We may be in for another storm or two over the week-end and this coming week! All fall/winter we were wondering where the snow was and now it's here! Unfortunately, our first storm of 12" fell this Tues/Wed when we were driving and hour to close on our house. This storm is coming when we need to drive the hour again to our new house to work on painting and may need to go 20 min. back and forth from our new house to the nearest town where my mil lives and will be taking care of some of our kids! So, it should be an interesting week-end. I'll probably be MIA until Sun or Mon. This storm is lake effect snow from Lake Superior and has the potential for 18" of snow! And I heard there may be another storm later this week as well!
Today was a good day! We made the 1-hour drive over snow-covered roads to close on our house today! All went fine and we were able to close on our house so we're back to owning a home again! Even though I'm stepping back from living in great places this past year with lots of acres of land, buying a house that will keep us free from financial stress will be so much better! Plus the place we're at has no neighbors around it so it feels like we own acres and acres even though we only own a 150x150 lot. We also have great friends in town about 1/4 mile away so that will be well worth not having a ton of land! I'll have to take pics of the beautiful town of used to be 71 or so and now 79 sometime! It's in a very beautiful spot!
Anyways, we have a lot of work on painting, flooring, and getting appliances for our new house. So that along with packing and all will keep us busy for the next few weeks!
The other good news is that the owners of the house we've been renting to have 2 offers on their house and are pretty sure they're accepting one of them! We had 8 showings in the week since it's been listed so it's been a bit of work to be cleaning it up and vacating every day! So hopefully the offers are good enough that it will be taken off the market and we can stop having showings here and life can become more normal!
Today we are getting our 2nd biggest snowfall of the year and will probably end up with about 12" of snow! So all of you with your garden seeds and planting plans, you can appreciate your nice warm weather a little more and not take it for granted!!!
We were supposed to close on our house today but weather (and other things) messed that up so hopefully tomorrow it will all be done... It's been quite the last few days. Plus our house we're staying in is on the market and we'll have about 8 showings in the first week so we're busy keeping it clean and vacating. There is a 2nd showing on Fri so hopefully...!
We will be making our 3rd move in 1 year the end of April (unless something unusual happens and things fall through)! See my post about our last year for the whole story! Yes, we've gotten pretty good at the moving thing and have things pretty well organized and lots of things we never unpacked since we've been renting. Anyways, here's the text of an e-mail I sent out announcing our move to friends. I'll just post that so I don't have to retype about it! I posted a couple of pics of the house in a post below.
Now that Spring is coming and the place we've been living in will be back on the market to sell soon, we started looking at housing options. We were open to renting again nearer to Ashland where Leland's mom lives, but didn't know if we'd find anything cost-effective. Just recently we decided to look into housing in a tiny town about 20 min from where dh's mom lives, and just had an offer accepted on a house. We're buying a nice, higher-quality double-wide manufactured home (2400 sq ft) that's on 1/2 acre about 20 min. from where dh's mom is. It's in a very small town (about 90 people)! We started looking this route after we found a really neat church nearby. The pastor and his wife live in the town where we're buying, and they suggested looking there. It's in a very beautiful area and there are 2 parks in town. One is right on a great river that lots of people come to fish (my oldest is really into fishing), and the other one is away from the river and has a playground that's somewhat newer. Both of them are within walking distance. It's really in the country.
The house we're getting has open land all around it that one day may be developed. Unfortunately with the developing there are covenants so I can't have chickens yet, but at least I can have a garden this summer! Across the street and in the rest of town you could have chickens, so maybe I'll still find a place to have chickens! The house has 4 bedrooms plus and office. There is a master bedroom with a master bath that's very nice. There's a smaller living room with a fireplace, and a kitchen/dining/bigger living room all combined in one room (which I love so you can cook and see the kids at the same time)! There's big sliding glass doors from the dining area to a deck. No trees in the yard so that's the other negative, but there's also a bigger 2-car garage that looks very nice.
