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Laughing, I joined her as she darted across the hall, ducking her head in each room and gasping at them before telling me what she would do with the room and the furniture that might be in it. Or what furniture she wanted to buy.
The master bedroom was a sight to see. It was huge, almost a wing of the house on its own. It had its own kitchenette and dumbwaiter for downstairs, along with a full bathroom and two huge walk-in closets. It was its own suite and would provide a wonderful place for our little family to stay if we had guests and wanted to be on the grounds ourselves. It also had its own massive porch.
As Allison swung the doors open and the sunlight filled the room, even I was taken aback by the view. The grounds crew that I hired to do the lawn immediately around the house hadn’t ventured much past about twenty yards in either direction, but from the vantage point of the master bedroom we could see acres of land, all which came with the house.
“I need to be in that,” Allison said, motioning toward the wooded area just beyond the place where the grass started to grow high again.
“Then let’s go,” I said.
We dashed down the stairs and out to the car, where I had a hiking stroller packed away. It had been an impulse purchase on a day where Allison and I had talked about going hiking with the baby when it was born. I happened upon an ad for it online and it was on clearance, so I grabbed it. I’d stuck it in the trunk and hadn’t opened it since, so I was rather excited to get a chance.
With Leo comfortably in a mosquito-net protected bubble in the stroller, we began making our way down toward the tree line. The grass got quite high by the time we got there, but when we crossed from the grassy area into the trees, it was like walking into a magical forest.
The temperature instantly dropped a few degrees with the shade of the leaves. Central Texas wasn’t exactly known for wooded areas like this one, but it was glorious. It seemed overrun and untouched by human hands for a long time, but it added to the charm a bit. The area seemed alive, teeming with wildlife and flowers of all types.
Allison described how she would want to put a walking path through it, but only in the areas which were already trodden down from years of being a path. She pointed out where she would want rest areas and maybe even putting in a water fountain for people to have when they walked the estate.
Then, as we neared the center of the huge property and began to turn back, Allison spotted a gazebo near the tree line, just off to the side and hidden away from where we could have seen it coming out. We ran over, and I could tell Allison had fallen instantly in love with it. It was going to need a lot of work, to restore it to its former glory, but it seemed like work that might be fun. Revealing it from the earth that had tried to claim it would be satisfying.
It made me so happy to see how excited she was, and I knew in my heart I was only falling more in love with her. No matter what amount of work was ahead of her, when she saw a project that had promise, she lit up, and I found her immensely adorable. She could be telling me a million things she wanted to do, which I knew in the back of my mind would mean hundreds of hours of work, but I wouldn’t mind at all. Not if she was happy.
“Babe, can you get that vine?” she asked, coming back around the gazebo from the other side.
“Sure,” I said, realizing she had been gathering the vines and pulling them together so she could yank them off. One had been giving her trouble. I walked over and found the vine, yanking it down with one pull.
As I did, several other vines fell off, apparently having been attached to the large one that I’d just removed. With the vines gone, the gazebo was now accessible, and Allison walked inside. It was still covered, but the inside of it was practically spotless, aside from a few leaves. I joined her inside and marveled at how dark and secluded it felt. For a moment, the three of us were in our own tiny little world.
“I love this,” Allison said, leaning into my chest.
“Me too,” I said.
I pushed the stroller and wandered around, following Allison as she told me what she wanted to do with the grounds of the estate.
