Blogs are hard.
Blogs are especially hard when you have three growing boys, a full time job and a homestead to manage.
Blogs get even harder when you suddenly have to move. And that's where we find ourselves now.
My current home is unique in that it was built by a man over sixty years ago and is one of several around me that he built for his family. The man who built my home was named Wallace G. Rupp and while I never knew the man personally, I can tell a few things about him based on the home he built and the land he cultivated around it.
The first thing I can tell about Wallace is that family mattered a lot to him. This is evident in the home he built not just for his wife and many children, but for his sister, his neice, and for other members of his family. It's obvious in the way he completely rebuilt the house he'd started with when his children began to number more than five.
I can tell that he was an avid duck hunter. The theme of Malards runs through this house from the mailbox out front to the drawers in the kitchen to the gun room downstairs. He loved ducks.
I also know that he died in this house, in the room my middle son sleeps in now. Not that I've told him that, or ever will. He'd never sleep again.
I know that he was a scout master and I'm fairly sure he all of his sons are Eagle Scouts. Though I'm not positive about that one. I know that Wallace Rupp was a man that did his own thing. He built this house himself. And then rebuilt it. Everything from the electrical to the plumbing he did himself or with his boys.
Finally, I know that I am the only non family member to have ever lived in this house.
In the house directly to the north of mine is where Wallace built a home for his siste Dixi. I only met her once, but she was a very nice woman who taught me about the wild cherries that grew in the Backyard. She warned me about the worms and I will cherish that knowledge.
She passed, back in October.
Her family wasted little time in cleaning out her home and listing it for sale. My landlord, one of Wallace's sons, tried to buy it for himself. Mostly because there is a road that runs through the middle of our backyard and ends in hers. There's a large shop that belongs to Dixis house that can only be accessed via that road. But its really just part of our yard.
Unfortunately, the house sold for almost $40,000 over the asking price. The man who bought it is very nice and he runs a chain of amazing burger restaurants. And he's been overhauling the house. Neither of these houses has been updated since this 60's.
Even more unfortunate than that is when a house that needed so much work sold for so much money, my landlord looked at this house and began to see nothing but dollar signs.
A few days later he let me known that the house was going up for sale and then a few days after that he gave us our 30 day notice.
If you've seen any of our photos, you know that we've been putting a lot of hours into getting the garden here put back into working order.
Here's Tim tilling the group we cleared and covered in ash from the leaves and yard waste we'd gathered and burned. (With a permit from the city)
Hours of work and more money than I care to count was thrown into getting this ready. Now we won't be around to see it in Spring time.
The one good thing in all of this is that it's a chance for us to start over. Our little family is new and we've needed a fresh start. I got my boys out of California and to Utah, which was the first step. But this home is the last place I lived as another man's wife. And maybe it's time for us to get a new home. One that belongs to all of us.
It's just not the time for moving.
I just started a new job working as a 911 dispatcher and that's stressful. Starting a new job is stressful. Starting a job where lives might depend on what you do or don't do, is even more stressful.
The silver lining here is that we found a house. A really great house on two acres of land in a little suburb of SLC. It's a quiet neighborhood surrounded by people who are farmers themselves. It's perfect.
And we're not first in line.
There's a chance that the people ahead of us will drop out and we'll be able to get the house. But there is also chance that they won't. And by the time we find out for sure, we'll have less that three days to be out of the house we're in.
It's a hard call to make. And an even harder opportunity to pass up.
Now we have to decide, do we wait for our potentially perfect house, or refuse to roll the dice on a place for my family to live?
How do we start our new lives when we don't have the certainty of a home?
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