Hi!

I swear I haven’t quit blogging…I’ve just been outside so much and I can’t bring myself to sit inside on the computer. We had friends visiting and we’ve been traveling, camping, hiking, horseback riding, working, planting etc. I’ve been taking lots of photos and I’m working on starting my own photography business. Life has been busy and fun!
Our summers aren’t as long as our winters, but when summer hits, it’s so nice that I have to get outside and soak up every ounce of it! I do miss reading all of your blogs and I try to get on once a week and get caught up. I feel so behind! It’s nice to read that everyone is enjoying their summers and see all the photographs of your beautiful gardens.

This weekend we have Chief Joseph Days. It’s quite a deal in the little town of Joseph. Tuesday afternoon there is a horse run down the middle of town (cowboys run a large herd of horses down main street), a children’s parade on Friday and the main parade on Saturday which I actually get to ride my horse in. I joined a small drill team and we will be doing cute, easy drills through the whole parade. I’m very excited! I have a petite, pretty Arabian named Selina and I’ve always wanted to ride her in a parade. Sounds corny, but we get glitter hooves and all!
Starting Thursday, the rodeo starts and goes through Saturday. I’ll make sure to get lots of photos!
Anywho…I haven’t fallen off the planet and I’ll be back in fall with loads of pictures and stories to share.
I promised to put up some photos of the new house a month ago. Check them out here.
XO

Today, I took a horse ride to a neighboring creek that was enclosed in a line of Aspens and the beauty of where I was took my breath away. Tears came to my eyes. Good tears of pure joy and peace. Tears from being so alive at that moment that you know… you know that you are one with everything that is. I was connected with the water flowing, the rock that was doubling as my seat, my horse next to me, the wind moving quietly through the trees and I was at peace. Alive and at complete and utter peace.
I am so fortunate to live in such a place on earth that takes your breath away because it’s so beautiful. My surroundings make it that much easier for me to be in the moment as often as possible. And that is my ultimate goal..... to live in the moment, every moment, permanently.

A funeral

Last week we were in Connecticut. J's grandmother passed away. It was expected, but sudden, if that makes sense. We flew out last week and stayed at his grandfather's house in Meriden, Connecticut. It was an unfortunate reason to travel out there, but we had a nice time. I even got to go to Manhattan for the first time! Pics to come.
J has a HUGE family, Italian on his grandfather's side and Puerto Rican on his grandmother's side. I met over a 100 family members and I LOVED it! I don't have a large family so it was all very new and exciting for me to meet everyone.

(Here's a pic of Jordan after the funeral. On a humerous note: He and lots of his other family looked like they belonged to the MOB. He looked so handsome I couldn't let the chance go by without a photograph!)




















The funeral service was a very traditional Spanish Catholic ceremony. It was beautiful and I was fascinated with all of the ritualistic steps. J's grandparents were married for 65 years, but they were childhood friends and got married shortly after high school. They shared a life together for over 75 years! It was horribly tragic to see his grandfather alone, but bittersweet as well because their story is so romantic. If you haven't seen The Notebook or read the book by Nicholas Sparks, you need to. His grandparents had a romance that is portrayed very accurately in that story. About 5 years ago, J's grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. In the last year of her life, she really deteriorated. She couldn't recognize anyone, not even the closest family members. The only person she responded to was J's grandfather. When he walked into the room, her eyes would light up. He is the only one she could recognize and remember. Watching J's grandfather motion through all of the funeral steps was hard. I believe that he wanted to make sure that his wife of 65 years was honored. The funeral ceremony was the last gift that he could give her to honor their love and the life that they shared together. After it was all said and done I could see the energy in him dissipate. He made it though the ceremonies to celebrate her life and now he's ready to join her.
We don't know how long J's grandfather will last now without his life companion and who can blame him? He's lived a wonderful, long life and he's lived the dream. He was with the person he was head over heals in love with for most of his life. Their story was a true love story. I can only hope and dream that J and I can continue that love in our story. I write this post in honor of J's grandparents....
Olegario & MariaTraverso



A and her Grandfather, Olegario.

I disappeared!

I've been so busy and it's been over a month since my last blog entry! I also haven't had a chance to read a lot of your blogs and I've missed it.

We were so busy moving and getting settled and every night, when I usually do my things online, I was just too tired to do anything but pass out in bed.

We are moved in to our new place now and I'll get pictures up of the house and property this weekend.

