Life Update – We Moved!

Written to my family last Saturday.

Dear Family, 

The past two weeks have been a bit of a blur.

We moved in last Tuesday and a couple girls from church helped me get packed up and also helped with the cleaning and unpacking here at the new house. That was so nice! Andy had gotten the kitchen cupboards in and set some countertop on them, so after a good scrubbing, (these particular cupboards came from a cat lady’s house) they helped me put away most of the kitchen stuff.

There were a lot of boxes that needed to go in the pantry, but since that area was still full of tools we just stacked them as well as we could against one wall.

The first day after we moved the roof started leaking and it leaked all day into bowls and cups set around to catch the drips. Andy spent the day running back and forth to the old house bringing animals down, and until the end of the day we had the dogs and some puppies in here to boot. That was not a very fun day.

On either Thursday or friday Andy got water pumped up from the pond into the 55 gallon barrels and we had running water! It was still only cold water, but such an improvement over none at all. Friday I got the back rooms cleared out enough to move the boys beds into their room (they had been sleeping in the living room) and move the dogs with their puppies into the back pantry area. What a huge relief! I felt a lot more sane after I gave the floor a good sweeping and cleaned up the dog hair where their crates had been sitting in the middle of the living room.

On Saturday we took a break. I heated water for baths and we all took turns riding the little snow machine. That was so much fun! Saturday evening Andy worked until midnight putting up the pantry shelves, and I spent any spare minutes this Monday and Tuesday unpacking all those boxes and getting things organized. The area where the boxes were is now a nice little play area. Eventually it will be where the steps go up from the basement. 

On Monday Andy also got the kitchen sink in and the rest of the countertops in place. That sure is nice! And now we have hot water too!

Wednesday we were able to get the washer and dryer to work with our off grid power and rigged up water system. Over the course of the day we got the accumulated week and a half’s worth of laundry washed and dried.

Thursday it finally felt like we were catching up. I had my mentor over for coffee and we had a really good chat. That night Ariel slipped on the ice when the children were playing with sparklers outside. She busted her chin, got a fat lip, and lost her front tooth! We’ll try to get her to the dentist soon to get a spacer put in until she gets adult teeth.

Friday, when Andy was filling the water barrels he forgot about them and flooded the house. 1-2 inches of water all over the floor! Thankfully he had put nice drains into the concrete when he built it so we used a squeegee to get most of the water into the drains. Now we’re running the dehumidifier nonstop to dry out the rugs.

I was writing all this out in my journal this morning, and as I did I thought, ‘no wonder we’ve been exhausted lately! There has been a lot happening!’ At least I have it written down in the record now, so that times we think we’re busy we can look back on these days and feel like life isn’t so hard after all.

I’m loving the view here. Even on cloudy days you can see so far across the muskeg, and when it’s clear the mountains in the distance are so pretty! Sunrises and sunsets are my favorite.

With love,

Tabitha