Jumping Back In... Hi Y'all !!!

There seem to be those of you that are capable of blogging through the trials and busy times of life.  I totally fail at this.  Part of it is good because I know that blogging comes second to my family but part of it is not so good because I often am holding back.  That is not something I intend to do but it really takes a lot of inner strength to keep going with all the emotions going through one's head.

Well, at any rate... here I am again trying to jump back into this.  It gives me an outlet and a place to connect other than Facebook, Instagram, and the real world while chronically some of the craziness of my days.  I enjoy journaling and writing and so this is a nice way to do just that.  Life has been going a thousand miles an hour for me these days so I will try to do a little run down of some happenings in the past several months....

We lost a baby to a very traumatic miscarriage at the beginning of 2014 shortly after purchasing our exciting new 12 passenger van.  We turned inward amongst our little household with our little family of seven and in doing so we disrupted the apple cart so to speak.  Many in our lives did not take this well but at the same time we were showered with care by those that showed us the love of God.  We took simple a simple vacation of camping in the Spring which is not really like us but it was a time away with just our little family in total seclusion.  We decided to get serious about selling our house and listed with an agent.  I had no idea what craziness that causes in one's life with random showings and needing your house to look presentable all the time... which it really never did... lol.  We found about 6 houses that we thought were where we were supposed to be and suddenly there were roadblocks in the way.... until.... we found a little country home that was nothing like we were looking for that was being sold on foreclosure for less than half the original listing.  We dismissed all that business after taking a peek at it and carried on looking at other dreaming homes.  We kept pondering this foreclosure house and found out it was going to auction.  After much contemplation we decided that we might want to look at that possibility a little closer because we could totally transform our way of living and truly simplify leaving room for more true living.  Before you know it we were bidding on an auction and WON it for less that 1/3 of what it had sold for two years ago!!  Our Summer was spent with making this house liveable (previous owner had purposed to make it unlivable so it could not be sold, since no one could get it financed).  In two weeks we spent $10K getting it to where we could move in and in early August we started moving our stuff over and just finished moving all our stuff over about three weeks ago.  It has been insane.  I truly don't know how people move all the time.  That is not the life for me but it was good for me and I learned a lot and had a lot of growth through the process.  So, now we are to the point of searching for a new church and settling in.... and still unpacking boxes and organizing.  Something tells me this sort of things takes a while to truly get settled.  Next up is a moving sale for the remaining things at the other house and some repairs and then, really pushing selling (since our realtor has not even shown it once).  So the goal will be to do some weekend Open House times and see if that helps.  Other than all that it is day to day living here and I will try to blog about some of that.  Homesteading type things have taken a back burner.... of course, all the moving and work we have done is part of the homesteading journey but it has not been much to journal about... or maybe it has but I fall in bed really spent at the end of each day and journaling has not been on the agenda.  It has been total survival mode here and we are happy if people are fed and mostly clean and such.  lol.