So anyways, we just got finished signing paperwork. It did have a pipe break while vacant (a repossession) so we will be putting in all new flooring and need some appliances. Hopefully it won't be too hard to do all that choosing! So we'll be working on getting all of that figured out. We'll close April 19th and then move by the end of the month after the work has been done. Our plan is to live there for a few years, buy land with some of our leftover $ or as we save up a little more $ (unless we decide we really love living in a tiny town!). Then if it's cost-effective and especially if we could find a walk-out lot, we could possibly move the home since it's a manufactured home and dig a basement for it and turn it into a more normal house on a basement with a lot of space! So that's our latest news!
We went house hunting today in a small town (about 100 people) out in the country. Ultimately we'd like more land, but this would be a step towards having land some day. This is the place of the 2 we saw that we are interested in buying. It's in a large double-wide manufactured home on 1/2 an acre. It has 4 bedrooms and 2 baths plus an office, a living room, a family room, a kitchen/eating area, a small laundry area, and a nice deck on the back. It needs all new flooring as they had a pipe break when it was vacant.
There is an accepted offer on the house, but it's contingent and our realtor needs to find out what the contingencies are. We may make an offer - still weighing the decision! We could buy this place debt-free which would be wonderful! Here are some pics!
I love the large kitchen/eating/living room all in one room! I hate trying to cook and not being able to see what's going on with all the kids!
Living Room
Office - possible new home of our business Encore Ink!
One of the bedrooms. They don't look that exciting with no carpeting!
So we'll pray that whatever is best happens, whether it's this house or some other house or renting for a while and building!
Of course that title assumes that there is a "perfect" place to live! I think one of my biggest struggles is longing for that perfect place to live. For me that would consist of:
at least 10 acres - ideally 20 - even better 40 or more!
part woods, part field, possibly some rolling hills for a walk-out house or a sledding hill (of course a mound septic system can also become your sledding hill !
Away from road noise - maybe somewhat isolated, though neighbors can be nice to have too if they're the right ones!
Some kind of water on the property - a spring, a creek, a river, a pond (preferrably more than a puddle!), a lake...
a climbing tree
BUT are we called to try to find our piece of "heaven" on earth? That's my question I'm wrestling with a bit. God never said we were supposed to make a "perfect spot" for ourselves here. Last summer the place we rented was not quite perfect according to those standards, but it was pretty incredible! We had a lake that we could canoe and fish on, a beach where we could go swimming and play in the little bit of sand, some woods (though they weren't very accessible), lots of beautiful fields, 105 acres!, private drive so others couldn't see your house! Several times while I was there, I wondered about living in a "wonderful" place. Was I content there? Was it all I wanted it to be?
One other reason I loved living there was I met a wonderful Christian friend down the road who plans to homeschool and is very like-minded! What a blessing that was! We also had an older couple who watched over the place who weren't Christians that we tried to minister to and witness to. We raked leaves for them, brought over homemade applesauce and enjoyed chats outside with them. Since moving, I may miss the land there some, but I miss the relationships more!
So now, we're looking to move again soon, as the house we're in will go back on the market and I really want to live closer to my husband's mom. Plus we just found a wonderful church there! The pastor and his wife homeschool and have 2 kids similar ages to my older 2. We had a WONDERFUL visit with them after church at their church potluck and really hit it off with them. They live in a small town about 20 min. from my husband's mom. The town has about 90 people. I was looking at listings yesterday and saw that there are 2 incredibly cheap houses in town there. One is on 1/2 acre and the other is on 3/4 acres. We could buy them with no mortgage and still have plenty of $ in the bank. Both of them seem large enough for our family. Then we could continue to look for land and buy if we found the right land at the right price. We could build as we got $ and then sell our house in town (hopefully).
So, do I put my dreams on hold and look at buying "in town" (if you call 90 people a town)? It would be nice to have a place of my own and be able to garden and possibly have chickens (if they allow it). There are several nice parks I hear in town as well as a river that comes close to the town where my son could go fishing easily (from what I can tell on the map). Maybe there is someone living in this town who needs our witness. Of course it would be really nice to live close to our pastor and his family - to have a friend down the road!
