It's Happening! Almost.

I should have posted earlier, but I'm in a weird head-space. I'm trembling with joy and fear and good old-fashioned trepidation. We're in escrow on Querencia, contingent on selling our rental property in San Jacinto that's also half-way through escrow. Jake did a lot of work on that place to make it sell fast, and by a lot, I mean driving up there every day after work for two weeks, and two weekends of not-stopping-for-food cleaning and patching and painting, spending the nights on a hard floor, and landscaping in a yard 200 yards from a dairy farm, so working through flies of plague proportions. The boys and I went up to help twice, and Dan loved counting the cows and 'helping' me vacuum. I got sad thinking about those cows covered in their own filth, eating God knows what, but that's another story for another day. I get a little crazy about how animals should be treated. Hold on while I go get myself a glass of raw milk from Organic Pastures...

Still with the crazy lady? Good. Because this crazy idea is becoming reality. We're going to live on more land than we know what to do with (yet), in a house bigger than we'll ever know what to do with, and we're going to let our little boys run wild and pray, pray, pray they don't break all of their bones. We want to fill our home with orphans and the displaced, but first we need to make it livable. That's seeming like a bigger and bigger job every time we look around. I'm definitely a throw-myself-in-headfirst kind of gal, so thank God (really, I do every day) that Jake is there to be my steadying influence. I want chickens and a huge garden and foster kids and summer-visiting orphans from Ukraine and a fully renovated, furnished home (with curtains, rugs, art, etc) and dogs and parties, all at once. Jake is a bit more practical, and wants the water, power, broken railings, and other needed repairs to be fixed first. Boring, amirite? And there a lot of little things that are going to add up:

Like piles of this everywhere

And random corners with holes in them

And seriously with the random wiring everywhere?

And all kinds of little boy hazards.

So there's a lot to do. Add to that cleaning and fixing up our condo to rent out, and I'm in a cold, tremble-y sweat. And Jake is going to a bachelor party in Vegas and the UK for one week, maybe two in June for work.  June, the month we're going to be moving in. Bless his precious soul, he's so stressed out about it. I don't know why everything always happens at once, but it really, really does. It never rains but it pours, feast or famine, boom or bust, etc., etc. There's nothing he can do about these things, but he's stressing about them anyway. That man of mine is so good. He's also a workaholic who forgets to eat for an entire day because he's cleaning and painting. He's insane. I'll only do those things if I know there is a specific time, with specific food that I will get, and then after a quick nap and maybe a show on Amazon Instant Watch maybe I'll start painting again.

Unfortunately, our budget dropped a bit when we had to drop the price of the San Jacinto house, and with inspections and basic repairs I'm not sure how much we'll really get done before we move in. Probably paint, hopefully floors, and probably not adding a shower to one side of the upstairs suites, which right now only has a sink and toilet. We were hoping to build that so that we could more easily rent those two huge rooms & their landing (that also have their own separate stairs) to help supplement the mortgage while we're renovating, but I don't know if that's going to happen now. There is another full bathroom, but it's downstairs, right by the front door, so that won't be particularly attractive to housemates. We're also legitimately considering renting out any or all of the three huge garages for storage. Being house-poor isn't exactly where we wanted to be, but these beautiful five acres are exactly where we want to be, and I don't think we could ever find another deal like this one. If all goes according to plan (is that God I hear laughing?), we aren't going to ever move again. It's the kind of place we want to live the rest of our lives in. If it doesn't burn down in the wildfires. Haaaaaaahhhhhhh, deep breath.

Because there are places like this

And this

And sweet little window ledges like this that are soon to become reading nooks (with window guards because I'm not crazy)

It's always seemed to us like the only way to go-- the worst house in the best place, then work our little tails off for years and years to make it what we want. But now that I'm looking at those years and years in the face, I'm feeling faintly sick. Adventure is not for the weak-hearted, so I'm praying hard for some courage.

Incidentally, how does one become a hardworking homesteader? Is there like a book I can buy or something? Someone who can come teach me how and save me from all of the mistakes? No? Huh.

At least it will be interesting. Life is either a daring adventure, or it is nothing. (Thanks for that gem, Helen Keller. Now I'm inspired to like, do hard stuff. Booooo.)