2 years! I can’t believe it’s been 2 years since I’ve updated this blog! How did the time go by so fast? That’s crazy!!!

Soooo, the big news is that we are living in the house! It is just about complete, we’ve gotten all the inspections passed, etc, and we have been legally allowed to live in the house since the end of September 2021! Hubs and I and the girls had moved in from the trailers when the wildfire smoke got so bad in August (about 6 weeks before our final inspection – but the inspector didn’t care). And then we moved my brother in just a week after passing our final inspection. He is a paraplegic who needs full-time care and it was always our plan to have him come live with us when the house was finished. Pajii moved in a couple weeks later after we completely finished his room and bathroom. My dad and step-mom still split their time between here and Utah and live in their RV (their “tiny house”) while they are with us.

However, we are not completely done with our house just quite yet. As anyone who has built a house will tell you, there’s livable, and then there’s finished. Right now, we are at the “livable” stage. The floors are not finished, baseboard is only down in a few of the rooms, and most of the doors are still lacking trim. But we are IN the house, and that has been amazing this winter, so far! No more trudging up and down the hill to the trailer in the snow. And a fully functioning, large kitchen! It was glorious during all the holiday baking!

And a fully functioning INDOOR bathroom, complete with hot water for the shower! Indoor plumbing; what a concept!

And the living room! We had a TWELVE FOOT tall Christmas tree in our living room, and it didn’t seem all that huge! It was so very cool and something we’ve been looking forward to for years!

We still haven’t unpacked the storage units with what little bit of “real” furniture we have in there, so for now, we are still running with our hand-me-down/thrifted/roadside furniture in the living room. And we still have all of our built-in storage shelves, etc to be built, so things still look a little strange and temporary in places – such as the wire shelves beside the front door.

But we have been moving in select pieces of furniture to make our lives easier, such as a hutch that goes in the dining room.

I really needed a place to keep cookbooks and organize a few things since I am now back in charge of cooking dinners. For the past several years, Pajii has been the one cooking dinners so that I could focus on the house. But now that we are past the push to get in the house, I can do the menu planning and cooking once again. It is something I really enjoy, but boy, am I out of practice!

In other Homestead news, we lost two of our pets this past summer. Our old dog, Sid, got to the end of his life and it was time to say goodbye. It was expected, but sad, as these things normally are. What was not expected was that one of our kittens that we had just gotten at the beginning of the year would also need to be put down due to cancer. Little Onyx was only 8 months old and was our youngest daughter’s special pet. That was hard.

But in the way that things usually do, time moved on, and we got a new cat for our daughter for her birthday in October. Jupiter is a siamese kitten who was 5 months old when we got her. She’s one of the prettiest cats I have ever seen.

And then, for MY birthday in December, I got a puppy! Asher is a Border Collie and was 12 weeks old when I got him. He is learning so fast and growing like a weed.

So now we have 3 cats, 2 dogs, 2 fish, and a lizard that live in the main part of the house, plus Pajii’s 2 cats that stay in his room. And about 25 or so chickens outdoors. One of these days we’ll probably add some more farm animals to the mix. and our plan for this spring is to build the first portion of our gardens.

Right now, we are in full on Winter mode here on the homestead. Now that the holidays are over, we are back into school and trying to find our rhythm again. The cold weather brings extra challenges with taking care of the animals and such. But we also enjoy playing in the snow.

Hubs is taking some time off from work in a week or so to do a big push on finishing up all the projects here around the house. We won’t complete them all, but hopefully we’ll cross a bunch off the to-do list. Particularly the small leak in the water system which has presented itself in the last couple months

Life has been particularly good this fall and winter so far. We are still figuring out our permanent off-grid systems, what is possible, what needs to change, and what works for us. But just being in the house full time has been such a blessing.

We are really looking forward to being able to work on outdoor projects this coming year, without feeling like we have this huge thing (the house construction) hanging over our heads. As a friend recently told me, it’s time to re-train my brain to not be in constant construction-survival mode. But, oh yeah, we still have a bagillion finishing projects to do. *sigh* One of these days we’ll be finished. Right?

Right?

Anyway, one of the reasons I haven’t updated this blog in the past 2 years is that I find it so much easier to post to my Instagram account (which also posts to my CRH Facebook page. You don’t need a Facebook account to see my page there). I have a lot of updates on there over the past several years, so go check it out so see all the pretty pictures

Click here for my Instagram
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Until next time, hopefully not too long in the future, have a blessed day!

Maridy