I've told the story of how we found Mink Creek so many times that it is a reverent recitation. There I was this poor, desperate housewife in a one-bedroom apartment with three children and a husband that seemed to be quite content or could have been if it hadn't been for his moaning wife. I wanted a home, but all we heard from the parents was "you can't afford to buy a home," and all I heard from the realtors was "Let us look at your finances. We will pre-qualify you for a loan and find you a home you can afford."
   A stylish female realtor drove up to the duplex in her nice car one day and cringed when I walked out with the children and a diaper bag full of crackers, drinks and diapers. She was a trooper. The 3 girls and I rode around with her for months, and  the only thing we accomplished was making sure that poor business woman never wanted children of her own.
   The paper work showed that the Costleys only qualified to purchase a shack in inner-city Salt Lake or an abandoned flat next to the railroad tracks or under a freeway overpass. The housing industry called them "starter homes," which meant they were places you could only stand to stay in until you'd built up enough equity that you could afford to go into more debt for something slightly better, and remember, you had to be lucky enough to re-sell the piece of junk. I didn't understand it. I wouldn't buy a dress I didn't like for $20 why would I buy a house I hated for $60,000? I wanted a home, a beloved place where we could raise our children.
   I was explaining my woes to a woman in our church one Sunday and she said, "I have a secret to share. Let me come over this afternoon and tell you about it." Her secret was this, "Decide and define exactly what you want. Write it down! Keep looking, but be patient, and it will find you."
  So, Wynn and I sat down that evening and wrote down our desires. He'd been working with the teenage boy scouts at church, and he was amazed that the boys had no work to do, no responsibilities except maybe to keep their bedrooms clean. They were always out roaming around the neighborhood and jumping over garbage cans for entertainment, so at the top of our wish list was to be out in the country where the children could have some chores to do and siblings would have to be their own best friends. Yes, that's what we wanted, a home in the country with some wide opens fields, a hill to climb (I'd had that in Boise) a creek to play in, (I'd had the canal in Boise). Wynn had also enjoyed these things in his boyhood. We found that what we wanted for our children was our own childhood. But, a few things had also changed socially, the future seemed a little more uncertain and we found that self-reliance was important to us, so things were added to the list like; an independent water supply, room for a big garden, no more than an hour away from a university and at the maximum no more than 3 hours away from our extended families. And last, but certainly not least, we had to be able to pay for it with something other than money, because we didn't have hardly any. We were dreaming BIG. It was written down and we were willing to wait. Two more things were needed before our dream would come true, but I'm out of time again so the rest of the story will have to wait until tomorrow. Until then here's wishing you a day of dreaming, a Mink Creek kind of day.