I was trying to wait with this post until I had some more beautiful photos of the house.  But I don’t know when we’ll get back out there and I need to get on with the explanation for:

1. why are we moving to flat land when I had told you “Hill Country”?
2. why will we only be there for 2 or 3 years?
3. why do we get to move to such a nice place, clearly out of our league?
4. why is it partially furnished?

The answer to all these questions can be summed up in two words.

House sitting.

My dear friend and her husband and kids must go to Korea for the Army for 2 years.  They don’t want to sell their house since he is so close to retirement.  They hope to get to come right back after the Korea tour, but the Army might decide they want him somewhere else for his last year in the Army.  So, the plan is for my family to live in the house for whatever time they end up being gone.

We’ll be taking care of the place and making some improvements for them.  They have very similar goals to ours as far as rabbits, goats, chickens etc. so any pens and coops and cages we build will continue in use after they return.

There you have it.  Short and sweet!  Sorry I don’t have any more photos.  I’ll take more next time we’re out there.

See that group of trees on the left?

Now, see the big tree just on the left of the highway?

Turn left and come up the driveway.

Pass the wildflower meadow there on the right.

Let’s sit on the front porch for a while and enjoy a hot cuppa.  (We shall try to ignore the air-soft war being waged  among the various teen-aged boys present.)

Then we can go out to the hay barn and imagine where my boys will build the chicken coop and put the rabbit cages.

Next we can have a look at the old cow shed and imagine a happy little herd of milk goats frolicking about.

It’s gonna take a little bit of perimeter care, but it’s just perfect for the small stock farm I’ve longed for, lo, these many suburbia years!

I think I’m gonna need some farm boots!

This is the place we’re moving to in June.  It’s a long story and I am too excited for all those words right now,  I’ll fill ya in on some of the details later.

For now though . . .

• 25 miles from church and work
• 11 acres
• 4 bedrooms
• 4 living areas (wild, eh?)
• 3½ bathrooms
• large laundry room
• huge closets and lots of ‘em
• converted garage
• covered porch, patio and gazebo
• fenced playground
• fenced, in-ground pool
• basketball court
• archery range
• knife throwing range
• wildflower meadow
• garage
• small chicken coop
• shed
• hay barn
• cow (goat) shed, fenced (mostly)
• fenced vegetable garden area (huge!)
• go-cart track
• pastures
• no neighbors

I’m sure I’m leaving some things out, but the butterflies in my stomach are on parade after having made that list for ya, so I’m gonna leave it at that.

God provided the perfect place for our family to spend the next two or three years.

Rejoice with us!

It’s Spring Break in San Antonio, and I barely noticed.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but I know I’m not, shouldn’t Spring Break happen during the Springtime?  Just a thought.

I really do enjoy times when the incarcerated children aren’t required to report, because that means we won’t be glared at over the fence by all our neighbors if we dare to venture out into our back yard during “school hours”.

I would have chosen a different week for it.  Maybe sometime during the next season called Spring.  Just sayin’.

Even so, we have had some uncommonly beautiful weather the past several days.  It’s due to rain maybe  tomorrow or more likely, Saturday.

You’ll remember that I’m not planting a garden this Spring due to our imminent move sometime in June.  But there is something very compelling about all that sunshine.  I’m planting a container garden, but that’s so limited.  I’ve never done a container tomato plant before, peppers either.  I still haven’t planted the lettuce and spinach seeds, but the buckets are ready.

We’re looking for lots of baby rabbits next weekend.  See?  Rabbits understand about Spring.

Parsley outside my backdoor!

El Niño, La Niña,  whatever, I forget how it goes, but I think that due to the oppressive heat we had this Summer, we are having a very wet Winter.  Or maybe the wet Winter is a harbinger of a mild Summer to come?  I don’t know, but we have had rain near ’bout every four days ’round these parts all Winter long!  I’ll try not to complain because I know we have it very easy in the Winter.  This is our time to shine!   We seldom get snow, and when we do, it’s hardly anything to worry about.  Also, the rain we’ve gotten lately is sorely needed.  So, I’ll try to not sound too whiney.  OK?  I’ll try.

