Welcome to our adventure

Welcome to our adventure- seemed extra fitting for not only a door hanger for our next “home” but our life in general.

Since the beginning, Joel and I have done things anything but normal.  We started out way too young, having a baby when we were still kids ourselves.  We worked hard, made mistakes, and opted to never give up no matter what.  I remember buying our first house at 18 years old.  We barely consulted anyone and just decided we wanted to make our own way, knowing we would mess up at times.  That was before we had whole heartedly put our trust in Jesus but rather whole heartedly tried to do it all on our own.  (spoiler alert, God is better at it than we are!)

Somewhere along the way things changed,  Jesus swept in and helped shake things up for us!  We started looking more at a big picture and evaluating our hearts and the paths we were on.  Did they take us where we were trying to go?  Nope!  We realized priorities needed to change and so everything in our life started shifting.  This is when we started making choices that people didn’t understand.  We got lots of questions all the time about the direction change we had made.

You see, we made a lot of choices in the beginning that set us on paths we didn’t want to be on.  The world would see these choices as normal, but as time went on, we realized we wanted on a different path because the one we had put ourselves on wasn’t taking us where we wanted to go.  Getting there hasn’t been easy, but we are trying hard to correct, move forward, and not get back on path full of debt and in the moment choices.

2 years ago we bought a piece of land.  A month later we had our 5th child.  10 days after she was born, our family of 7 moved into a camper.  Yep!  We lived in the camper for 7 months until the house was far enough along that we could move in.  We lived without cabinets or sinks for a while, but got use to using the bathtub for everything!

We fell in love with our house quickly!  Every detail was done with our family in mind.  From the  layout to the finishes, this was ours!  We have a heart for hosting and loving on others and when we built the house that was one of the things we kept in mind.  It didn’t take long before we were ready to utilize the perfect entertaining space and we started hosting people before we had cabinets!  The house was wonderful and we loved it all.

After living in the house 8 months something happened.  We realized that selling our house, the one we poured our hearts into and loved so much, would help us stay on the path that lead us where we wanted to go.  After praying a ton and having lots of conversations weighing the decision, we decided we were going to sell.  It was a hard choice but one we felt good about.

2 years after buying our property, we sold our house.  Bittersweet for sure.  It wasn’t our original plan but we see God’s hand in every single detail.  (one day maybe I will share it all here!)

So what is next.  That is what we get asked daily.  Where are you moving?  What are you doing?  Are you living in the camper again?

We are building a shop.  The shop will be our home while we build the next house.  We are use to unusual and we tend to think that if we made it in the camper, we can probably live about anywhere!  The shop will be a lot more room than the camper was and we all know it is temporary.  We plan to do lots of adventures soon and maybe, just maybe I will get better at regularly writing about them all!

Here is to adventure!  May you find it in your own way, enjoy it, and learn from it!