New home!

Another step has been taken. We purchased our future temporary home today - and 36 foot fifth wheel! It is hard to believe that we will be living in this RV for quite some time starting May 1st.

This is not the exact one, but it gives you an idea!

Lots have happened over the last month. Jason and I have decided not to build this year and wait it out, giving ourselves time to experience living in a way we have never lived before, getting to know the land, and taking the time to just enjoy our land before diving into building and investing money into it.

We also decided not to build the straw bale house we initially bought plans for. We really had to think about our priorities, needs, and wants. It came down to two things. Either we:

1. Build this larger straw bale home and have a mortgage (payments every month for quite sometime) and therefore not having the funds to become self sufficient anytime soon (solar panels are very expensive).

2. Build a small cabin type home (very small mortgage or none at all) and have the money to do the other things we hope to do during our lifetime (including traveling, saving for the girls post secondary education, saving for retirement, giving to charities, recreational activities). As well as getting to being self sufficient much more quickly.

Option two sounds much more appealing. Why do we need a big house? So what if the girls need to share a room - most kids in the world do. What is really important? Having more space per person or having the ability to do more things together and having more options?

As much as we would love to build a straw bale house, it isn't the only way to build "green"; there are so many other options. Bring "green" has so many sides. Building a smaller house that takes less material, less energy, and produces less waste is green too.

This is the plan for today. We'll see what follows...

The next beginning

The day has finally come.

Today the court put through our offer on the property. It's ours!

What a journey it has been just to get to this point, which is the whole theme for this blog - each journey takes us to a new beginning.

Once we found out this morning that the property is ours, it was honestly a dull shock. We have yet to get excited about it. It has been months of numbing the urge to get excited about it while we prepared ourselves for a different path. It got to the point that plan B seemed more enticing because we didn't want the heart ache of losing plan A. It is strange to know that the big adventure is about to begin and we don't even know how to feel.

We do know that God continues to line things up each step of the way and continues to confirm the direction we are trying to walk. It was easy to doubt during the last couple of months that maybe this wasn't the way to be going. However, we know that the
'waiting' was just as much as an important piece of the journey as was getting here.

Now, our dream can begin to unfold.

A wintery day at the lot.

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."  

Seneca

What Lies Around the Bend

As we have been waiting to go back to court (5 more days!) to see if we get the Timberwolf property, Jason and I decided we'd go look at a few houses in the mean time. There are three places that we are interested in viewing. We figure if we go see these places and we happen to like one, then we have something to look into if we don't get Timberwolf. If we don't like any of these them, then we are more willing to offer more for the property if the court rejects our initial offer.

So, today, we packed up our super travelers (aka: our girls) into the truck and had our lovely realtor, Nicolle, accompany us to go look at the 3 houses.

The first stop is an older home on a beautiful acreage (32 acres). The property is beautiful. However, the house is just not for us. I  can't see our family living in it. It needs lots of updating and I can't get past the wood paneling on every wall.

The second house we all love. The 7.5 acre property is gorgeous and has a beautiful valley view. The house is very cute with a lot of character and many upgrades. We'd have to do some renos (such as new windows) but over all it is nice. We could begin working on getting it off the grid sooner than later.

The third house is a foreclosure. The property, shy of 4 acres, has a spectacular view, and the house is really just a carriage house set off to the side of the main building site (ready for building our straw bale home???). The carriage house is pretty much the same structure that we had considered building on the property - two bedroom suite above a garage. It has been built recently, but needs to be finished. We love this one as well. Small, but all that we would need until the time when we could possibly build a straw bale home.

It's been a really emotionally and mentally draining day for me. One part of me wants the simple road - to just buy a house and live in it. Comfort and easiness. But the other part of me wants to fight that urge to do what is common. I still yearn for adventure and challenge. I don't want to let go of the big heart dream.

In it all, I hear Him whisper. The path around the bend may not look like what I hope to see. Whatever comes is part of the adventure. Take hold and make grand of what is given to you.

I'm so glad that at this point the choice is not ours. It lays in the hands of the Him who loves us. Thursday we will have the next step in view.

"We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us."

Joseph Campbell