Snow Day

Here is a photo of the house and outbuildings taken from the back looking over the slope. We took the dogs out to walk around the property this afternoon.  Herman, Lady Bug, and Scout loved being outside, running, burrowing, knee high in the snow. It was cute watching them. Heidi grudgingly walked along, but made a quick beeline to the house when I mentioned going in about a half hour later.

Lady, Scout and Heidi

Herman

Thanksgiving was good, we had dinner at the home of our friends and neighbors Larry, Deb and Amanda. Good food and good company! Kevin had most of the week off from school, and besides the daily work, we have kind of been relaxing and spending time together. Thanksgiving night, we spoke with Sarah and each of the grand kids, also heard from Marcus in South Korea, Jay and Adam were here with us. Kevin was a little disappointed that neither of his biological kids called, but we have come to accept that some are more family orientated than others. I wonder what will be left of the traditional holidays when this generation of non committed young people grow up. If you don't aspire to have a family is there really a point to family holidays. Kind of sad in a way, but enough on that topic.

We still haven't banked the house, and we are suffering with drafts on the floors. I crabbily face mornings running to the bathroom with bare feet. I really need to pay more attention to the placement of my slippers. Kevin hopes to get the plastic on the foundation tomorrow. We are also going to get the rest of the upstairs windows tomorrow too. The snow is really pretty and Adam went out hunting in it yesterday. Today is the last day of deer season, but no deers have even been spotted and the guys never made it to Solon. It's probably a good thing since we don't have a deep freeze yet, maybe next year. Adam is still hoping to get a snowshoe hare.

We finally got a dryer yesterday and I was very excited until we plugged it in only to realize that the 220 outlet wasn't wired into the box. We had originally planned to get a gas dryer, but Larry had this one for sale cheap. Kevin made a call to our electrician John and he will be out next week. It is a little disappointing, also we got a washer with the dryer, but the pump appears not to be working so I will have to deal with our old, ugly but functional machine for awhile longer. Oh well, I guess I wouldn't appreciate the good things if everything worked smoothly.

Jay is starting to get stressed about Christmas, Thanksgiving annoyed him a bit. We usually just eat at home and I guess he was expecting leftovers and was pretty annoyed when we didn't cook. The problem is that Jay can't express his expectations and if we don't anticipate them in advance he usually tantrums to some extent. It wasn't bad, but he is still kind of annoyed, I also fell short for his Black Friday plans. I will definitely cook on Christmas, fill the stockings, bake cookies, he'll get it all!

I went to town today, didn't shop much, got a couple of small things for Tristen. I am getting Elliott a Hallmark recordable book, and since we have no Hallmark stores locally, I will have to order it online. Christmas isn't going to be full of material things, but then again, we don't ever really go overboard. This year we plan to go even less so. I checked into knitting classes while in town, Carol at the yarn shop charges five dollars for three hours of lessons. I begin this week and my first project is going to be a hat. I also found a great new designer retail shop bought a really nice pair of jeans and another sweater for eleven dollars. It was nice getting out of the house for a couple of hours.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! This has been an amazing year! Just a year ago, Kevin and I made the decision to buy this house. We were both working full time jobs, opposite shifts but we had Sundays off together. It's crazy looking at our life now, and thinking of how far we have come in just one year. A year ago, I never really thought about money, when I went grocery shopping, I tossed in just about everything. I never made it through a whole week without having to buy something else to make a simple meal. Truthfully, I rarely cooked. I purchased easy to prepare foods for Kevin and Jay, ate the worst junk during my half hour lunches at work, and came home at one A.M. exhausted but far too wired to sleep. I would slip into bed around four A.M falling asleep right before my husband got up to start his day. My life was shopping, Starbucks, my job, and eating out most nights that we were home together. We disliked Jay's program, but we accepted that there wasn't much else that would work. Our house was full of stuff, but it wasn't really a home.

When we first bought this house, we figured it would be several years before we would actually move here. I will admit that when Kevin flew out in December to close on the house, I was secretly, or maybe not too secretly jealous of him. He took a video, which was actually dubbed a cross between the Blair Witch Project and a National Geographic special.

We visited Sarah and family over Christmas, used all my vacation days, then I went to Florida again in March. Finally in May, I had enough days left to make it a week in Maine. We came out here in Mid May, no water, no electric, thankfully the weather was good.