Never buy plastic fencing, even though it’s cheaper than the wire fences.

BUT!

I’m really sick of the mud, and the kids being in the house so much.  See, one of the trade offs that Texans are so proud of is that even though we huddle indoors listening to the humm of the a/c for most of the Summer, which, by the way, lasts about eight months here, the pay off comes in the Winter when we can enjoy the truly mild (yesterday the high was 79°) field trip weather.  Perfect for going to the Zoo, or bird watching, or cleaning up a long neglected backyard!

I’ve had it with the rain and the resultant mud, and we have mud!  After our record breaking heat and drought this past Summer, there is no lawn, just mud Mud MUD!

Rabbit cages, clothes lines, and dirt lawn – it’s the Redneck Tri-fecta!

Today is a great day.  It’s sunny, dry and 50°, so there is work going on out back.  If I had focused on laundry instead of rabbit breeding this morning I might have even hung some laundry on the line.  That’s ok, first things first.

Tomorrow the forcast calls for more mud in the form of rain AND snow.  I have my doubts about the white stuff.  My kids have still never even seen it, and likely some of them doubt if it’s a really and truly real thing.  At least we’ll enter into this weeks wetness with a cleaned up yard!

I don’t know why I did it this way, making it last a whole week.  I know some of y’all have forgotten.  Some have lost interest.  some weren’t even aware there was a giveaway.

So I decided to post a reminder.

Go to my post titled New Phone Service? and leave me a helpful bit of advice in the comments.

Last person to comment before 2pm cdt today wins a prize!  That’s only 3 hours from now!

What is the prize?  Well, click here to find out!

My van is gone!  Yay!

You’ll remember that our old, beat up, huge van broke down for the last time in May.  My plan was to donate it to charity right away, but that plan was foiled due to clutter obscuring my extra sensory perception failing to discern the location of the title.  GRR!!!

This past Saturday we got a visit from our friendly City Code Compliance Officer!  Turns out there’s a law ‘gainst having a non-working vehicle on the premises.  We were given ten days notice.

THAT got the title found in a big hurry!  Took us about 2 hours, but Hubs finally located it under some clutter he had stacked up for no good reason.  Never mind, the clutter is all put away thrown out now.

And while I was searching in my files for the title I found the number for the Purple Heart Car Donation Program, where we sent our last Suburban when it died.

I know, I kinda personify my cars, but y’all, when you have to drive a car that seats 8 or more, and you’re on a tight budget, you find you are very appreciative when you have one that works out!  So appreciative that it leans toward personification.  I don’t name my vehicles.  That’s just too far for me.  But I will tell you that I refer to my new white Suburban as “My lovely Suburban” almost every time I talk about it.  That’s not weird, right?  RIGHT???

Anyway, the point of all this meandering is that yesterday was the day!  The tow truck arrived!  The man loaded our old van and drove away!

I’m so relieved!  It’s wonderful to not risk a fine from the ridiculous Code Compliance folks, but more than that, it’s another big step in our preparation for moving house!

I finally have all my kids at home for the whole day all at once.  When you have teens this just happens more and more seldom.

And since they’re all here and our city has decided that it is time for my neighborhood to have our wonderful brush and rubbish pick-up AND it’s the last time we’ll have this service for free before we move . . . it’s time for the boys to be cleaning out the garage!  BIG TIME!

I love it!  I am a closet minimalist.  I love LOVE love seeing all this clutter go out to the curb.

They are unearthing lots of junk I forgot we ever owned, much less kept.  What is the matter with us?

When we move we may very likely move to a place with no garage.  That would be a huge adjustment for us.  I do hope so.  Less clutter storage!

Anyway, I wrote this whole post to tell you about the phones.

Once upon a time we had a home phone.  The kind that actually plugs into the wall.

So, Tex brought these weird phones with all their cords and plugs and hugeness into the house to make sure that they were supposed to go into the Goodwill box.

Here’s the rub.

Sally Mae saw them.

And you know how girls are!  It’s coded into the DNA to NEED to talk on phones.  She almost cried when I told Tex that, no, we don’t want to keep them and, yes, please put them into the give away box.

