I can finally let go of a dream, happily!

Our previous home, the one we just moved out of, was the home I had fallen in love with so long ago, the home I wanted to move into since my husband first moved to the prairies of Saskatchewan, the home I had asked him to go take a look at, to see if it was possibly THE home for us, the BIG BEAUTIFUL home that was so fabulous on the realtors listing was my DREAM home.

The size of the house was fantastic, plus there was a two car garage and 87 acres.

I felt it was a piece of heaven on the prairies! When we first moved in, I shared about my love of the great big beautiful home: http://homesteademporium.wordpress.com/2012/10/18/the-long-way-home-continues/

But… as our Long Way Home seems to have proven over and over again this past year…
It just was not meant to be. Here we are, after our third move in one year.

When we were first given our notice to move out, I grieved. Really, I did. I loved that home. What’s not to love? The kitchen was amazing.

The great big tub with the great big crack that my hubby fixed, was my favorite place in the world whenever I was stressed. I could never understand how the previous person’s who lived there all left the tub cracked, and unusable, when they could have enjoyed it all that time as much as I did!

Don’t get me wrong, the homestead we are in now has a LOT that I’ve enjoyed from the start, the big barn, and the beauty of the mature yard site. As Shaylah said the other day, it offers the best of all we loved about our BC hobby farm, trees and trees galore of ALL sorts! Nature at it’s finest! This, I love about our homestead. There’s also a HUGE garden, and lots of fruit trees. I love all this about our new homestead too!

However, there were things I didn’t like so much. It’s much less land, just under 18 acres. The home is much smaller then the home I had fallen in love with, but in all fairness, it is still 2400 square feet, so it’s not small by any means.

The house…it’s well used, a typical prairie farm home that’s in need of a good amount of love. The kitchen is the exact same kitchen from when the home was built many years ago. The bedrooms are small, our bedroom furniture won’t fit and even with half of our bedroom suite out of the room, my husband and I are still hitting our knees on the remaining furniture, just the bed and the dresser, every day. My sewing room is unfinished and certainly not ‘refined’. I’m trying my best to pretty it up, and I’m actually getting there. It’s difficult with a rather small, no, a non-existent decorating budget, but I do have lots of fabric at my disposal, and, I am creative. I have full confidence that I’ll do more then make it work, I’ll make it beautiful.

However, the house does have it’s positives too. The fact that I even have a sewing room is huge. Many women don’t have sewing rooms. I know that I am blessed and I do appreciate that. The floors in the house have all been updated and are good, even if not what I would personally choose. Although there’s wood paneling everywhere downstairs in the basement, the upstairs walls have all been freshly painted in neutral colors and I have NO desire, after THREE moves in one year, to even TOUCH a can of paint, so that’s a BIG plus.

And I know that just as we’ve done before, Graydon and I will turn this well ‘used’ home into a wonderful retreat one day. We know how, and we’ve done it well, we can do it again!

I really do love the barn, the huge shop and quonset on the property are awesome for my hubby and son, my soon to be humongous garden is like none I’ve had or even dreamed of, and the every loving fact that we are FINALLY home to stay… this week I learned a REALLY big lesson about watching out for what you want in life because sometimes you’ll regret it!

This past week, we had insult added to injury. To add to the difficult task of paying for TWO homes, half way across the country from one another, and all the bills that go along with TWO homes, and our main income barely covers the two mortgages alone. Then there’s the extra’s in life like FOOD for seven, often eight people (our pre-adoptive son spends several weeks at a time with us, we don’t hold fund raisers, or ask for aid for this adoption), gas to get to work, incidentals that pop up etc.. To add to all that, this week we received our final bills for the BIG BEAUTIFUL home I loved so much. The electricity bill, and the gas bill.

Whoa Nelly!

