• 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.

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    Inside they wrote:

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    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!

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.