It was almost a year ago exactly that I wrote the "Stone Wall on the Lake" blog posts Part 1 and Part 2.

In a year's time, I've written 112 more blog posts; TJ has taken 32 trips for work; Bauer, Cash, and Story have all learned to wakeboard; Sailor is out of diapers-crib-and-high chair; and we replaced our dog Penny with seven chickens.

It also took a year's time to complete the two things I mentioned in the earlier Stone Wall posts: to add a sign to the entrance of our property, and to get a piece of artwork for the wall just inside our front door that highlights the meaning behind the name "Stone Wall on the Lake." 

The front door artwork is a watercolor painting of the poem below:

A Time to Talk by Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don't stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven't hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

We want our home to be a friendly place, a place where we have time for other people, including and especially our own children. It's not my strong suit to stop my work on a whim, or to have my productivity foiled, and for there to be no shouting either. But I'm trying, and if you come to see me on a horse, I won't even have to try because your horse will stop us all in our tracks. In the meantime, the Stone Wall sign by the road and the Robert Frost poem by the door are great reminders every time I come home. 

Special thanks to Felicia Murphy, our artist friend and owner of the Etsy shop BlueHousePaperie, for doing these commissioned pieces, including the two below, which hang in the kids' bathrooms.