House-y Dreams

The other day I had a realization.  Bear with me!  But I'm wondering if any of you have come to the same conclusion?  For most of my twenties and early thirties I held an image in my mind, a picture of what my "future life" would look like.  It included (in the very early days) dreams of my husband and our future kids, and the kind of life we would lead.

Thankfully, my husband and three kiddos are the center of my life, and they are the fulfillment of my most precious dreams!  But I also dreamed of our house, because, well, that's just what I do.  Usually I imagined we'd live here:

Or here:

Or certainly here (who are those people in the photo and why are they in my imaginary house?):

The future was always unknown and hazy, and there was always the sense that something new and exciting was just around the bend, something that would tell me we'd "arrived" at our life.  Someday we'd live in a big, white, rambling country farmhouse.  Someday I'd have the perfect hydrangeas in my side yard and six fireplaces to choose from when wondering where to sip my coffee or wine.

Do you see where I'm going with this?  Looking back on where our path has taken us, that white cottage farmhouse has yet to materialize!  As newlyweds we started with a charming little bungalow in Mt. Lookout, a fun, hip (or was it only hip ten years ago when I was hip?) suburb of Cincinnati:

We moved to Colorado in 2007 and took on a little more rustic, almost Craftsman-style house:

Then we went way off my usual grid in 2010 with a 1930s Spanish Colonial in San Francisco, CA:

Followed by a 1950s ranch, also in San Francisco, which gave me a big lesson in decorating a rental house that was seriously in need of help!

And now, finally, to our home here in Cincinnati, where we plan to stay for as long as life allows:

It's funny, isn't it? Now that I'm 37 (and not 25!), I know that perfect white cottage on the 5 acre farmland with white picket fences is never coming my way.  And you know what?  I am SO OK with that!  Instead, we have a home built in 1979, surrounded by great neighbors and sidewalks, in a community I love.  We have one fireplace, not six, and though I try to make the house look like it was plucked from a charming English countryside, it was not, and I love it anyway because it is ours.  

Do you get me?  Do you find a joy (and even relief!) in being content with what your life holds, even though it doesn't match your younger self's dreams?  Don't get me wrong, I'll always be tweaking and trying to convince my husband to add a picket fence (hopefully this spring!) and a cupola with a weather vane on top of the house and more hydrangeas and a stone walkway and...and...and...

But we're here for the long haul, and I couldn't be happier.  Does that sound familiar to any of you? I'd love to hear!  :)