It's Time!

Wow things have been exciting lately! I had high hopes of documenting our trip across the country, but my goodness, it went by so quickly and we had little, if any time to do anything other than drive. It was actually a rather pleasant experience. It's not really something I want to repeat, not at this point in my life at least, but it was so neat to see everything we saw! We went through Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland and back to West Virginia. Our last day was the longest...and although we made it just before it got dark, we were able to camp out in our new home as soon as we arrived to West Virginia. I think everyone was a tad bit disappointed when we first arrived...I mean, we'd only seen this home in photos, so we all had a fantasy of what it would be like. Not that it's bad by any stretch, but it was a bit different than I expected. The main disappointment for me is the paint job. I don't think I can accurately capture just how bad of a paint job this house has. The former owners loved to paint, but they were really, really bad at it. There are places where they painted AROUND pictures on the wall, so when they removed those pictures to move, there are big, square, white spaces on the wall. The baseboards have paint on them, oh...I could go on and on. My initial reaction was despair. I was so tired from driving, so exhausted from thoroughly cleaning our HUGE home we had just moved out that I did not want to think of any other projects. Now that we've been here for a while though, none of the initial things that I was appalled by bother me anymore. I see them as things that we'll get to, at some point. I'd like to paint...soon, but we'll survive for now.

We had a big fiasco with the movers. They showed up WAY later than we were initially told they were. We were given a date of June 27th at the latest. They arrived on July 2nd. Okay, not SO bad...but wait. They only arrived with SOME of our stuff. Some of the things they did have were fantastic to have...such as having a REAL bed after a LONG time of sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor. But they brought our dining room table...and our dining chairs and the leaves for the table. Ummm, but no legs? Really? How did they get separated? We got some of the crib parts for our 3 cribs...but not enough of the parts to make one entire crib. Then we were told our things would arrive...get this...July 17th. WHAAAAAT? Yes, it was horrible. It was a test and I'm sure I could have handled it more gracefully. But I'm so glad it's over with. In the interim, Jeremy built me a HUGE island for my kitchen. I think we're going to re-arrange some things to make it most user friendly, and I'm so thrilled that as home owners, we can do whatEVER we want!!! :) Happy, happy, happy!!!

We got the children a pool. They LOVE it. The weather has been so pleasant this summer. I was expecting it to be absolutely miserable here, but it's SO beautiful and so pleasant. I'm really, really loving it. Most people have big gardens around here. We arrived too late in the season to get started, but next year I'm hoping to grow the majority of our produce. We've found a farm that sells raw milk for $7/gallon! Grass fed beef is everywhere here, and it's not too terribly expensive. I was expecting things to be a lot less expensive here though, and really, it's not. Property and homes are less expensive, but groceries and such are possibly MORE expensive, if you can believe that. AND it's nearly impossible to find organic things here. Another reason to grow a nice, big garden next year. I no longer have access to Azure Standard for my bulk goods, so I'm now buying them off of Amazon. There has been a big of a learning curve to find the things we've become accustomed to. That was one of the up sides to not having our things...we weren't really able to unpack, so we got to spend a lot of time exploring our area.

Our most recent acquisition is what my children have been begging and pleading with us for for ages: a dog. We scoured craigslist and adoptapet.com looking for the right dog. You'd be amazed how much people want for "rehoming fees" for "rescue dogs". It no longer surprises me why so many dogs need homes!! Some of the people wanted $300 for a mutt!!! So we found Sophie on craigslist...she's a Border Collie/Australian Shepherd mix. She's just about a year old. She's very sweet, very smart and is wonderful with the children. They're so happy to finally have the dog they've always wanted. I'm having a bit of a hard time getting used to yet another mess-maker in my home, but I know with time we'll find a system that works for us and it will be as if we never didn't have her. (does that sound right?).

So that's that. I know I've left gaping holes, but believe it or not, my life is very busy. We're hoping to start school in 2 weeks, so I'm trying to get my systems in order...grocery shopping, meal planning, cleaning, school, etc. It's a tall order in my limited time and capacity...so pray for me! :) I promise you, I'll be back soon. I've got a goal set to update this blog at least once a week...and to start taking WAY more pictures. I hope to do a fairly quick video tour of our home as well!

Welcome!

Hi there! I've decided to create this blog as a place to share the happenings of our family as we embark on the brand new journey of moving across the country! Since I haven't been fantastic with keeping up with my Troyer Family Home blog, I thought that it might be a good time to go in a different direction over here. One of the main things I want to use this blog for is an avenue to share the things I've learned on the domestic front as well as the things we hope to learn as we jump into the new lifestyle of home ownership/homesteading. Since I'm one of the Titus 2 women (am I really that old already?) for my precious nieces, I'd like to share some of the things that I've struggled with in my walk of motherhood in hopes of making their journey a little easier. I was going to write a book, and maybe one day I will, but for now with my crazy busy life, I'll just stick with blogging and see if I can be consistent with that! I hope to share a LOT more photos, videos and stories than I have been. Life is very busy, but it's in the crazy days that the magic happens and I don't want to miss sharing any of details of what makes our family so much fun, so challenging, so silly and so blessed. So here we go! I hope you enjoy!