Saturday

This moring, I spent attempting to organize the kitchen while Chris work on the garage/shop. Finley spent a good deal of her time petting the neighbor's donkey. She named him Frank.

After lunch, I planted a summer squash plant I brought with us in one of the flower beds around the trailer. The previous owner had used weed barrier fabric, which I hate. Beneath the fabric was thick clay soil. If the majority of the soil around here is like that, I have a lot of work ahead of me. Woven all through the flower beds was Burmuda grass. I had a small hope that Burmuda wouldn't be found here. No luck with that. Now I am thinking that I ought to get some plastic and solarize the areas I want to turn into gardens. That might save me a lot of work.

After planting the squash and a couple iris starts, I took the weed-eater to some thistle. Watching the flower heads explode and feeling their juicy flesh spray my face was strangely satisfying. After that, Finley, Joe, and I rode our bikes the 8/10ths of a mile up to the mailbox to check it. It was empty.

In the shower, washing weed guts off my legs, I discovered that I am developing a serious sock line. Yikes.

And here we are...

This is the view out of our dirty bedroom windows this morning as I type.
We have arrived.

I had to dig through a box this morning to find a clean coffee cup. I am assuming that Chris put my chicken cup in the (exceedingly loud) dishwasher. So now I sip out of a John Deere mug. Tolerable.

What a crazy trip this has been. And will be.
I want to document all the things that have happened, all the ways that this transition in life came in a big package with 'GO' written on the side. All things work together for good in a way that is abundantly more than we can ask or think...

But to make a long story short... we managed to move out and clean our old house before the supposed closing date (thanks in large part to the sellers of our new place letting us move our junk here early). Then the closing got bumped one day, then another. In the midst of it, I lost my debit card and broke my brother's french press (the only coffee maker at his house- where we were staying), so it felt like things were spinning out of control.

Wednesday, we closed... Ended up with a whole lot more money in the bank than we anticipated, which is exciting, because we really don't want to live in this trailer any longer than is necessary. As much as I think it is funny to tell people we live in a trailer, the 20 yr. old particle-board, ant-infested kitchen leaves a lot to be desired. And I really don't want to hear the crazy hose-end sprayer that is mounted waist-high in the master bath screaming 'EEEEEEeeee' all through the 'shower' for long. And let's not mention the left-over, toxic moth ball odor mixed with hints of mildew and something else not very pleasant. (Hopefully a good floor-to-ceiling scrub down can eliminate some of that).

Other than that... we are excited. Frogs croak like crazy in the ponds at night. The neighbor's miniature cows and donkey wander by our 'backyard' fence for visits throughout the day. I have yet to see the massive wild turkey that lives around here somewhere, but Chris startled it one day when he pulled up. I have an idea of where to start a garden and where to put some compost piles. There are a few trees that look good for swings, in the event we don't build a new playset soon for the kids...

Speaking of kids, they have been troopers. In spite of me telling Finley about a dozen times yesterday, "I'm sorry, I don't know where that is." She hasn't gotten too bent out of shape, and likes to watch for the horses. Joe told Gramma on the phone yesterday, "We moved into our new house!!!" and proceeding to nearly yell all the exciting facts about it to her. They have taken to riding their bikes on the gravel driveway fairly easily, and if it weren't for the mosquitoes, I probably would have kept them outside all day yesterday.

Speaking of mosquitoes.... we need to buy a mosquito trap. They tend to be a bit pricey, but I think it would be worth it. We looked into buying some ducks yesterday, but the guy recommended that we clean up the area around the pond and perhaps put some lighting for the area at night to keep away potential predators.

So I suppose I need to get moving. There is a pile of kitchen boxes waiting to be unpacked or moved, things to be cleaned and painted, and I still don't know where the bulk of my clothes are...

Finley's 1st Lost Tooth

Can you tell she's excited?

Moving

I remember the day nearly 13 years ago when I packed up all my important earthly belongings into my little, brown, Toyota pickup truck and moved to Nashville.

I remember another day, a few years later, when I relocated in Nashville, all my possessions crammed into a little white Honda Accord.

Then I got married and had kids.

Sheesh.

Sitting outside while the kids played in puddles in the rain.
A car pulls up across the street.
Preteen jumps out to run up to the neighbor's door.
Something drops from her hand into the grass of the front lawn.
No one answers, she jumps back in the car.
After I ask if she dropped something and tell her I can put it in a trash can for her, she gets out again and hands me the trash.
The car pulls away, revealing the rest of their fast-food-breakfast trash dumped in the street.
My heart sinks.
I pick up the trash.
Then Finley asks me when the world will come to an end.

The "Graduate"

My Little Radiant One

Three Lefties (?) Painting

Happy Mother's Day to Me

With everything going on here, I never got around to sending my mother a Mother's Day gift or card. She sent me a card, though, and a little spending money. So I went shopping today and found these shoes. They were on sale for $15 and give my pinky-toes wiggle room, which I have found to be of the utmost importance to my aging feet.

Thanks, Ma. I love you.

Tulip Poplar Bloom

Where We Are (most likely) Headed

Life is amazing. Chris and I are standing at a place in life, looking down the road with vision. Looking back, what I see is a series of impulsive or uninformed decisions that were somehow sprinkled with grace and blessing. I see provision.