On top of our monthly payments for electricity and gas that we’ve been paying all along, we were hit with just shy of TWO thousand dollars for electricity, PLUS just over ONE thousand dollars for gas!! In just EIGHT months of living there! It seems the monthly payments were ‘guesstimated’ much too low, and believe me, they were already high!
I assure you, we are NOT frivolous people! We’ve lived in many a home before, and never had these kinds of costs!! It’s sheer craziness!

I told my husband, that extra cost may just be worth the knowledge that I will NEVER, EVER regret not being able to stay in that BIG BEAUTIFUL ‘dream’ home!

I am SO happy to have had to give up my dream home now. I’ve learned my lesson, and learned it well! BIG dreams come at a cost, one I’m not quite willing to pay the rest of my life!

I really just wish that lesson hadn’t come at such a ‘literal’ high cost!

And now it’s time to get back to sewing! I tell myself in times like this, to the tune of Dory’s song in Finding Nemo, “just keep sewing, just keep sewing…” and I thank God, over and over again, that I LOVE what I do!

So remember, when you shop at Homestead Emporium, YOU are making our ultimate family dream a reality. YOU have helped, and continue to help, our family live on this wonderful new homestead of ours. My NEW dream home. The one YOU and good friends, have helped us to attain! The dream home that won’t cost us an arm and a leg for the rest of our lives! You help us get by every.single.day! YOU even help with our adoption! Even if you can never adopt a foster child yourself, you have the knowledge that you helped another family who could! For that, as I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again, we are very thankful!

We’re staying positive. We’ve gotten this far! The house in BC WILL sell!

It WILL happen.

And then we’ll be truly living the ultimate dream!

*update. I was wrong about the gas bill, praise God! They actually owe us a small credit! Phew!

Living in the land of boxes…

We’re living in the land of boxes right now. We still have our rental home so we’ve been spending so much time cleaning there, taking down fences, moving every last thing, and fixing any last little holes, paint touch ups, ect. that we’ve had barely any time to unpack.

I’m trying real hard not to feel panicked about this. We have our first adoption homestudy HERE at our new homestead, in just 2 days.

Yikes…breath…

At the moment I’m making a batch of elderberry syrup while the kids are still sleeping because although I can’t find the cutlery… I HAVE found all my elderberry syrup ingredients.

Good thing too. I’ve been fighting off something all weekend.

Randomly I walked by a box and found my StressPlex vitamins. Not packed with my other vitamins, which I haven’t located, JUST the StressPlex. Hmmm… A sign perhaps? I think I’ll take one with my elderberry.

The previous owners of this homestead gave us a housewarming gift.

Inside they wrote:

We had an offer in on their place almost two years ago but since our home in BC didn’t sell, the offer expired. They knew how long we had waited and we had developed a friendship along the way.

When we moved into the rental home, we were sure we were finally home for good, but again, our home in BC still hasn’t sold and the owners wanted to sell, not rent to own, so we were stuck again. We had NO clue what we would do.

We kept an eye on this place, but didn’t dare put in an offer with our place still not sold. Then our friends approached us about buying it, for us. We would ‘own’ it, but since we couldn’t get another mortgage until our BC home sells, they would take care of that part so we’d FINALLY, TRULY, be home. For good!

We feel so VERY blessed by our friends.

We’ve been blessed by many friends this weekend. We had a total of 28 people here at our home the day we moved in, with one family feeding 22 of us, right here in our new home! They brought enough food for two meals, drinks, cutlery, napkins even! And it was all farm raised foods too! I love living in farm country!

Friends have helped us pack, move, and clean our rental home. It’s been overwhelming! I can’t wait to settle in and start paying it forward right back to all if them! It was a true “Welcome Home”.

There’s lots of work to be done here on the homestead. We’ve moved from a new-ish 3600 square foot home with huge kitchen and baths, to an older 2400 square foot bungalow that desperately needs bathroom updates, and one day some other renos. But if you know us, you know we’re good at that and in no time, this homestead will be everything anyone could ever want.

For now, it’s more then we could have ever hoped for, and all that we have ever dreamed of!