We now have:

5 chickens

5 cows

1 horse

5 cats

5 dogs

The cows and cats are new and I'll get pictures of them up as well. We are actually a farm!

I plan to get my garden started this weekend. I feel so late, but the season is much later here. People are telling me that I still have time to plant.

I have much more to write and share and I have all of your blogs to catch up on! I'll be writing alot the next few days!

I got out early today and started working on the new house. We move in on June 1st, but we are doing work on it now to make it more livable before we move all of our stuff in. Paid work too!

The last updating that the house had was in the 70's. You can tell by the fabulous green, shag carpet and the light fixtures.

Today we were extremely surpised and esctatic to find original hardwood floors, in great condition, underneath the old shag. This made me giddy! I LOVE love love hardwood flooring. J pulled up the carpet in the two bedrooms and will finish the living space and hallway this week. I pulled down old wallpaper from the master bedroom and the guest bathroom. We plan on replacing the flooring in the small master bath and in the kitchen/dining area. As you can see, the lanolium in the kitchen is very outdated as well. It's so old and damaged. I really don't know what fashion and design was thinking in the 70's and 80's. The beautiful hardwood floors were covered up for shag carpeting!
I plan on keeping most of the old light fixtures in the house. They are considered "vintage" now. With some paint updating (J is really good with paint!) we can refinish the fixtures and make them new again. Everything that is done in the "70's bronze" will be repainted.

I picked out all the paint today. We will be painting every room but the living area because it has nice log walls. The kitchen will be painted nice and bright. The guest bathroom needs quite a bit of work, but a friend is great at tile work and we plan to have him re-do the tub....hopefully for trade.

Some fencing on the property needs to be repaired before we can move Selina, our horse, in and we have to fix up the chicken coop and get it ready for our new chicks.

Alison has named them all and is in love with them. These are the first chickens that our family has had. We got 5 black sexlings to start.
Everything is moving along very swiftly and quickly. I believe we will be able to have all of the work we want to complete, done before we move in on June 1st....THEN the gardening will begin!

Tune in for updates! I'll put pics up as we continue with all the upgrades. You can see more pics here.

Life ALWAYS works out

I can't believe this has happened!

We decided last weekend that we were NOT going to buy a house right now for many reasons. Thanks to all of you that commented and gave your thoughts and suggestions. Although I don't depend on what others say to make up my mind, it's nice to get thoughts from others who are living the way we want to live. It's amazing how much it helps when you are too, "in your head."

At one point not so long ago my husband and I actually vowed that we never wanted to buy a house because we didn't want the financial strain and the loss of freedom that comes with renting. Somewhere from that point to now we got obsessed with wanting to buy...I guess because we love where we live so much and because we want to homestead.

Well, this last weekend, we wrote our pros and cons list and we made a decision that we did not want to buy. Immediately the burden lifted and we decided we would just rent for now and sock money away.

Life ALWAYS works out......

This Monday I got a call from the owner of the very first house we looked at and fell in love with, but realized we couldn't afford. It's a long story, but we were referred to this house by my husband's employer. At the time we weren't even thinking of buying anything yet..we weren't looking, but this property opened and J's boss thought of us. We fell in love with the property and small house and were truly bummed when we figured it wasn't going to work for us. It's been about 3 months since then and out of the blue, the owner calls me and informs me that she owns the house outright, really likes us, and knows how much we love it AND that she wants to RENT the house to us until we decide to buy it. It gets better! She wants to hold the loan for us when we decide we want to buy! She explained to me that this house had been her first house and that the property had been in her family since the 70's. She loves the property, but never plans to move back to this area. She wants someone in there that will cherish it like she did. She's knows how I felt about the place and that J and I will love it like her family did. Isn't it amazing?! There are still, in this day and age, wonderful, beautiful people who will do wonderful actions to help others out. She explained to us that someone had helped her and her husband get started long ago when they were young and broke and that she wanted to return the favor.

We will be able to have our horses, cattle, chickens and anything we desire. It's a 5 acre plot with a creek running through the back that gives water rights. The property has both evergreens and pasture which gives sun yet, trees that I love. The house is small, just like I want. There is a run down barn and a run down shop/garage that needs some love. The house also needs some work and upgrading, but she's willing to pay us for all of the work we do and pay for any upgrades. We really can't lose with this deal. If we decide not to buy it, then the property will be worth more to her, if we do decide to buy it, then we have put all of our love into it and the place is ours!

