The New House On The Hill...

We're getting new neighbors. Just down the hill a home rises from a field previously used as the neighborhood sledding run.

We'll need to find a new place to sled.

That's the thing with change. Sometimes you've got to make adjustments.

This is one house. To the north a subdivision is going in that will increase our community by several dozen homes. And when I say "subdivision," that's exactly what the development did to our community--divided us. Some fought the plan with signs and petitions and impassioned pleas on social media. Others, though they may have not wanted the development to go in, felt private property should be just that--something the owner of the property can do with what they want, within the bounds of the law and community standards, of course.

Our family moved into our little town back in the late 1960s. Except for a few years here and there, I call Farmington my home since that time. Our town is the kind of place where many have family members living here since its founding. It's a place people like and their children like to live.

That's what happened to me.

It's funny how many of us don't want to make adjustments to change once we're all settled. Because there was a time when no home existed, not on the hill or on the flat land. People came, people adapted. The community grew. I found it sad that so many people wanted to deny others the opportunity to enjoy the same things that they enjoy--to stop others from living in a place they love to call home. Would I rather the mountain stay the way it is and not get torn up? Probably, but what if someone looked at our lot fourteen years ago and said, "I think there's too many homes on the hill--even one more is too many," or if, when my parents bought an orchard of fruit trees in 1969, people protested the sale of that land?

I know my life and the lives of my children would have changed forever. So, we're getting new neighbors. The home will most likely be finished by the end of the year at the pace they're going. As I took pictures of the house under construction and imagined what the house would look like, I thought that I could be upset because more people means more traffic and the need for our kids to find a new sledding hill. Or, I could be excited that another family will move in and their lives will be forever changed because they bought the property, built a house, and turned it into a home.