Do you remember two and a half years ago when my husband got out of the Marine Corps and we moved to Colorado for good? And then God had other plans, and six months later we moved to the DC area for 10 months until a new job allowed us to move back to Colorado–you know, for good.

We bought our dream land. We came up with preliminary plans to build two houses: a large one–our dream house–and a tiny A-frame. I spent hundreds of hours planning and researching and drawing the same floor plans six thousand times over and then I went through trade school to learn as much about construction as I could and then–

–we decided to move to Ohio.

Did you know that building a house is really expensive? Because everyone always likes to know numbers, our preliminary estimates were as follows:

Site work: a solid $200K

Big house: $825K (see preliminary elevation sketch below)

Tiny A-frame: probably another $200K

Now, I decided to be the general contractor for our builds which would have cut costs down significantly, say by 20-30%, and then I decided to learn to be an actual builder which would have saved many many thousands more. Plus I’m thrifty and these estimates were for hiring a top notch builder and his crew to do everything for us; being hands on was literally going to save us hundreds of thousands of dollars (and be my full time job for as long as the build took).

Financial Peace University came along and Dave Ramsey’s mind control tricks led us to make the insane decision to build our houses in cash. CASH.

And then life happened.

Twenty thousand dollars in medical bills. Needing a new vehicle. The military contracting world changing dramatically as the current administration made their own horrendous plans. Ya know, life, and so our own plans had to change as well and we realized renting in Colorado while we saved wasn’t a financially reasonable option.

The world continued to change, and we realized we just wanted to move somewhere quiet where the government would stay out of our business and we could raise our kids on land and have chickens and bees and goats. We wanted to move close to my husband’s family and live simply.

So we bought a red farmhouse in Ohio.

Two and half acres in the country, surrounded by trees, space for the kids to play and an above ground pool. It’s full of projects, to be sure, and I’ll get to put all the skills I learned in preparation for building our houses in Colorado to good use as we pretty much remodel this thing top to bottom.

Will we still build in Colorado? Yes, and we own the most amazing land which helps the dream immensely. There’s also a business plan attached to the dream as the tiny A-frame will become a short term vacation rental. When we will build? I don’t know. After many years of saving. When we can get back there for me to manage the builds myself. Will we stay in Colorado after we build? Clearly, I am not qualified to answer questions regarding what our geographic location will be more than a handful of months from now, so I will not even try this time.

In the meantime, life is quiet.

We’ve got space and time and breathing room. Us all being together is a short season as another deployment is coming and life will once again be filled with chaos, but what beautiful chaos it is.

With the breathing room comes headspace to start writing again.

I’ll be honest, the main reason I stopped writing is dumb. Something happened with the server and my computer and I was unable to save my posts.

There was a lot going on and I couldn’t focus so instead of fixing the server issue I simply ignored it, hoped it would go away, and took a break. Got off social media all together. Spent my time working on trade school and moving and another major life change.

Speckled sunshine now flitters across my living room floor and I can see the maples outside just beginning to don hints of red and orange. There is no noise out here in the country, except for the sound that is constant and everywhere as the leaves dance and cicadas sing and, well, the children create a general cacophony. Our new house is still mostly empty, our mattress is on the floor and our dining room boasts only a rug, most of our boxes lay piled in the corner of our garage, and it’s simple and I don’t mind. It’s ours.

We’ll get back to the stuff you’re actually here for shortly, but I thought you all deserved an update after half a year of radio silence.

In summary:

Left Marines, moved to Colorado for good, moved to DC area, moved back to Colorado for good. Bought land and started preliminary work to build houses. Decided to build in cash so needed to save. Decided we were fed up with cities and wanted to move to the country. Bought a farmhouse to slowly renovate. Moved to Ohio–for good.

For good. Famous last words, eh?

I obviously have no idea where what life will look like in a year, because if you had asked me that question one year prior to today, or two, or three, or five, I would have answered you with great certainty, but clearly our “for good” and God’s “for good” are not the same thing, so who even knows.

What I do know is we’re in the right place right now.

I appreciate you still being here with me, friends.

See you soon.