My elderberry syrup is done, and the kids are up, so it’s time to go finish cleaning at the rental home and take one last long hot bath in the HUGE jacuzzi tub! I’ll share more photos of the house once it’s no longer full of boxes!

Moving…we should be experts by now!

Just two more sleeps, and we are FINALLY home!

Home, on our new (to us) homestead.

As the day draws closer, quickly, there are many emotions.
This is it, FINALLY it!

We are finally moving to a home, a homestead, here on the prairies of Saskatchewan that we can finally call our home. No longer ‘renters’.

There’s excitement over our new adventure. The more I learn about the property the more excited I become. We will have a real barn. I’ve always loved old barns. In highschool art class, old barns were my very favourite subject to draw. I still have my favourite drawing of the view inside an old barn. I will need to find it. I’m quite positive it looks a lot like OUR barn.

Then there’s a bit of ‘fear’. Not true fear, I’m not ‘scared‘. It’s difficult to explain, mixed along with SO much excitement! But the reality is, our home back in BC is still not sold. That means we now will own TWO homes. As wonderful as that may sound… It’s not wonderful. It’s very difficult, burdensome, and while that hobby farm sits empty with no one to love it, it’s financially and emotionally draining.

It dampens our extreme excitement to FINALLY be going home!

And that makes me sad. I don’t want to feel burdened, emotionally or physically drained, at the most pivotal moment of this entire Long Way Home journey our family has been on.

I want to bask in the contentment I feel in my heart now that we know where home is.

I want to ponder the absolute wonder and self sacrifice of friends stepping in to put the mortgage in their name until our other home does sell, so we could finally have a permanent home!

I want to sit in awe and amazement that in all our times of wondering how we would ever find ‘home’ after being told we would have to move for a THIRD time in one year, in our wildest imaginations we never could have dreamed we would end up at the very homestead we had an offer in on almost two years earlier.

So, as scary as it is, to be financially responsible for TWO hobby farms now, thousands of miles apart from one another, in our awe and amazement of where we are headed we must swallow hard, dig our heels in deep, and make that final sprint towards that finish line.

We can finally see it now.

Home sweet Homestead.

Home sweet Homestead. That’s where we spent our afternoon today. 

We called up the owners of the home we’re moving to on April 27th (that’s 26 days, 21 hours, 43 minutes and 44 seconds away, for anyone wanting to know… but who’s counting right???!) and asked them if they would mind us popping by after church.

We just wanted to check out the barn, and see if we could get at the paddock fencing to look it over and see what we’ll be up against before the BIG moving day.

They said, “SURE! Come on over!”

Getting to the barn was easy.

The other outbuildings… not so much. lol

It may be spring, but we’ve got some snow that needs melting! I expect most, if not all, will be gone within the next few weeks. In time for the move!

We did make our way to the chicken coop though! The entire chicken yard is fenced from top to bottom!

When we moved to Saskatchewan from BC, we had a sad incident with a lot of our farm extras, including all our chicken ‘gear’. The horse mover had assured us there would be room for all of our chicken stuffs, and our horse stuffs, to move along with our horses. However, when she arrived to pick the horses up, AFTER the movers had already left with all the rest of our belongings, she told us she wouldn’t have the space after all. This was pretty upsetting, because it meant we’d have to leave it all behind. It’s not cheap to start chickens!

However, the home owners of our new homestead told us they were leaving ALL the chicken ‘stuffs’ behind for our kids! They used them all for ONE round of chickens! Today we found out they are even leaving us a chicken plucker! How awesome is that?! LOL
I’m not even sure I can manage to butcher our own chickens… but it’s awesome anyways. I know I’ll fully embrace this homesteading lifestyle one day, and be able to butcher our own chickens.

One day…

Thankfully it won’t have to be today.

In the barn, there are currently 8 stalls. We’ve got everything all planned out already. We’ll have six stalls for horses. One stall for Shaylah’s sheep, and one stall will be converted into a heated tack room!

