Monday, September 30, 2013

Welcome to Possum Cottage

Man, oh man, have I fallen behind on my blogging! Yikes! I feel like ever since Elka turned one (actually a little before that...) life has been seriously nutty. I am able to tackle everything that needs to be done (except laundry; don't ask me about my laundry) but there's no room for extras. None!
 
Well, unless the extra is buying a house. We apparently had time for that, back at the beginning of the month. And having a fourth baby. We're evidently doing that too, in April.
 
I'm going to begin a new blog, and it will be called possumcottage.blogspot.com. I've got it already and there are a few seriously oversized and misplaced pictures on it and no text because I can't figure out how to do ANYTHING, including something as simple as resizing a few pictures. I don't know why they are turning out so huge over there when I've never had that problem here (that I can recall, anyway.) To tide you over until the new domain is up and running, here are the first pictures that will be featured there, and what will roughly be my introduction post. Welcome to Possum Cottage!
 
 

Back in July, I checked out a house on a whim. I've been pretty vocal about the fact that we'd been looking for a place in the country for some time and we were feeling really burnt out on the whole search. We'd come so close to getting a number of places and for various reasons, they fell through. "It's not the one," we got good at telling ourselves. But after more than a year, it seemed like we were never going to find "The One."

But then there was this place. I'd been seeing it on my real estate apps for awhile and had emailed about seeing it once, but got no response. It didn't really look that great online though. Small house. Only two acres. In the middle of nowhere. Meh. But it kept being there on my screen and I kept seeing it and I was kind of feeling desperate so one morning I just called the listing realtor and asked to see it. They could show it to me that afternoon! Yay! Obviously, Martin would be at work, so I just decided to go by myself. But then my mom called me and I told her I was going to see a house and she said she and my dad (freshly retired!) would come with me. (My mom is a really curious person.) So we did. It was about fifteen minutes or so away from our downtown house. I did not have super high expectations--I knew the area, for one thing, and was pretty certain, judging by that and the image on google maps, that this was going to be a boring little plot in the middle of prime Indiana flatness.  However, as I turned onto The Road (what would later be "our road"!) I was pleasantly surprised! What is that little rise in the earth!? Is that--is that a HILL!? Is that ROLLING cornfields?? I drove by a few nice little old farmhouses a few newer ones, and then I came over a rise and I saw in the distance the house I had seen on realtor.com. That was it. That was our house. I got really, really excited as I drove up and saw the address and pulled in the driveway. So excited that I already had my phone out and as soon as I put the car in park I texted Martin something I had only said once before: "I think this might be the one." I hadn't even seen the inside! I just knew.



There's a playset in the yard with two swings, so Anja and Greta were thrilled and occupied while we inspected the outside. A few trees, a nice rolling lot.... way better than I'd been picturing. Off to one side was a fenced in area that was so overgrown you could hardly see the buildings in it. No one was sure if that was part of the property or not, but after a phone call to another realtor, it was established that yes, that was part of it... it was where they kept their goats. (My heart kind of stopped there. No joke.)
 Doesn't Judy the Truck look nice? She fits right in .



As does Elka.

So, when we saw the inside it was only more obvious that this was the house for us. All hardwood floors, lots of windows, farmhouse sink. What more could you want? The bathroom is a little junky and the kitchen might need "updating" as they say (although I did paint some cabinets and my dad painted part of the kitchen which was a very nausiating blue to a much nicer light green) and we (Martin. All Martin.) built a wood floor over the bedroom's original cement floor. And it's really small. But even with all that, it is perfect for us. Just perfect. It has a nice little porch, a fun little mudroom off the kitchen, an attic that someday will be useable, and a basment that you have to remove floorboards to get to.  We have a chicken coop attached to the garage outside, a big pen with animal outbuildings, a firepit, a playground and the perfect area for a little orchard down the line. Right now the only animals are the two dogs, but they are so happy to be able to run free (as in, run away down the road with the neighboring farmdogs) and the two cats, who are still a little traumatized from the move and have a hard time gathering the courage to leave the bathroom. But this place has potential to be a beautiful little homestead.

We are so happy here. The kids are able to run and play. Instead of saying, "Can we go outside?" and me saying, "No sweetheart, the molesters are out," they ask and run out the door before I even answer. Because OF COURSE they can play outside. The biggest danger now is the prickle plants that grow in the yard and really smart if you step on them.

The drive into town so far is not at all daunting. We've been going in A LOT, like every day, and that's getting a little ridiculous for current gas prices, but the drive itself is not bad at all. Besides, the freedom we have out here is worth any commute.

We're still living out of boxes for the most part, but slowly things are finding their places and pictures are being hung on the walls. I think all of our stuff is now here.... at least the majority of it. We still need to clear out (to a big honkin' dumpster) the rest of the old house and clean it out and then put it up for rent and cross our fingers.

In other news, Anja is still in speech therapy this year and totally rocking it. She's making enormous improvements, and through her improvements, Greta's speech is clearing up at pretty much the same rate. We've been sitting out of ballet classes.... we took one over the summer at the community center but Anja didn't really want to take it again and Greta ran out of middle of the first class crying and refused to ever go back.... so that was kind of a bust. We're looking into one more session at the original place before Anja turns 6 and they can't be in the same class anymore.

We are expecting baby #4 in the spring! It's been the easiest pregnancy so far (about a week away from the second trimester), and my cravings have been very, very different. We're all guessing it's a boy and Anja is even hoping for a boy!

Hopefully the new blog will be up and running soooooon!