Hopefully we'll go see these places soon and think and pray about it. In looking to move to the country, I prayed several times about whether the Lord wanted us out away from lots of people in the city. I have always told the Lord that if he wanted me to move to the inner city, I would. As much as I have my desires for a "perfect" spot, more importantly I want to be wherever the Lord wants us to be. He has the best plans for us!
Since we moved up North last fall, we've been attending a church not too far from where we're living. While we like the church we're at in some ways, it tends to be a bit legalistic on some issues and we're also hoping to move closer to my mother-in-law soon (an hour away). There are several different areas where we could live, so in order to help us decide where we should look for land or somewhere to live, we decided to try to find a church we could attend out in that area.
Over the past 2 years, I've gone through a lot of changes in how I think about different issues. One thing I struggle with is finding a church that is conservative, yet not legalistic. It's so hard to find that balance both in my own mind and in churches. It seems that so many churches that agree with things I've been convicted of, tend to be legalistic in how the preach or teach others. Though, I've been convicted of different things, I haven't become convinced that these things are "doctrine" that I can say absolutely is a truth to defend. On the other hand, I don't really want to attend a church that does many things I don't agree with.
Anyways, today I may have found that church with the right balance. It's a small church, but size isn't important to me. There is good fellowship there, the Bible is preached in a systematic chapter by chapter, verse by verse manner, and it is conservative. The pastor believes it's important to not be legalistic and desires to objectively search the Bible for all answers to different issues. I'm very excited to have a place that I believe will become our home church! Now to move close enough to attend there regularly! The house we're renting will go back on the market soon so we'll begin casually looking for a place to rent or to buy. Unless the Lord provides us with the right place for very cheap, we'll probably be renting again and buy land and build as we get money. So we'll see where the Lord leads us in the future!
Some of you may have read much of this as it's in detail throughout my blog as the events occured, but I thought I'd post the whole story in a condensed fashion as you probably don't have time to read my whole blog. IThis is an amazing testimony to God and his leading even when we can't see what's ahead and I hope it will encourage each of you as you look to your own futures.
The past 1 1/2 years has been a year of incredible change! We went from living in the suburbs in the Twin Cities, MN with a normal job, to now being in the country in Northern Wisconsin and owning our own business! The path we took to get here has been such a faith walk for us!
It started when we pursued buying Lifetime Books & Gifts from Bob & Tina Farewell. We were one of the final 6 families or so who they were considering selling their business to. We worked a convention in Phoenix with them during the bidding process and decided that their business wasn't the Lord's will, but that he was using this to give us courage to begin a move to the country.
We first needed to sell our home so it was on the market throughout the late summer and fall of 2005. It hardly had any showings and I think in my eagerness to move on with my "dream" of being out in the country, I moved before the Lord was ready to. How often we in our impatience try to make things happen when the timing isn't right!
Shortly after we took it off the market for that winter, God brought a buyer to us that heard about the house through a mutual friend. Were we supposed to sell without having a job to go to yet or a home? During this process we had several interviews out where we were hoping to live. Some of them it looked like were the perfect things, and just when we thought we would get the job, the Lord closed the door on those jobs. Were we supposed to go ahead and sell our house to this buyer?
At a Bible study my husband was attending, a friend heard of our situation through my husband's prayer request, and offered us a home to rent (month-to-month, below market rental price). This home was on a plot of land that his construction company owned and was planning to subdivide and build new homes over the next couple years. So were able to sell in the spring to this wonderful family that paid the asking price, was easy to work with, and completed the deal without realtor fees, AND God blessed us with a wonderful summer at an old farm-house on 100+ acres along a lake filled with largemouth bass. But still no job in Northern Wisconsin. What a wonderful summer it was!