And then… there is a LOFT! A great, big, beautiful loft. The kind of loft kids imaginations dream up. The kind of loft MY imagination dreamed of all these years I’ve longed to own a REAL homestead.
I didn’t snap a photo of the loft, I must of been too awestruck to think of it. I actually didn’t have my camera with me, and these are all iphone photos (my bad), but it won’t be long and I’ll be sharing so many photos of our homestead that you’ll be begging me to STOP already!

I also didn’t snap any photos of the house yet. It’s still someone else’s home and I don’t feel right snapping photos of someone else’s home. Once it’s ours, there will be plenty of time to share photos.

For now, I’ll share that the home is a basic bungalow, 1232 square feet up and 1232 square feet down. Currently there are three bedrooms up, and we’ll be building another bedroom downstairs for the boys (our son Joshua, and our ‘pre-adoptive’ son, who will most likely be finally moving in with us for good this summer).

Downstairs there is also a large family room with a fireplace!
AND… drumroll please…
A separate room for my sewing studio! The sewing studio also has a room off to the side which had housed the laundry room at one time, so there is a great bit old fashioned, double laundry tub, where I will be able to do ALL my dyeing! No more dyeing in the kitchen! Yay!
We’ll also be moving the laundry room back downstairs. Currently it’s upstairs, but after the incident here in our rental home when the washer flooded from the upstairs all the way down the walls to the basement… well… we won’t be leaving them upstairs. We’ve seen, and heard of too many washers overflowing. Concrete floor with a drain is the very best spot for a washer, in our opinion. lol

The house also has a very large root cellar! I’m very excited about that. Now that we’ll be able to plant a big garden, I intend on filling that root cellar up to the very best of my abilities!

I could go on, and on, and on about our excitement right now. Even ELSA was as excited as a giddy little school girl. It was great that our pre-adoptive son was able to see the homestead before he leaves on Friday as well. It was so great to see the kids (and us parents) all having so much fun exploring our new homestead! I can’t wait to share more as we start working on fences, fixing up the barn, and moving in. For  now, I’ll simply finish up by saying how incredibly thankful we are for EVERY prayer, every kind word, that each and every one of you has shared with us over all this time that we’ve been waiting, and wanting, to finally go HOME. We have been blessed SO much through the trials, the waiting, and the wondering. For that, we must say:

THANK YOU!

Continued prayers that our home in BC will finally sell some time soon, are also greatly appreciated! We’ve come this far now! Let’s hope the rest of the way isn’t too far now.

Waiting to go home

And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. (Romans 8:28 NLT)

Thinking hard on this as I fight what must be a slight ‘anxiety’ attack this morning about this whole moving again thing.

GOD brought us here. The way Graydon (dh) landed his job, right when we needed it most, how it all came together was nothing WE did or could do. Both our eldest kids landed good jobs right away here! Our church family in our new community has proven over and over again that we are richly blessed to be here through their help and support.

So this time, with this move, I am expecting GOD to provide us with a home. Right here! One we can afford, either through rent to own or through our home in BC finally selling! I am asking that this time it be a home we can OWN, where we can dig in real roots! A home where I can finally plant a garden, and the kids can feel settled. Where they can have chickens again, and Shaylah can have her sheep.

Going through all this, you can’t help but wonder if you’re on the wrong path somehow, we question and discuss this all the time as a family! We don’t ‘waver’, we simply continue to seek God’s direction. We have not closed our ears to hear any direction God points us in. We know also, that others wonder, and question, if we’ve got it all wrong. If we’re on the wrong path. It’s confusing, why all these moves etc.? No one has any way of knowing. We only rest in the facts that God knows, and so far each move has brought us to a better place. We’ve spent the last 8 months enjoying a beautiful huge home, with good landlords.

The first place we rented here on the prairies taught us, and our children, how to deal with persons who say they are one thing, yet prove to be something quite different! The kids learned, by watching us, how to confront lies, false testimony, and to stand up for yourself.

