Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Coming Clean, Getting Real, Fessing Up (Part Two)

When we filed bankruptcy, our goal was to save our house.  We've lived here for almost 13 years now.  Perhaps it's not so much that we wanted to stay here, but rather we didn't want to have to pack everything up and move it all somewhere else.  Do you know how much stuff a family of 12 collects over that many years????  And yes, we do wish that we could continue to live here since we've invested so much of our life here--our farm animals, building up our garden area, our orchard, our warehouse that holds our business materials, our pets, etc...  But since we can't make the Chapter 13 payments anymore, Chapter 7 is our only recourse.  If we were to be able to keep the house with Chapter 7 we would have to pay the amount outstanding (over $10,000 now) and that isn't an option.  So "pack it all up" is our new reality.

So where are we going, you ask.  We are blessed that DH's parents have an available mobile home (rental) that we can move into north of St. Louis next door to their place.  It's small.  We are planning to keep our RV so that we will have enough room for our family to live in.  The RV will house our daughters and the mobile home the rest of us (me, DH and the 3 little boys).

We don't have room for farm animals there so we've found new homes for them--which has all but broke my heart!
Some of our Shetland Sheep

 Some of our Nubian Goats

My favorite Nubian doe.

We will be taking our 3 dachshunds and our older black lab/chow mix dog Lila.  She is actually Son #1's dog but he isn't able to take her since he lives on a highway with no fence (we will have a nice, large fenced in back yard).  We will be living next to the highway as well so cannot take the cats (I highly doubt they would stay in the backyard!).  And of course the parakeets will be coming with us too.

So we still have yet to find homes for the 4 cats and Great Pyrenees dog Daisy. The GP is worth quite a bit and a great guard dog--but I can't even seem to give her away. I hate to think of what might become of our pets--especially our cats. We have a friend whom I haven't seen in some time who does rescue work that I may have to call.

We are trying to approach this as an adventure (which is what life is, isn't it?) and see the positives.  I will have a large space to garden in and DH's parents have a large above-ground pool the children love to swim in.  We will be closer to many great places to shop (Whole Foods Mkt. and Michaels), attractions to visit (museums, St. Louis Zoo, Six Flags) and favorite restaurants (Lions Choice and White Castle).  This is the area we used to live in.  Essentially, we are coming full circle.  We got married and lived next door to DH's parents in one of their rental places and then moved away--many moves!--and now we are returning to where we started.  It feels right.  Sad, but right.

I considered changing the name of my blog with the move but where we are moving is still our "heritage" since this is where my husband grew up and will probably inherit someday (in the very distant future hopefully!).  So perhaps my blog name is even more fitting.  Granted, our homested will be of the more urban variety but I'm feeling up for the challenge.  :-)

I would deeply appreciate prayer for our family.  Change is hard for us.  I'm not sure how soon we can get everything moved but we're hoping to have it all done before mid-April or sooner.  I will continue to post here about our daily life and of our progress with the move.  Thanks for patiently bearing with my long drawn out tale if you've made it this far!!  <3

2 comments:

dulce de leche said...

Love and prayers for a smooth and peace-filled transition. <3

Fruitful Harvest said...

Hi Kris,

My thoughts and prayers have been with you! I'm sorry I have not been by sooner! I'm so glad to hear you will still have a garden. I will pray that you find loving homes for all your animals!

Love,
Georgiann