Somehow we found our way into this little place. Mostly people know it because it’s a town you drive through to get to other towns, but for us it’s home. From the main road there are old barns and fields filled with apples and horses and broken stone walls. We know that tractors have the right of way and we sell honey and vegetables at the end of our driveways with a little honor system jar to put your dollars in. Bucolic, I think the word is.

Our kids are growing up together, sharing the same teachers, same soccer team, same frog pond, same snacks. We parents work together in giant zones of defense - trading rides, setting boundaries, carrying band-aids and extra water bottles and texting each other that we’ve got so-and-so in our line of sight, not to worry. For the kids it’s like having 100 siblings. They fight and play like they’ve known each other since birth, which they basically have.

I love watching your babies grow and I can’t wait to meet who they become. And I hope they always remember where they came from and that they were loved by a whole bunch of community.