Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Checking in

Its been a while since I've posted mostly because things have been pretty insane here.  We decided to try and sell our farm.  Our basement was piled higher and deeper and we had our work cut out.  We also finally got rural water which added to the insaneness.  Our home is a quarter mile from the road and the ground was semi frozen and hard to trench.  It was trenched right next to our driveway and what a mess we had!   We had to bring in two loads of gravel just to be able to get in and out of here.  When it got all connected we had no water pressure.  Nothing was working right.  We had waited 12 years for this and what a dissappointment!  Christmas was a nightmare with people trying to take a shower and just getting drips to wash in.  Yesterday we finally got it fixed.  I went to the water office to let them know we still had no water pressure and see if they could suggest a new and hopefully better plumber.  They went and got a new pressure regulator and showed me how to increase the pressure myself.  They gave me the name and number of a plumber too just in case.  I came home and tried what they told me to do and it worked perfectly!  We now have awesome water pressure and all the faucets now work great.

Now for the really insane part we went through everything in the basement and donated tons of stuff to Good Will and other second hand places.  Got our good stuff put away or repacked into more permanent containers in case we had to move quickly.   We also got buried in bags of nonburnable stuff we had to haul to the kids places to dump in their dumpsters.  That's another thing that  didn't get taken care of until this week.

Two days after Christmas I departed with my daughter on a cross country trip.  That meant I had to get all of Christmas put away the day after Christmas and all the food had to be dealt with. We took off early trying to beat a winter storm moving in and made it to west Kansas in time to by pass the mess.  For some reason I saw that it was not going through Colorado so that is where we headed toward.  We went to the Oz Museum in western Kansas and stopped that first night near the border.  The next day we went to the Colorado dunes and then headed to Mesa Verda.  We tried to see the cliffs but it was a 30 plus mile journey on very winding roads and about half way there we realized it would be pitch black before we got there so we turned around and headed back out.  We had planned to stop in Santa fe New Mexico that night and my daughter was head strong about getting there.  We made it but it was really getting late.  Her surprise was we were spending the night  with her twin sister who had spent Christmas In Utah.  Nice surprise even if we didn't have much time together.  We had breakfast and went to the San Miguel Church together and then stopped for hot chocolate before we parted ways.  We Spend half a day in Santa Fe and then drive across New Mexico stopping at several Indian sites.  The next day we headed to the Grand canyon.  We came in a different way then we had ever done before and so I got to see things I had never seen before.  Again we had a late night getting into Lake Powell area.  The next day we stopped at a new national park area The Grand Staircase Escalante Monument.   It was quite exciting to visit this area and a place I would love to go back and explore.   We then headed north stopping in I think it was Zions.  She stopped and wanted to go hiking.  She got me to go places I never dreamed I'd go!  We climbed down into a frozen creek bed and hiked all through the cliffs and canyons.  We meet up with a herd of mountain goats.  It was quite a hike.  We ended up not getting near where we had planned to be.  We ended up in Fillmore Utah that night and the hotel had a train set up overhead going through the lobby and room they serve breakfast in.    The next day we finally got to Provo, Utah just in time for my daughter to move into her dorm.  I went to a hotel very near her.  The next day she had orientation and I had to be out of my hotel by 11 am.  She thought she could pick me up at noon so I just waited in the lobby for her.  We then went to the rest of her orientation together.  Later we went out to eat and then went to temple square in Salt Lake City.  We spend a few hours there going on tours and seeing all the Christmas lights.  Did a little more shopping and I filled her gas tank one more time.  She then dropped me off at the Amtrak station.  My train was suppose to be there at 3AM but it arrived 2 hours late.  I used to take the train from Neosho, Missouri to Kansas City when I was a kid and we took the train once from Kansas City to St. Louis with our boys but I have never taken Amtrak before.   While it ended up running late and they had over booked it I still really enjoyed my 37 hour trip back home.  It was very comfortable and very clean.  I liked being able to get up and move around.  They also had electric connections so I could keep my phone charged up.  I would not hesitate to go by train again.

The day I got home a professional photographer came to take pictures of our home.  I was scurrying around stashing things and trying to stay out of the way.  I knew he was coming so left all my bags in the car.  And until today its been really crazy taking care of one thing after another.

So if our farm sells we will probably move to SE Missouri.  We don't really care if it sells or not as we really love where we are but its really more than we want to deal with at this stage of our life.  Here is the listing if anyone wants to see it: http://benbond.kwrealty.com/listing/mlsid/108/propertyid/1971325/

Feel free to pass the link on to anyone you think might be interested.  We are close to Jamesport, MO(Amish community) and Adam Ondi Ahman, Far West, Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah (LDS historical sites)  We are the midway point between Des Moines, Iowa and Kansas City.  

So hopefully I will get back to posting more often.  Now that things have settled back down.  

Hope you all have a blessed new year and we all prosper in 2016!
Cherlynn