the age of thirty-five I would still be leaving with my parents! Nor did I think I would EVER choose to do so. Or choose to live with my grandpa. But here I am one husband and seven kids later living with my parents and grandfather. And I couldn’t be happier.
Don’t get me wrong, we have our bad days as does any family. But for the most part we are happy.
You see my husband and I grew up in a town where it is always 68 degrees with no humidity and we both loved our families, so the idea of moving away to a more affordable town was not one we liked. After we married, we rented a cute little one-bedroom apartment but quickly realized we needed more space so we found a house to buy 30 miles from our hometown, still close, good weather. Then I found out I was pregnant. We were unsettled in our house and so we started looking at other options.
That is when we found our first Compound. A bit of a lot with two houses. We looked at it with my parents and we decided that if both of us pooled our resources we could buy this property together. And soon after we all moved in. My parents in the big house, Matt and I in the little house.
A year passed, we had Serafina, Sam joined our family, my Grandfather had a few health scares, and I found myself pregnant again. Matt and I were quickly out growing our small house and we really needed to move my grandfather closer to us or us to him. After endless discussions on different solutions we decided to spend one day driving around looking for a new house to accommodate us all in the area my grandfather wanted to live. And if we found nothing we were going to start a remodel project. Well, as fate would have it, we found a house that fit all our needs. Three master bedrooms, two kid rooms (we have since remodeled and now have three kid rooms), a shared kitchen, living, dining room, a couple bonus rooms and plenty of land for roaming.
A few months later we all moved in. My grandfather, my parents, Matt, Me, Sam and Serafina. Then five months later Matteo joined us. Two years after that AJ. And then in 2012 the twins were adopted, taking us to: eleven personalties, four generations, and one roof:
“The Compound”
{to put together so as to form a whole}
Updates:
*In early 2015, Papa Robob moved to a senior center near Lynn's sister's home. Here's that story.*Mid 2015 Lexi joined our family as our 7th baby, 2nd baby girl and final baby.
*Then in 2017 we decide it was time for a climate change and we packed up our family of 11 and moved the compound across the country to Colorado. We have been loving exploring our new stomping ground.
The rest is history – in the making as we speak.
Tracy