I am so thankful that we traded in our middle class, hectic, material focused life for this simple, people based lifestyle. I love that I now bake bread most every week. I have learned to make inexpensive but delicious and nutritious meals for my family. We have met some really great people who "get" why we love it here. After living in the same neighborhood in St. Peters for nearly twenty years, we never once did anything with our neighbors. Here we have made friends. We have both stepped way out of our comfort zones and I would say we have learned to do many things that in the past we would have paid someone else to do for us. Kevin repaired broken windows, hauled water from the spring when the pump failed, and has figured out how to improvise when he needed something to do a job. I have cleaned up and restored cast iron pans that a year ago, I would have tossed out or given away. We tiled a mantle, paneled a wall, wallpapered two rooms. I who used to scream if I saw a bug, have learned to use natural methods to get rid of flies and spiders.We have learned to compost, and build a fire warm enough to make us comfortable. We had mice, now we have two cats. When we walk our land, it is our land, we don't write a monthly mortgage check. We have to think before we buy something, but really, there aren't many stores here anyhow. By the time we locate what we were thinking that we need, we have figured out another solution. I am getting great at shopping in resale, and thrift shops. Kevin substitute teaches to subsidize our income. Jay is getting ready to move into a house with room mates that he actually has something in common with. He will have a day program that will teach him skills and provide him with recreation. We are all happy, and thriving. For that I am very thankful.

Quiet week

This hasn't been a very productive week because I had a cold. Adam and I cleaned up the area around the house putting the barbecue grill, lawn chairs, ladders and a bunch of odds and ends away for the Winter. Thanksgiving is next Thursday, we will be celebrating for the first time in our new home. This year it will just be Kevin, Adam, Jay and myself, but we plan to make all of  the traditional favorites, Turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, butternut squash, green beans, and a couple of pies.

We celebrated Kevin's birthday last Saturday. I made his favorite, chocolate cake with buttercream frosting. Most of the kids called Kevin with greetings and the grandchildren sang Happy Birthday to him. We celebrated with some of the neighbors, good music and conversation.

We went to Presque Isle on Wednesday where we went out to lunch before taking Jay bowling and to dinner. Bowling was candle pin, which was fun. Jay is doing well, and seems happy to have a busy schedule.

Today, I have been baking bread, cookies and a pork pie for dinner. It was pretty sunny today, though kind of chilly. We have a nice fire so it is comfortable inside. The weather forecast is that tomorrow we are supposed to have snow showers. It is hunting season and the guys want snow so they can "track" the deer.

Winter is just around the corner, our first snow was on Halloween, and we have had a couple more days with flurries, but none on the ground yet. We have sealed a few of the windows, what we did is used weather stripping on the windows and then on the North side we have added clear plastic on the inside. Kevin has also fixed the doors that were askewed so we can now close them. There are a few gaps, but I am going to make some of those draft dodgers to seal out the draft. I sorted through and organized all of our magazines, we have many that will help us plan for livestock and gardens as well as pass the time during the Winter months.

Jason is now living in Presque Isle, soon to be in Patten or Houlton in a house with a couple other men with similar disabilities. He is happier in the city with a lot more stimulation, and will be also attending a day program. This has been a hard phase in all of our lives, but I think this is overall a good chance for Jason to learn the skills that he will need in his life. The staff so far has been very helpful and caring and finally after nearly 31 years of looking for a good situation for Jason we may finally be making some headway.

This year we will be buying all of the ingredients for Thanksgiving, our goal for next year is to raise everything here on the farm. I would love to be able to also put together a meal for another family  to donate next year.

Kevin is working on repairing the sagging floors. He put jacks in the basement to help raise the livingroom floor. We have one beam that is sagging quite a bit, but he put a jack in two areas on that beam, You adjust the screw over several weeks until the floor is raised, this process is best with our house because the beam will gradually straighten out and it will decrease the possibility of the beam cracking. Over the next couple of months we will work on the other floors. Already the floor is more stable, my knick knacks don't rattle when you walk around.

We have added two new family members, Sophie and Lilac. Sophie is a two year old calico cat, and Lilac is an eight month old kitten. The first week was horrible, the dogs barked non stop at the cats, Sophie went through the bathroom drawer and was in the wall behind the tub. She came out on her own, I am guessing she was cold, or curious. After a week, everyone is settling down, I won't say it's perfect, but the cats aren't afraid of the dogs, the dogs aren't obsessed by the cats, and the mice situation is very much improved.

Our satellite internet has proved to be expensive and ineffective. It goes down whenever it rains, or snows. We cancelled the service, so now are using dialup, maybe a good thing less distractions. Dialup is pretty slow, but rumor has it that broadband is coming in the near future.

We attended a Halloween party here in the neighborhood, it was great fun. We didn't wear costumes, though a few people did. It was fun, we love the neighbors, a very nice group of people.

On Thursday, another of our neighbors whom we had not yet met dropped by with a warm apple pie. This was pretty much unheard of  in St. Louis. This is why we moved away from the city. In twenty years in the same neighborhood, we really never friendly with our neighbors. As one of the people said on Halloween, "out here, we are not just neighbors, we are family." Perfect.