As summer winded down, we really wanted to get moved up North. My husband was commuting a long way to work down there and wasn't looking forward to commuting long distances in the winter, plus heating costs would be high in that house we were in. My brother also recently had moved to Wisconsin and offered my husband the temporary opportunity to come help build his home in the area. We visited the area to look for a home to rent if we made the move and again through one of those fine threads of someone talking to someone talking to someone else (that could only be God's hand working) we were given the opportunity to rent a home large enough for our family on 40 acres of land for $300/month! We decided this was the confirmation we needed to take a step and have my husband quit his job and step out in faith to move somewhere without a permanent job.
When my husband was in his last week of working for my brother on his house, we heard on an e-mail group about a homeschool family's business that they were selling. At one point it had made a full-time salary, but then the husband needed to go back to work to have benefits, so they no longer had time to put into the business. Anyways, many people put in bids on the business, but because of our circumstances over the past year, it was evident to this family that we were the family they felt led by the Lord to sell to!
So we now own our own ink business that can help people save $ on their printer ink and cartridges! More on the business at another time. The website if www.encoreink.com if you must check it out now! We are just getting up and running. The website definitely needs an overhaul. Many things we sell aren't listed so if you don't see your printer or ink, definitely check with us personally!
The wonderful thing about having our own business is that provided things go well with it, like I'm fairly confident it will, we will be able to move to any location up North here without worrying about being near a job. My brother and my mother-in-law live about an hour from each other and now we could live somewhere in-between where there aren't as many job possibilities!
I am just excited and amazed at the Lord's provision. After praying for a job for months, to be given an established business that we can run from home is such an incredible answer to prayer! "Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine...To Him be glory"! Ephesians 3:20-21
So soon when we feel comfortable with the business, we can begin looking for our country hide-away to settle down into! Now if only I can have just as much patience in waiting for God timing for getting the place to live that God has in mind for us! You would think by now I would have learned!
God is continuing to provide incredible guidance and opportunities in this journey from the city life to the country life! We've been looking for a job for my husband for over a year now. In Oct. my husband finally took the big step of quitting his job and moving to the country. My husband helped build my brother's house for a little money for a time here. Recently (during my husband's last week of work for my brother), we heard on an e-mail group about a homeschool family's business that they were selling. At one point it had made a full-time salary, but then the husband needed to go back to work to have benefits, so they no longer had time to put into the business. Anyways, many people put in bids on the business, but because of our circumstances over the past year, it was evident to this family that we were the family they felt led by the Lord to sell to!
So we now own our own ink business that can help people save $ on their printer ink and cartridges! More on the business at another time. The website if www.encoreink.com if you must check it out now! We are just getting up and running. The website definitely needs an overhaul. Many things we sell aren't listed so if you don't see your printer or ink, definitely check with us personally!
The New Residence Of Encore Ink!
(former residence of Jemma - 4mo baby)
The wonderful thing about having our own business is that provided things go well with it, like I'm fairly confident it will, we will be able to move to any city in the area. My brother and my mother-in-law live about an hour from each other and now we could live somewhere in-between where there aren't as many job possibilities!
I am just excited and amazed at the Lord's provision. After praying for a job for months, to be given an established business that we can run from home is such an incredible answer to prayer! "Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine...To Him be glory"! Ephesians 3:20-21
We've been in Hawthorne, WI for a little over 2 months. We've been very blessed in our time here. The move went well all in all other than having problems with the furnace when we first moved. The house here has been a blessing to us and has worked out wonderfully. We've found a church that we've been able to contribute to and feel at home. So all in all, we've felt quite at home here. It's been very nice to be near family here.
My husband has enjoyed doing the construction work on my brother's house. He's learned a lot and has worked with some great guys. Now that work is pretty much coming to an end. This past week was his last week of full work there. There's a chance he may still help with some painting in the next week some, but otherwise, the rest of the house will be contracted out to others or done by others. So now we're waiting to see what we'll be doing next. So far no great jobs have turned up. There have been a couple of things to apply to lately, but no calls on them at this point. We aren't too concerned yet. We know that God has just the right thing for us in his timing. We're excited to see what that will be!
So anyways, that's a quick update here! Otherwise, we're keeping busy with birthdays and Christmas and all! God bless all of you!
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