You’d think that with a 40-acre farm as expansive as theirs, and a business that thrives on the outdoors, the entire Gaines family, led by Joanna and Chip, would be adventure seekers through and through.
But, as she explains in her latest note for the Magnolia Journal’s summer edition, Joanna, 48, believes that she and her five kids all share the same trait of being homebodies – and it might just be all on her.
“We’re not naturally big ‘go on vacation’ people – even in nature’s most persuasive season,” she wrote in the latest post titled “A Note from Jo: Chasing the Ordinary.”
“For our family, home is where we recharge, where we reconnect,” she continues. “Here, we are our most relaxed, our most free. I’m likely to blame for our staycation state of mind. I think I may have unintentionally turned the kids (sorry, Chip) into bona fide homebodies just like me.”
Joanna and Chip, 51, share five kids together: their oldest two, 21-year-old Drake and 19-year-old Ella, are now college students; they also share Duke, 17, Emmie Kay, 16, and Crew, seven.
“Sometimes, I wonder if it’s not always such a good thing,” the Magnolia co-founder says of being more inclined to relax and stay at home. “I wonder if all the comfort we feel in here is limiting our ability to thrive out there.”
© Getty Images“In those moments, I tell myself I need to be more adventurous in the classical sense: Swing big. Jump in. Go someplace we’ve never been. Take a chance – and if I do, do it with arms stretched wide. Do it feet first. And sometimes, I do, and sometimes, we end up on vacations that don’t quite restore us the way we need.”
She explained that when the theme for this issue was discussed among the team, “Chase Adventure,” it was Chip who took the lead with the brainstorming, but she had to gain a whole new perspective by learning to find the adventure in the ordinary.
© Instagram“Our dreamiest moments have rarely been the places we went or the big splashy plans we made,” Joanna said. “They have always been the way we lived out the days in between. The terrifically mundane, quietly compelling, profoundly ordinary days of summer.”
“I’m calling for a summer of thrill-seeking here at home, among the ordinary and the everyday,” the Fixer Upper co-host said of her goal for the season, although still did add that they’d probably go somewhere on vacation. “I’m sure we’ll find our wanderlust somewhere at some point. But for the majority of the next three months, I hope we’re chasing the ordinary.”
Chip, for his part, centered his own note around the “chase” part of the brief, especially as one ages. “There’s no changing the fact that we’re all getting older,” he penned. “Time is flying by, just like we’ve all been warned. So, if youth isn’t something we can actually hold onto or get back, then the question becomes: What is worth chasing?”
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