Over our nearly fifteen years of marriage, we have often commented how so much can happen in a year. So many unexpected things. Some wonderful. Some hard.
Some of our biggest changes
Some of the biggest changes were the birth of each of our three children. Each has added a new dynamic to our family. We can’t imagine life without any of them.
Another big change was the purchase of our first car. A grayish blue Subaru Impreza. It was a great improvement over the manual Jeep Cherokee (that I never learned how to drive). That car was sold to eventually make way for … you guessed it… a minivan. We never thought we’d see the day when we were mini van owners. Especially Charlie. But with baby number three on the way and our oldest in kindergarten, the van was the most practical choice.
We have since had several other vehicles, including cycling through three different trucks. We have gotten used to that kind of change. When we finally sold the van just a few weeks ago, the kids didn’t even care about coming to say goodbye. And I realized that I never even took a picture of it.
Probably the biggest change happened when we purchased our first home in 2011. We were dying with anything over $200,000. Oh how things have changed. At least where we currently are living. We lived in that house for ten years. We landscaped the yard, finished the basement, had two of our babies there, and grew very accustomed to the wall to wall neighborhood. But we loved it and we were happy.
With three young kids, we knew we wanted to raise our family with a love for adventure and enjoying the outdoors.
We bought a UTV that we enjoyed for a couple of years. We used it to get to my grandpa’s off-grid cabin, we went camping and exploring in the mountains near our home, and we felt like we were cultivating the spirit of adventure in our kids.
I grew up boating with my family and had always thought a boat would be fun for our family, but never thought it was a possibility. However, after a fun vacation with my family to Lake Powell, somehow Charlie liked the idea and we decided to purchase our own boat. But there was no way we could store it on our small driveway in front of our house. Our kind neighbors a couple of houses down from us allowed us to rent part of their much larger driveway space. It worked well for the time.
But the next year, we felt the adventure bug again.
We didn’t go camping nearly as much as we would like because of my issues with feeling comfortable and not getting too cold. Charlie suggested we look into getting a camper trailer. The research began and after much exploring and talking, we finally found a great trailer for our family. But where to store it?!? The boat went to my sister’s house for storage and the trailer went to the neighbor’s driveway. I lived in a state of constant worry about our “toys” and annoyed that we didn’t have driveway space to store our own things. I felt like we were just making things hard on other people by letting us store our recreational vehicles in their driveways.
We started thinking about moving again.
Which was very unexpected. We had imagined our house to be the forever house. And then out of the blue, the neighbors (where we were storing the trailer) told us they were moving. We decided to buy their house, so we could have a bit more space and have room to store the boat and trailer. It went smoothly and the unexpected change ended up being a big blessing for us. It was relatively simple to move only two houses down the street. We stayed in the same neighborhood, same schools, same church, same friends. It seemed like a comfortable, easy, perfect solution. We thought this would be the forever home.
But it turned out to be just a baby step.
After only about a year in the new house, Charlie’s situation at work changed. Again, unexpectedly. He began looking for something different and ended up switching jobs. And now he was working entirely from home. We suddenly could move anywhere we wanted to and the teasings of an idea we had felt years ago started to come to the surface.
We have often felt that moving out of our home state could be really good for our family. We would be leaving the comforts of home and family, but it was give us many more opportunities to learn, grow, and help others. The idea wouldn’t leave and we began to receive several confirmations that this was what God wanted us to do.
We began looking and after a year of searching, we finally found it.
It’s not perfect, but it gives us so many of our dreams that we didn’t even think would be possible. Charlie is getting his acreage. I am getting the opportunity to remodel and build. We will have space for all of our homesteading goals. We will have the chance to become more independent and self sufficient.
We are nervous, but so excited about this huge and unexpected change. 2023 is turning out to be another crazy year. We never knew when we said “Happy New Year” that we would be going to embark on such an amazing adventure. We know that we can do hard things!
Country living here we come!
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We wish you the best with your personal journeys and adventures!
~ Rachel