The home we’ve been in these last 8 months may not be home for good, but we’ve had a rest after a very difficult start with the first rental. We have been able to rest, to enjoy, to live, to meet others, to learn about our community. We’ve had peace being in this home. It was shorter lived then we had hoped, but it’s been good. We needed the rest.

We have remained faithful and have not wavered from our faith in Him. We don’t ‘expect’ because we feel we deserve it, we are asking God to provide a ‘final’ home this time because we know He is faithful, much more so then we are.

I don’t know if God will give us a home here, to buy, to keep. I can only hope. But hope is what I will do!

We did it! We survived… and thrived!

You know what I realized this morning as I reflected on this pretty March day outside my kitchen window?

We made it, we did it! Our family survived paying TWO homes through an entire winter, along with high heating costs, utilities, upkeep, etc. halfway across the country!

We didn’t do it alone, it wasn’t just my husband and I. Our children helped tremendously by working hard when needed, and being by our side!

But it doesn’t stop there! Support from family, friends, church family, and even our great customers!

We made it, we did it, with help from
ALL of you!

Spring is coming. We have no idea what will happen from here, if our property in BC will sell, where ‘home’ will finally be…

Yet… knowing that we’ve made it through the worst part, through the winter months, and we didn’t just survive, but we thrived!

thrive:
verb: thrived, throve, thrived, thriv·en, thriv·ing.
1. to prosper; be fortunate or successful.

Yup! That’d be our family!

Knowing we made it, makes it that much easier to keep on keeping on!

Strength, to have or not to have…

It’s Friday March 1st 2013.

On Monday, the home we are renting, in which we had hoped would be our final home, will be back up for sale.

Over the past week since receiving the news, I’ve been fighting a battle within myself. I’m going to be brutally honest, and bare my soul for the ‘world’ to see and hope that none of you hold my thoughts against me.

This was really difficult news. As those of you who have been readers of my blog, my friends, and my family know, after Graydon and I lived thousands of miles apart while he worked here, and our five kids and I stayed in BC trying to sell our home there. After way too many months apart, the kids and I finally made the move out here too. That was last April. We arrived in Saskatchewan April 17 2012.

We had such high hopes that we were well on our way to being FINALLY home.

Well I won’t go into all the details since then but it would seem even after two moves, we are STILL no closer to being FINALLY home then we were last April 17th. Here we are, once again, almost a year later in a home that’s for sale and no idea of what our future holds.

I told Graydon last night (this is the brutal honesty part…don’t hate me) that the thought of living through house showings, in a rental home, has hit me so hard that I feel like throwing up, running away from home, smoking a thousand cigarettes (no, I don’t smoke, but did for years) and maybe even getting drunk just for the heck of it. Just to try and escape the distraught, and anger, and even the fear, that I feel right now over the uncertainty of our future.

However… thankfully, I try real hard not to listen to the anxious thoughts that flit through my head.

Instead, I texted a good friend who I knew would understand and she said she would be praying for me. I knew Graydon would be praying for me. I knew our church family has been praying very hard for our family.

And I fought tears.

I fought tears for hours as I ate dinner with my family, as I worked, as I packaged orders, edited product photos, and replied to emails. As I spent some time with the kids before bed, and as I said goodnight to each one.

And I finally let those tears flow as I tried to go to sleep in the half empty bed while Graydon was working his 12 hour night shift.

Life doesn’t stop because I’m having a bad day. Or even a bad year it seems.

And with that thought, I can’t even rightly call it a bad year.

Yes, life has been very uncertain, but bad? No. We’ve grown, we’ve lived, we’ve loved, and we’ve all matured.

Our hearts are tender, and feeling a little bruised at the moment, but I know we are stronger too.

The other day I read about Ann Voskamp who witnessed her little sister’s death as a toddler, and how she struggled all her growing up years to find joy.

I seek joy. I believe we WILL find what we seek in life. If we seek negativity or anger, we’ll find that too. So I strive to seek joy, and peace.

