The Barn

The barn slab has been poured!

The beams are going up.

It's starting to look like a building.

The walls are up!

A view from the back.

The front of the barn. You can just see our camper to the side. We lived in that for almost a month while we were waiting on the barn to be finished.

The barn's "front door." It feels a little more like home with a welcome mat and some potted plants.

Beginning Pictures

Welcome to our little spot in the country.

Our driveway - it's nice to have caliche put down.

This will be the house site. We've cleared some cactus, but that is about it at this point.

 

 

Here is the barn site. We'll start it soon!

The cleared cactus has to go somewhere for now. And, yes, I got to use the tractor to help clear all this junk and push it out of the way. Jim just might have lost his job of using the John Deere. It was more enjoyable than I thought it would be.

The nice thing about clearing out the mesquite to make room for our house and barn is that we are getting a good supply of firewood.

Aah, yes...the Ditch Witch. We rented this to dig the ditches for our electric and water lines. Jim rather enjoyed using this piece of machinery.

One of the resulting ditches

Getting ready to put the pipe together for the electric line.

Finished

 

 

Woohoo! We have a water meter! It's the little things, ya know.

The sap on the trees looked neat, so, of course, I had to take a picture.

The kids relaxing on the kayak that Troy bought at the Knight's garage sale.

Hopefully, the upper tank will fill up soon and the kids can test out that kayak.

Well...we are under way out on the farm. Land has been cleared and we are gearing up to make the move. We can't wait!

About to be...on the Farm!

A couple of years ago we bought a bit of land just outside town with the hope of building a house on it one day. Well...that day has arrived! We put our current house on the market in June with the expectation of it taking a while to sell due to the current housing market. It was on the market for about 6 weeks. The sale will be final in September. Things are moving forward a bit faster than we expected, but we're not complaining! We have not, however, started to build our house yet. That will not get under way until the sale of our current house is final. We have, though, begun work on "the barn," aka a glorified shed. This barn will be our residence while we build our house. Yes - the barn will have a bathroom and a kitchenette. It will not have heat and air, but it will be well insulated! If the heat gets to be too much, we can always take refuge in our camper for a while. We decided that since most rentals around here require a year lease and are more expensive than our mortgage payment, we would rather live in the barn and  have that money go toward the new house. It will also allow us to keep most of our furniture in the barn instead of renting a storage unit. The only exception is our piano, but that will temporarily reside at my brother's home. So, I am getting used to the idea of living in one large room with my five favorite people for a few months. I'm sure there will be challenges, but I'm actually looking forward to it.

This blog has been pretty silent for a while, but I'm hoping to keep up with it again and document our transition from city people to country folks. And, of course, provide a record and pictures of our house building project. So here we go...we're about to truly be on Old MacDonald's Farm!

Irony

Woah...

...this tummy bug has stunk! Reese started it all and it has now run through 5 of the 6 of us. Mother's Day arrived, and my whole family came over to join us for lunch. Well, Troy  (who felt fine earlier in the morning) didn't want to eat lunch, and just went to bed instead. Jim didn't feel well, either. As I started to eat the yummy brownie and ice cream that my sister-in-law had brought for dessert, I got that feeling that my turn was coming. I ate the dessert anyway. It was good.

Shortly after everyone left, Troy made a dash for the bathroom. As I was helping him clean up afterward, I made the comment that he might have to move over pretty quickly because my stomach was not feeling too good. He got a very Jim-like grin on his face, and said, "Happy Mother's Day." We both cracked up. I love that he has his father's sense of humor.

Jim and I were both sick that night. Paige woke up sick the next morning. Trent never threw up, but he also didn't want to eat at all yesterday, which, if you know Trent, is very unusual. Thankfully, we all woke up feeling much better this morning. I'm not sure if I'm willing to say that Trent is out of the woods yet, but I'm hoping he just got a light case of it.

We don't have this happen very often in our house, especially not to all of us. I am so thankful that my kids can fend for themselves now when I'm not feeling good! In fact, those who were feeling better did a good job of helping the others who didn't. That made this mom proud. Of course, now that everyone is better, I get to deal with the not-so-fun aftermath of too much time spent watching videos and Mythbusters, but, hey...it got us through the tummy bug of 2011...I won't complain too much. At least we learned some physics and Annie songs while we were sick.

Tummy Bug

Ugh...we don't often see the tummy bug here at this house, but it has hit . Little Bit threw up 4 times today. It started around 3 am and lasted until about 10 am. She was throwing up and running a low fever, yet between trips to the bathroom she was still singing at the top of her lungs. Annie songs, in particular. "It's a Hard-Knock Life" was the favorite choice today. Appropriate. Quite the performer even when under the weather. She had some crackers and Sprite for lunch and then crashed on the couch for a couple hours this afternoon. She is in good spirits this evening, but still feels warm. Hopefully, the throwing up is over. Now...how do I keep everyone else from getting this bug?

Love to Read

One thing I have really enjoyed watching around here is the kids developing a love for reading. As I write this, all of them are curled up with a good book. It's so fun to see that they love reading as much as I do! I hope it continues all their lives. Currently, the boys are very into the Harry Potter series. Paige is reading Number the Stars (we finished it as a read-aloud not long ago and she wanted to read it on her own afterward), and Reese is perusing our blog book, especially the pages that have pictures of her. It's been a fun experience (most of the time) to be able to teach all my guys how to read. Thankfully, they love it, and I look forward to many more years of curling up with good books with them!