11 Acre Wood Blog

The Fam with Mrs. Libby.

Taking advantage of ‘being all dressed up’.

Sistas.

Quizzical expressions.

Our church graciously provided a meal to feed all of us on Friday night. It was a huge blessing not having to worry about cooking with nothing to cook in. J

Servin’ up plates.

“See, back at my house we have comfy chairs to sit in….” LOL! (I really don’t have a clue what Mr. Fritz was really saying)

Party on the floor.

Mrs. Jeanine and Mr. Michael.

The younger boys having a great time!

My sistas.

Mmmmm….chicken!

Conversations….

….from the ground up.

Ethan bud.

Bright and early.

The trailer being loaded.

Decisions, decisions…..

Father and Son.

Still not quite awake.

Many trips were taken back and forth from the house to various vehicles carrying items out.

Workin’ hard.

Momma looking around…..

….trying to figure out where to put everything. 

Making some rearrangements. 

Freezer #1 unloaded. We had three refrigerators and three freezers moved up there that day. 

Granddaddy.

A great team.

Paul.

Many little helpers.

And yes, the goose came to welcome us. (That past week his friend accidentally got run over by the electricians. Since then he’s deserted his duty of protecting chicken and doesn’t quite know what to do with himself).

The man and his hat.

Last freezer….

….now on to bigger and better things (well, at least heavier).

Losing a few helpers in this bottleneck.

We brought a load of rocks from our other house to have on hand for landscaping or other such projects. At the other house we grew rocks every time it rained, but here the terrain is a little different and good rocks are harder to come by. 

Backing up.

Rocks and hydraulics….pretty fun!

Of course, a little manual labor is done as well.

The ‘gigantor’ rock

From the first time he’d heard we were moving, Nehemiah packed up his Minko (blanket) and shoes and he was ready to go! Poor guy thought it was just like going to Grandmother’s, when we say we’re going, we pack up and we leave all in the same day. He just didn’t understand the difference. He kept having us tell him how many more days it was (which wasn’t necessarily what we wanted to be reminded of J). 

Down come all the beds!

Sitting on a mattress working on my laptop. I guess it was pretty entertaining to Nehemiah. LOL! 

“Ahhhh! Hey ya’ll, there’s like an inch of dust on these fan blades!”

One time I put something in for Nehemiah when it was just him at home with us girls. Moving for a 4 year old is sooo much fun!

The boys lineup.

Normal household duties still go on…..

Bekah’s Art 1

Art 2

The boys favorite oak tree out front where hundreds of ‘battles’ have taken place.

Time to get out some energy. 

The growing Posse.

Down to two chairs and one card table. J 

Are you taking pictures of me?

Packing, what packing?

Hmmm…whatever you need me to do.

Just one box at a time…..

Let’s go!

Days got pretty routine. Get up, have quiet time, eat breakfast, pack until supper (which usually ended up to be around 8pm), have family reading with Daddy and fall into bed around midnight. 

The weekend before our official move, we had a visit from the Prouty family who had scheduled to come stay with us on their way to the Vision Forum Father/Daughter Retreat months before all the craziness of moving had started. They had opened up their home so graciously to us on our trip out West last Summer. Even when we told them we were in the middle of moving and our house was partially empty, they still wanted to come and even wanted to help with packing!    

Their family was such a blessing to have! We got so much packing and hauling done the one day they helped us. It would have taken us twice as long if we had done it without their assistance. It was also a refreshing break from packing, to have company. We enjoyed late night chats and kitchen cookie dough tossing. 

All these boxes are full of just books. One load of books had already been hauled off at this point, I believe.

Emptiness.

Helping hands make light the load.

Bekah and Emily finished up the sewing room.

Okay. where should we begin?

I’ve been sitting here and I really don’t know what Bekah is holding.

Bro.

Scott, very fast and quick packer! He was in town visiting our neighbors and so he came over to help for the day and then went and spent the night up at the Farm with Noah. 

Eman found various treasure when we tackled the boys room. J

Though they probably felt like just dumping everything somewhere, they didn’t. We heard that as a team, all three of them were able to pack our storage unit very well. It’s like an enormous puzzle!

Out comes more…

Gabriel.

“Stuff….it just keeps coming.”

Cooking conversations.

Rose sweeps our neglected floors.

Mealtime break.

Momma with her youngest.

Before dessert we were given a little entertainment by Scott. He is the pianist for Moody Church in Chicago and plays by ear very well! 

Rebekah played a song she wrote and then two seconds later Scott sat down and played the exact thing except adding his own ‘frills’. Hilarious… He was so much fun to watch play and jaw dropping! 

Thanks so much for your help and for entertaining us!

Ethan was our official box assembler and taper. We didn’t have any strong help since Noah was gone, but we girls were able to do quite a bunch of it. On occasion when Noah would come down to help for a day, we had this whole list of things we couldn’t do by ourselves that had accumulated. Many loads were hauled off to storage. 

The first thing we did once we knew we were moving, was to inventory the whole house. Grammy and I worked as a team room by room one day and six hours and 25 pages later we were finished!

We thankfully didn’t have to purchase a single packing box thanks to Chick-Fil-@ fry boxes and leftovers from when my sister moved. Though probably fifty dollars was spent just on tape. J

Faithful worker.

Beginning load #705… J 

Full!