I seek scriptures to find my peace.

Isaiah 41:10 has been a favorite scripture of mine since I was married to a man who was an alcoholic, but then became a new man. A new husband. My living, breathing, daily example of what God can do within us when we allow Him to, when we ask Him to.

To help me find my peace, and my joy, I decided to take Ann Voskamp’s advice and write out a 1000 things to be thankful for, right now, in my life.

It’s going to take me a while to get to 1000, but it’s a start.

I’m thankful others like Ann Voskamp are willing to share about their hard times so I can cling to their stories during our hard times.

This is why I share my story too. In hopes it may help someone, somewhere, some how. In the mean time, sharing helps me.

“we’re livin’ the story”

I haven’t been posting on my blog so much this last great while. I could say I just haven’t had much to say, but that probably wouldn’t be accurate. I’ve more honestly had too much to say, but nothing that I can put together within the walls of my mind lately, to type it out properly.

And then I heard it the other day. The reason why I have not been writing lately. To quote from my new favorite movie, We Bought A Zoo

Rosie Mee, the young daughter, to her father asks:

How come you don’t tell stories anymore?
Benjamin Mee, her father, replies:

Well, because we’re livin’ the story.

 

Right now, our family is living the story. I began writing the story of our Our Long Way Home back in May of 2012. Now, it’s getting close to a year later, and the story is still far from over.

Some days, our family has become a little weary of this long way home. We pray daily that our hobby farm in BC will sell because we had hopes of buying a much larger acreage here on the Prairies. Every.Single.Other.Thing has fallen into place so beautifully here on the prairies. My husband and our two eldest children all have great jobs, the kids both received great raises today at those jobs. We have an awesome church family that brings us wonderful encouragement and support. We’ve made great friends. My business continues to thrive. Our life is just as we hoped it would be.We LOVE living on the prairies.

Yet… we still live with the daily echo of, “when the house sells…”

In the meantime we continue to hope, and pray, that this one last, very big piece of the puzzle, will finally fall into place while we keep on keeping on. We encourage one another to continue to hope, and continue to work hard towards that future. It’s got to happen!

Each new morning brings new hope of a brighter future for our family!

Sundogs in Saskatchewan

 

The Long Way Home continues…

I don’t think I ever shared here on the blog that our current home, this very home I’m sitting in right now was the first, home I truly ‘fell in love with’ while I was browsing homes for sale on mls as the kids and I were still living in BC and Graydon (dear hubby) had already gone ahead of us and was living alone out here on the prairies.

I had asked Graydon to take a look at this very house last year August, to at least do a driveby. It wasn’t the outside of the home itself really that I fell in love with since I’m drawn more to the older character homes, but it was what the home offered in the way of size, AND land. Over 3000 square feet of indoor living space, with 87 acres!

And the kitchen, who wouldn’t fall in LOVE with this kitchen?! The home looked loved, and cared for.

But there were a couple of issues.
First, it was higher priced then the other homes we were considering, so we thought it was out of our league.
Second, we thought it couldn’t work, since there were no out buildings for our horses and combined with the higher asking price, it seemed best to look elsewhere.

Yet, through a series of unfortunate events, and our very ‘long way home’, it is in this very house that I fell in love with, that I sit in right now! Through no doing of our own! This was the way in which we HAD to go. There WAS no other options.

We may have thought it could NEVER work, and we may have felt we didn’t deserve to dare to dream quite so big, but obviously our thoughts are quite small.

This house and property are not ours at this time. We are only tenants. However, it has become our home. Our much loved home. And we hope and pray that it WILL remain our home. When our home in BC sells, we have already received approval to buy this one. It all continues to be a waiting game, a very expensive waiting game with each passing month that we continue to pay a large mortgage there, and rent here.

But while we wait, every morning that I sit in this living room looking out our huge bright windows, with my coffee & quiet time, I sigh in amazement that I am here. And I thank God that He brought us to this exact place, no matter how very difficult the road to get here continues to be.