I have to admit, I hate when she cries.  But it occurred to me to use a sneaky diversion tactic on my sweet, little phone-lovin’ girl.  I asked her why it made her sad to see those phones go.  She admitted that she thought they were neat and that we should USE them.  (See? DNA.)  But I was ready for her.  I told her that, while those phones might still actually be functional, they only work when you are at home!  Can you imagine?  How inconvenient is that?!?!!!

She dropped the idea like a hot potato.  Those neat phones, full of mysterious buttons, lost all their charm once she realized you don’t keep them in your purse!

I recently quipped to a friend, “Hey!  It’s 2010 now!  Where the heck is my flying car?!?!!”

I’ve decided it’s cool enough that I have children who have no idea what a dial tone is.

There’s a giveaway at the end of this post!  But it’s not a phone.

I love my cell phone.  I have an unlimited minutes kind of plan.  Watching minutes makes me nervous, so I love this plan.  I’m a grown up, so I don’t text much.  I have texted in my life, I’m just not proficient.

Thing is…

When we move I will have to change service providers and texting might become more prominent in my life at that point!

My little phone I use gets no service where we are going!

GRR!!!

How is that even possible?  Have you looked at what year it is?  I mean, it starts with a 2 for cryin’ out loud!  And we’re already in the double digits!  Not only do I not have a flying car yet, my cell phone can’t get service in the Hill Country!  I suddenly feel like we’re moving to Mars!

So, here’s the deal.

I need your advice.  Good, bad, indifferent.  I need to learn about other cell phone service plans, providers, roaming, blah, blah, blah…

Who do you use?  What does it cost you?  Do you like it?  What kind of phone do you have?  Should I spring for the iPhone?  ’Cuz I totally could have some fun with a gadget like that!

This is de-lurking day!

Everybody has an opinion on cell phones, right?  Lemme know what you think!  Leave a comment!  I promise it won’t hurt!  And then, next Wednesday, January 27th, I’ll give a prize to the last person to leave a comment with cell phone advice, by 2 p.m. cst! That is, the last comment posted by 2 p.m., no promises on what time I’ll reveal the winner, but it’ll be sometime after 2 on Wednesday afternoon.

Fun, huh?

Here’s a hint, you can comment more than once if you have something fresh to offer, up to three entries per person.  But spamming or just being annoying will get you deleted.

Would you like to know what I’m giving away?

Well, it’s something you’ve always wanted!  Even if you already have it, you want another one to give to your girl-friend.

It’s a copy of the book Passionate Housewives Desperate for God by Jennie Chancey and Stacy McDonald.

This book is provided by my wonderful sons, Tex and Hank.  I can only ship this to addresses in the continental U.S., so if you live elsewhere and still want to enter, you’ll have to have an address in the lower 48 for me to ship it to, ‘k?

You may remember that we are getting ready to move house in a few months.  We’ve lived in this house for goin’ on eighteen years, and saying that makes me feel like a geezer.

The thing is. . . there is an, um, an accumulation.  An accumulation of CLUTTER!  Good grief.

I am so glad I have teen age boys who are willing to clean the garage for room and board.  They’re glad about that too.  They’re kind of attached to the whole concept of room and board.

There was a big difference made in the garage last Tuesday.

The boys took a little break to try and hack into our ancient 486.

Remember this post about how to let kids learn to ride a bike on their own by taking the pedals off for a day?  What a grand idea that was, except for the part where we couldn’t remember where we put Sally Mae’s bike pedals.  That was a few months ago.  My poor baby has been entertaining herself with her scooter all this time, patiently waiting for us to find her pedals and fix her bike.  Poor kid.

Well, during the clean up the pedals were found!  She’s been ready for those pedals for a long time.  She hardly needed any help before she looked like an old hand at bike riding!

Look at her go!

I thought about being teary eyed over the whole thing.  You know, my B.A.B.Y. has learnt to ride a bike!  Then I realized that she is gonna be able to entertain herself for hours and get massive amounts of exercise, all with only minimal assistance from me.  It’s a whole new level of freedom I hadn’t seen coming!  I decided to chuck the tears and indulge in leaping.for.joy!!!

This is what I’m gonna do with some of that free time and space!