Moved {again}

 

Our life was busy before we moved to VT.
And now our life is busier.
I know.
It's hard to believe.
To add to the busy-ness ... we moved ... again.
Not far.
But it required repacking things (much more haphazardly), stripping wallpaper from our new bedroom and painting it ... and we still have piles everywhere in the new place AND in the home we lived in for about 6 weeks.
Did I mention that we've started farming?

This is what happened ...
When we were making plans to move to the farm we saw these housing options:
1) buy a nearby house off farm
2) live in one of the two trailers on the farm
3) build new on the farm replacing one of the trailers
4) live in the farm house with Ren Man's elderly grandparents who don't use the living room or the second floor
5) live with Ren Man's family while they build on the farm in one of the two trailer locations

When reviewing options 1) was appealing but we are homebodies and after looking at a couple of houses knew that we'd slowly be moving as much of the farm operation to whatever other house we bought - and we wanted to continue the use of the family farm already in existence.

Option 2) was out of the question for me for a very long time. When it finally seemed perhaps the best option we realized that we'd become the hired hand (currently, housing is one of the benefits of working on the farm) and while we have time to work on the farm somewhat in the conventional roles that have always been on this farm - we have a lot of our own farm work to do.

We researched Option 3) for over a year and we're loving the evolution of our ideas. When looking at pricing we needed the farm to finance or potentially pay for the whole thing. It gets tricky - does the farm own the house or do they gift us land and we own the house? We started to feel uncomfortable asking for this as we hadn't yet contributed significantly to the farm. So we asked Ren Man's parents if they would want to build instead. (see Option 5)

Option 4) seemed pretty great. The house is big enough and everything is heated already. Ren Man's grandparents are struggling more and more to live independently and this would help them feel more secure and take some of the responsibility off of their children who live nearby but none within walking distance. When this was suggested to the grandparents they said "no" too much change, young children were a concern ...

Option 5) in the end seemed the most sensible. We moved in, Ren Man's parents giving up half of their bedrooms for us and more than a little space elsewhere. After about a week most of our things had found a home and we were figuring out our daily rhythm. The kids were staying up late and waking up early. They didn't want to miss out on any of the family comings and goings.

Then Ren Man's grandmother fell (not the first time) and Ren Man and I were the first ones there to help her up.

I think this is what made her re-think the living situation.

So about a month after moving in with Ren Man's family we started the process to move into Ren Man's grandparents and making it our home too. We anticipate this being our last move ever. That's a nice feeling.

And that's why we've been busy on top of busy.