I can't believe it! I feel like I need to be pinched. We picked up keys today and gave 30 day notice to our current landlords.

These are the mountains we will see from our front windows, except they are closer than they are in this shot.

The most humorous part of this whole experience is that we've been stressing for the past few months. I know better and I know that life ALWAYS works out. If you are open to life and live life a moment at a time, it always works out for the best. Good things come. Even though J and I were stressed, we knew that everything would work out the way it was supposed to and it did. We are so thankful.

Check out the house pics here. These pictures are old and I'll get new photos this weekend, but these work for now!

What to do!? Please give ideas!

We are so overwhelmed with our housing situation.

What to do...

What to do......

Do we buy a large house in town and have a mortgage that makes money tight for us just to buy something??

or

Do we rent out in the country for little rent, with property where we can homestead...but we don't own it??

I guess that probably seems obvious to some especially since we want to homestead, but we are really struggling with what the right decision is.

If we move out to the country and rent;

....we will have a 40 minute drive into town. Our daughter will have to ride a bus into town, but there is a nice group of kids that she will carpool with.

....we will have inexpensive rent which means we can both cut down to part time on work.

....we can have horses, a few head of cattle, chickens etc.

....we can fish for Steelhead from the backyard

....we can pick our own fruit and grow a garden

....we will have to fix up the quirky manufactured house a bit because it's run down and old and chances are we will lose money when we eventually move.

If we buy in town;

....Our daughter will be within walking distance to school and friends. Sports will be easier because we will be so close.

....We will own our own small plot with a nice, new larger home

....we can garden

....we can have chickens

....we can't have the horse because it's in town

....we will have to work more to make a mortgage payment

....we will have a nice investment that we can turn around and sell in a few years that will, in turn, give us the money to buy our own place out of town.

We are just at a loss...we don't know what to do.

I know that J and I have to sit down and write down a pro and con list for both of us. I think J is more wigged about living so far out more than I am.

Please give us your thoughts. We need some input from other people.

Thanks!

Our backdrop

I've finally been able to get some photographs uploaded to my Flickr account and I wanted to share some of the photographs of the beautiful place we live.

Check them out...HERE.

I also have uploaded photos of the newest member of the family, Bella.

You can see her HERE.

PICTURES OF PROPERTY!

The weather was so amazing today and the light was great. I couldn't help myself so I took the drive out to the property and took some shots.


In another month, the canyon will be green. Everything is budding and blooming. It's beautiful and it smells so great! The only thing I heard while standing on the property was the river and the birds.

Check out the pictures on my Flickr.

Another house

We went to look at a possible house today that is 30 miles out of town. It's quite a commute, but we think living out there would be worth the drive. Heck!...we used to sit in traffic for HOURS down in California and we would only be going 20 miles. When it takes 15 minutes to drive 5 miles across town, a 30 minute drive through the canyon along side a flowing river, with NO traffic is really a nice commute.

Note: These photos are NOT of the property.

The property itself is PERFECT...it needs some work, but it already has a large, fenced off area for a garden with a mature orchard as well. It has a creek running alongside the drive way and the back part of the property butts up to the river. There is a small foot bridge that takes you across the creek to the back part of the property and that is where the garden and orchard are. I don't know how many acres it is yet. It's plenty for my horse and all our animals to run around on. The owner is out of town until Tuesday so we'll go back out there next week when he has time to take us out there. I don't know all the details about it, but I love it anyway. It's amazing! I knew it the moment I set foot on the property that it was what we are looking for. The house itself isn't much..it's a smaller 2 bed/2 bath house, but it has a large deck that wraps around it where I could imagine sitting and soaking up the sun. There is a flower garden in front of the house and already there were daffodils and tulips blooming. There are several mature fruit trees that line the driveway and creek. Perfect..just perfect! The owner really wants to rent to us and maybe he'll be interested in working out a lease to own option. I didn't take my camera so I didn't get any pictures of the property, but I will next week. The pictures on this blog are not my photographs, but they are photos of the area that we are looking at. Isn't it beautiful? They are compliments of Strength in Perspective. They have some great photos of the area. You can go see their photographs of our beautiful home here.

I really think moving out to this area would be the right step for us. It just feels RIGHT unlike the other places we've looked at. Jordan and I would have to cut down work because we both don't want to commute that much every week, but that wouldn't be a bad thing..after all, our goal is to eventually homestead!

This photo is a photo of the creek right next to the property we looked at today. This is the creek that runs through the property and connects to the river.