When we started looking for a property, we had already limited ourselves. We wanted to be out of debt... completely. So whatever we were going to buy, we needed to pay for with the equity we had built up in the house that we are selling. It seemed like all the 'nice' properties were beyond what we would be able to pay for.

One morning, I was toying with the idea of taking a small mortgage out to buy one of those nicer properties, when I felt like God spoke to me: Debt is man's way of working things out on his own. It can rob God of the opportunity of providing for us.

...

We had been contemplating buying a raw piece of land and just building. Chris' cousin knew of a property that was perkable and had city water and electricity at the street. We would have to rent, probably build a garage first and find a trailer to dump on the place while we built. The idea was overwhelming. So when I saw this listing, I got really excited. It seemed to have exactly what we needed: a trailer to live in, AND a big 30x50' garage / workshop to store stuff and operate out of while we build. I started digging into it a bit more, looking at maps of the property, and talked Chris into going down to see the place.

We drove down on a Sunday to look at it, and it was even better than I had anticipated. A 1/4 mile driveway alongside 5 acres leads back to the main 5 acres of property.
The trailer:

Covered porch on the back of the trailer looks out over fenced in yard... I won't have to worry about Z running off:

Looking back toward trailer and garage:
Pump house and little stable just past trailer:
View of pasture across from trailer. An old barn sits at the back of the pasture (hidden by trees).
The old barn we hope to partially rebuild and/or use lumber to build chicken coops, house, etc.

There is plenty of space for gardens and animals and neat, little areas for the kids (and me) to explore. My only concern is that the topsoil may not be deep enough to have a good orchard, but really, I don't know enough about fruit trees to talk with authority on the issue. I think I'll be able to at least find a spot or two for a few trees.

We met the neighbors that live on the same drive. They seem like folks we would get along with, and they have horses they already hinted that the kids would be able to ride. And although I thought I was headed down the home schooling path, there have been several things lately that have caused me to question if that would really be the best for Finley. The school we are zoned for gets rave reviews from everyone we meet, and knowing a family that previously home schooled entrusted their kids to this school... well, it is nice to know we have the option of putting the kids in school there.

We put in an offer I felt was a little low on Monday. Tuesday afternoon, they accepted our offer. Minutes after I heard the news, a friend stopped by with a flier for her upcoming art exhibit. The title of the show was 'Uproot' and on the flier was this definition: "To send roots upward, or in an unaccustomed direction, to draw strength and support from new sources."

We had the inspection during the the rain on Saturday, and although there were a few issues, there was nothing so far to scare us away from the place. We are now waiting for a septic and water inspection...

Although I am still holding my breath (since it isn't quite a done deal yet), I can't help but be a little amazed.

Midweek Update

There has been so much that has happened since I sat down to write a real post, that it is hard to know where to begin. Chris has been hesitant to let me blog about any of the house-selling /property-buying details for fear that they might stumble upon my blog. So to try to ease his fear, I did some Google searches and could only find that I was a Goodreads subscriber. thankfully none of those drunk, college videos popped up. (Just kidding, Mom.)

Anyway. We have a buyer for the house. It wasn't long after I started praying that we would find a buyer that loved the house and that would feel blessed by it (instead of praying that it would just sell) that we got the offer. Actually, we got three offers. The first offer (and the offer that we accepted) came from the same couple that Chris showed the house to when they showed up late. They seem really nice, and after doing some investigative work, I really think they will be good neighbors to our neighbors. Even after I worried a bit that the flood might scare them away after getting a little water in our basement, they are still on board and apparently excited about the place.

Speaking of the flood... Our neighbors started seeing water in their basement Sunday morning. The ground was already saturated from Saturday's rain, and with the heavy rain Sunday morning, it started pouring into their basement. Chris went over to help try to Shop-Vac it out, but it was soon apparent they were losing the battle. Chris came over to check our basement, then went back over to help move furniture up. Finally, I noticed a little water along the back edge of our storage area. Chris came back over, and I started vacuuming it up while he started getting things up off the floor. I noticed a puddle in the middle of the floor, so vacuumed it up, only to see it was back a few minutes later. It took me a minute to realize the water was seeping up through the mortar joints in the floor.

Let me stop here to say something about my husband. He tends to be a 'Debbie Downer' at times. Always anticipating the worst. Sometimes this brings me down. But I have to admit, it does come in handy. The man is always prepared to take action.

It wasn't long before all our basement furniture was upstairs. By this point, there was an inch or two of water on the floor in spots. (Our neighbors, by this point, had at least a foot.) This is when I started my intense Shop-Vac operation. Sitting right outside the basement door with an umbrella over Elias (the vacuum) and my bum in a puddle of water, I vacuumed for four hours. The water never got any higher, and there was only one spot where the water was high enough to get soaked up into the drywall. Several of our neighbors had three feet. We were so very fortunate.

More on the property we want to buy later...

Radishes Anyone?

Like I told my brother: always plant radishes. They make you feel like you know what you are doing in the garden...

Magic

Fin and Joe: "Magic, magic, poodle-pagic. Make Mom disappear!" Wouldn't that be nice at times?

Fin and Joe made magic wands today.

Mama Dove and Baby