Where we are headed!

I promised I would give you an update on the future of where the Cook family is headed.  Well, there has been a change of plans.  We originally had planned on building at the farm on part of the land that Sara owned.  Well, after finding out that we couldn't really build a house that would fit our growing family and get a survey done on the land without being about 15k over budget, we were back to the drawing board.  The most obvious answer to us was to move close-by.  We chose Brownsburg which is about 20 minutes from the farm and about 20 minutes from Wes' work.  We also liked the idea because the kids could get the "farm experience" by visiting and still live in the city close to friends and church with no problem.  We have been looking for homes and we think we found one.  It is a short sale so who knows how long it will take to close on, but the good news is that our offer is the only one they accepted and they have taken it off the market.  We're hoping that all those things point to us getting the house!  We are also hoping that we can move straight from our house here in Noblesville to our house in Brownsburg.  That might be too tall of an order, but a girl can hope can't she?  Here are a few pictures of it! 

Here's a better view of the house and garage.

We are hoping to get this house.  When we walked through it, the possibilites were endless.  There was even a secret door in one of the bedrooms!  How fun is that if you are a 5 year old boy...or a 30 year old boy for that matter!  And there is so much room for our family.  You would not believe how much I have been itching to get into a new place.  My secret hobby is decorating and I can't wait to start working!  The house that we offered on is pretty much a blank slate.  It has newer carpet and neutral paint so I am excited to bring some new colors to the space.  I think I will bring some of the colors from our house in Noblesville just because I'm not sick of them yet but I think I will introduce some new ones as well!

Things at the farm are going along well.  There is so much work to be done that I joked to Sara that I don't think we will ever be done.  The inside of the house is looking good but the outside and the "barn side" as we call it are in need of some major TLC.  Sara has been running herself ragged trying to get things done.  It's not easy to keep up on work when just mowing the lawn can take hours.  She is still keeping up with the chickens!  We have lost about 8 of the chickens so far to different things like animals, sickness, etc.  I guess they say that that's to be expected.  Our laying chickens are getting nice and big but they still have a few months to go before they start popping out eggs.  Our meat chickens are getting huge!!  They will be ready to give their lives so that I can make fried chicken in about a month.  It's a tough sacrafice to make, but someone has to do it!

There definitely have been bumps in the road such as broken down tractors, not having the right equipment to get jobs done, getting on each other's nerves, people not seeing eye to eye, etc.  We knew that things wouldn't always be perfect and we were right!  But if you're going to undertake such a huge project, why not do it with people you have to spend the rest of your life with anyway? :)

The future is starting to get clearer now and we are getting more and more excited!