Our ‘Long Way Home’ story continues to be written by the hand of God, we have no control over any of it but to do the best that we can each and every day.

Next month we go to a hearing to fight for our damage deposit from the ‘sewage’ landlord. We won’t even speak his name out loud anymore, after all the heartache and grief he has caused our family, all the while calling himself a Christian and throwing it in our faces over & over. It would have been easier to just give up, and let the damage deposit go, but we felt strongly that we need to fight this so maybe, just maybe, it won’t happen to the next person.

Our children have learned the hard way that you judge by the fruit shown in ones life, NOT by what they say. We’ve all learned MANY lessons and despite the cost, the pain, the heartache and the headache this whole “Way Home” has been, we see all the many blessings along the way as well and refuse to allow the negative to overshadow those very blessings!

And as far as no outbuildings on the property? That’s been taken care of too. A friend from church is bringing us an outbuilding this weekend. A FREE outbuilding. When we wondered how on earth we could come up with the funds to BUILD a shelter for the horses for winter, all the while paying a mortgage AND rent, we didn’t need to worry. It was already taken care of. Someone had a need to have a shelter removed from a pasture, and that need provides for our need of a shelter.

Amazing, isn’t it?

Some days I really question why I ever worry at all.

Oh so random. Always.

I’m realizing lately that my blog, my facebook page, my twitter, and all things online & social are so very random.

My instagram is total proof of this!

So I was pondering this and wondering if it’s a good thing, or a bad thing?

Then I realized, I really don’t care. I know ONE thing.

It’s me.

“I” am random!

My LIFE is random! How could everything about ME not be random?!

This last while has been a good example of how totally random our lives are. In the past couple of months or so we’ve:

-moved into a new home, one we hope to STAY in for good, for FOREVER!

-enjoyed our first summer on the prairies!

-moved our horses from one home, to a friends property to graze for the summer.

-made many new friends and enjoyed doing things together!

-driven to the city THREE times in an effort to pick up THREE back ordered bookcases (not wasted trips mind you, we always make the trips worth while, but still…)

-had my sister come stay for a few days

-had snow, which prompted a bit of a ‘panic’ about getting ready for winter

-we purchased an outdoor water heater element ‘thingy’, for keeping the horses water bucket from freezing. Can we call ourselves farmers now?

-our house/hobby farm that’s still for sale in British Columbia was shown 3 times

-the kids and I rejoiced at not having to BE there to clean up for these showings, while trying to still live our busy lives and run a business

-our Realtor informed us one showing will turn into a second viewing. Supposed to happen this week. We continue to wait.

-my hubby and three youngest kids went away for a few days to help out at a Bible camp up north

-we all worked on putting up fences here on our rented (hopefully one day soon OWNED) hobby farm

-we all worked on making a path through our ‘yard site tree line’ to our newly fenced paddock

-we found a very old truck on the property

-we celebrated not just our 22nd anniversary but the 2nd birthday of our smallest of 6 dogs, and the 14th birthday of our eldest cat!

-we saw a coyote on our driveway

-we had company come stay with us for 3 weeks, and we made a trip to Corner Gas while he was here!

-we had a flood in our home, from the washer.

-two weeks later, the water tank pressure pump ‘exploded’

-we thanked God for great landlords, and thanked God that they appreciate great tenants who can get things fixed, themselves, with little cost!

-less then another two weeks later, we lost all our water and dh realized the connections on our pressure tank need replacing. Good thing we LOVE our home. lol

-we explored possible garden sites on the property for next spring! And dreamed and dreamed about next spring, hoping the land will be owned by us, by then.

-hubby and I went away for two nights for our 22nd wedding anniversary

-we found a shelter to bring onto our property for the horses, it’s not a real horse shelter but it’s free, and it’ll work!

-we discussed all the possibilities for this new found shelter later on, sheep, a cow or two, chickens, pigs! oh my!

