Once upon a time . . .

. . . there was a girl named Ashton. She'd wandered the globe and moved more times than she had fingers and toes. She'd lived in a bookmobile, in a high rise, in a trailer, on the beach and on and on. She was gypsying around the world, enjoying things, and there, in a hotel room overlooking the gorgeous blue waters of Guam, she got two pink lines on a little stick.

Something desperately prayed for but thought impossible happened there on the beaches, and she and her Husband danced and laughed and cried and held each other in joy. But now - a place to raise the precious peanut! So back home she went, to the midwest, to start her happily ever after.

Pregnant, she and her Husband scraped up and signed their names to a piece of paper and got a little house. A fixer upper sort of house, with cute little walls, two bedrooms and one bath, an enclosed garage that was one big room, and a living room and a kitchen and a little roof over their heads. A half acre of land underneath and a run down building in it, with a crooked little fence marking off their little piece of in-between in a place that wasn't in city limits but wasn't pasture land either.

A room-mate came with them - just for a little while - and moved all her things into the little house. She'd been in a bad relationship and needed an in-between place, and the little house was it. Her whole big house took over the tiny little house and the pregnant girl and her Husband lived in the big huge garage room.

A baby came and their family of three was complete. The room-mate decided to move to be with her Love, and start her own little family. The house would be empty, a blank slate to fill with her own things. So the gypsy girl that never stayed anywhere long enough to put down roots decided to go ahead - she'd love her crooked little in-between house, her little patch of land, and make it her home. She'd go domestic, as it were.

She planted some tulips randomly in her front yard and prayed for the best; and when they came up she looked at her baby just learning to laugh, and felt a Husband's kind hand on the small of her back, and felt at home - like this place was hers and could be amazing. She was overwhelmed with love and happiness and rightness and the feeling of the dirt under her toes grounded and centered and anchored and overjoyed her like she'd never been before.

This is the story in progress from a crooked little house with a run down yard to a happy little home with a beautiful happy little family in it - growing things, green things and colorful things and yummy things, fixing up the sweet little house and learning to be peaceful and calm and let the wind and joy and happiness flow through the gypsy girl instead of blowing her away to the far corners of the earth.

My happily ever after has already begun, hopefully you enjoy seeing the story unfold.