“Too much ‘stuff’ overload”

Just keep moving, moving, moving…… (no pun intended)

Momma was good at deciding if we needed to keep something or not.

Ok, this table was left at our other house in town when we moved in and we’ve kept it for this long, I believe it’s time to say adieu! Plus, it’s not even REAL wood! Yep, bye-bye!

For the longest time it was frustrating because we were working on under the bed, in the cabinet type items where it looked like we hadn’t done a thing! All too soon though, we could definitely tell a difference.

Stuck in a closet to clean.

Life goes on……

From, Your Family

Grace is our decorator and loves flowers.

If you wish, you can leave her a note of encouragement on this special day. 

So the day Noah moves up to the Farm, is the day we passed inspection and knew we would be joining him in less than thirty days. God was literally kicking us out of our house! J

New places to explore.

On Saturday (the day after Noah moved his chickens) the whole Fam came up. We were also purchasing around 150 layers and a chicken ‘egg-mobile” from some local farmers. They were bringing the chickens that day.

Geese attack.

Watering system.

“eeewwww!!!!!!!!!!!   I bet this chicken has mites!!!!!!”

Hook up.

The most photogenic in the family.

Art.

The farmers brought the 24′x8′ egg-mobile on their even bigger gooseneck trailer.

Egg-mobile numba seven.

Crossing the prairie with our covered wagon.

Crowds gather to watch the show. J 

The “gate” is closed and…..

….the flock is released.

“Don’t lose count!”

Egg hunter.

Makeshift egg basket.

While some take a walk down to the water….

…others relax inside.

Chillin’ out with root beer (Grandmother’s specialty)

“Hi camera!”

Water ‘Man’. 

Looking for fish?

Momma.

“Hi! Whatcha doin’?”

Daddy.

It just so happened that the day we were scheduled to show them the house, we had around twenty people living in our home for a couple days. Our Grammy was staying with us you know, and then my sister and her family were there for a visit. With that many people (and eight kids eight and under) you normally just don’t even worry about keeping up the house. Well, one advantage of having that many people though, is that you have more help. The morning of, all the kids were bundled up and kept outdoors while the rest of us ran around stuffing items into drawers, climbing in showers to scrub, vacuuming, etc.-trying to make it not look like twenty people were staying there. LOL! Overall, I believe things went pretty smoothly that day. We all were totally exhausted and ready to fall into our beds that evening!

The couple liked the house and shortly after, a contract was written up contingent on whether the house passed inspection or not. At that point we were kinda just waiting to hear from an inspector as to when he could come by. On March 5^th there was a shooting class at a nearby base which Noah and a few others went to. All the ladies and children came over and stayed the day at our house. What a fun day! We had around forty or so people that day and some were able to stay the night with us. That next day (a Friday) Noah and some other young guys, moved up Noah’s chickens to the Farm. We girls visited with company and just had a relaxed morning at home. The guys got back at lunch and as we were eating, there’s a knock on the door and guess who….yep, the inspector with the couple! 

Mrs. Jeanine and Momma catch up. 

“I’m no trouble, see?”

“So girls, where is the chocolate stash hid?”

Bekah’s now tested and approved famous cinnamon biscuits.

Yee-haw! I figured up and I believe we had around 18 younger boys that day. It was strange to think that Grace was the youngest girl.

Sharing stories.

Kressy and little Carlos.

Grammy gets to visit with Mr. Michael.

Whatz up?

If any craziness goes on, it happens in the kitchen. LOL!

Amanda surprised us with her company! Thanks for coming, we enjoyed it so much.

Lunch break.

Nehemiah: “Just smile and then she’ll leave.”

Why don’t you just add one more person and y’all might actually be able to touch ground. LOL!

Afternoon reading.

The result when everyone chooses the same landing spot. J 

Bekah.

Sister Acts.

Gracie.

Addie’s art #1….

and #2.

Thanks to the M.’s and their camera for these shots from the guys perspective!

Table full of hungry men!

Hugs good-bye.

Midnight smiles.

 Sometime around the middle of February we had a family meeting to talk about the upcoming events and schedule for the month. One of the topics discussed was the fact that Noah was going to have to permanently move up to the farm when he moved all his layers (almost 300) up there the first of March. As a result Daddy said he thought it was the right time to really start working on getting our house on the market. He knew that it wasn’t the ideal time for selling a house, but at this point we’d be willing to take what we could get from our house in order to keep from dividing up our family between two homes. What a great testimony it would be if God chose to sell our house in these difficult times.

That next week Momma and us girls worked around the house. We’d made a master list of tasks needing to be done or things fixed up around the house and we began to work on them in earnest. Daddy would stay up into the wee hours of the morning some nights touching up walls, repainting molding and baseboards, etc… jobs that couldn’t be done during the day when it might get messed up. 

Well, by the end of that week Daddy got a phone call from a couple who said they’d heard we were getting our house ready to sell and that they would probably want to buy it. Our reaction was kind of a stunned silence, yet with a feeling of thankfulness to the Lord for His continual Faithfulness. There was a great possibility that this wouldn’t even work out and God was just gonna teach us something through it. We were ready to listen and follow. 

You can imagine all the questions beginning to fill our heads. It’s one thing to just start fixin’ little things around the house and another to suddenly be thinking about actually having to move out! The beginning of the week we were comfortable in our home going about the normal schedule and by the end of the week there was the possibility of leaving it. Things were happening very fast!