-we saw a second coyote, or possibly a small wolf, in our backyard quite close to the house. I want a gun now.

-we looked at guns, but need a gun locker first. We pondered many times over why all things cost SO much money, and why our money tree does not grow! We have kids and animals to protect here!

-we  unpacked boxes, mostly boxes of books, books packed away for years.

-friends gave us loads of crapapples and I made crabapple sauce and juice!

-3 of our dogs got real sick, 2 of them so sick they were close to death. We brought them back to full health again!

-we talked lots about how much we miss having chickens and eggs are no longer the same. Pale eggs=blah. We miss rich orange egg yolks.

-we discussed possible “real” barn ideas for once we actually own this property! Oh the discussions we have about when we can start a ‘REAL’ farm!

-we celebrated Thanksgiving with a big meal and company

-other friends gave us LOADS of potatoes

-my husband received a notice that he’s being audited. Apparently the gov’t doesn’t like agreeing to moving costs. This happened the last time we moved half way across the country too, and ended in our favor and them owing us. Guess what? So far it’s looking like it’s going to go the same way again. They send us a list of what is ‘allowed’ and oops, looks like we forgot to claim a couple of things!

-I renewed my love for the breadmaker (if we can’t have fresh eggs, we can at least have fresh bread right?!)

-other friends gave us loads of carrots, pumpkins, beets, & squash!

-we finally found a way to fix the big crack in our HUMONGOUS jet tub that’s in this home! We have high hopes we may one day be able to take baths, not just showers, again. Woot!

-we started school, HOMEschool, two weeks later then usual. It was the first time in my 17 years of homeschooling that I was thinking maybe sending my children to ‘real’ school would be easier…then I shook my head and snapped back to reality and reminded myself, I don’t “do” easy, that’s not what life’s all about!

-I drove a quad/ATV, on my own, for the very first time

-I drove a quad/ATV on ALL OUR land, ALL 87 acres (well, we call it our land, we HOPE very hard it will BE our land soon!)

-we all went camping as a family, for the first time in years!

-we enjoyed Tobin lake up north, and I snapped many photos that I have yet to share!

-we went for quite a few walks/bike rides, especially near home!

-I received my information packet on the info I need to send into the school district regarding our school plan (this is new to me! homeschooling was done differently in BC!) and I’m learning how to fill it out and send it back, but not quickly enough!

-I dyed more fabric. I love my job!

-I worked on quarterly taxes, twice, I’m late sending one quarter in. EEKS! I hate being late! Explaining that I’ve moved twice, and even halfway across the country, even with a whole homestead, doesn’t make any difference to them either. Taxes must be done when taxes must be done!!! EEKS!

-Homestead Emporium (me) was interviewed twice for online articles this past month: http://slowmama.com/greatproducts/all-about-cloth-pads/

-I sewed a lot of pads (a lot… of pads… sewn… always)

-I sewed other things too! Even one of my socks! Yes, I fixed one of my socks. Gotta save where we can right?!

-I finished the bamboo velour quilt and shipped it to it’s owner!

-I cut Shaylah & Julia’s hair

-I cut Alesia’s hair

-the kids finally all have their very own beds, and very own bedding! Well, except our son, he’s not decided on homemade bed vs store bought, what kind of bedding? camo vs wildlife vs ?. Decisions decisions…

-we explored our new hometown

-explored nature

-went on many day trips to see many sights!

-we prayed, countless times, that our home in British Columbia would sell

 

-we continued to also pay for said home in British Columbia that still has not sold, and continued to wonder why we have to ‘throw away’ so much money every month… *sigh* (so many extra hours of work, time spent away from doing family things, farm-y things…)

-and we continued to kick ourselves in the pants and say “hey, get over it and get on with it the best you can while you wait… and wait…and wait…!”

-and so we continued to do more work on THIS property here, and carry on the best we can, and ENJOY our property, and our lives here to the fullest!

-and through all that, I realized how much I am really loving our lives, our new home, our new property! Random and all!