Eastburn Adventures

We had our annual trip with Steve and Ginger planned for the end of August, and for various reasons, ended up having to cancel those plans. It’s all good, because now we know that we needed the time to move. But that didn’t affect that we managed to grab another slick deal for airline miles back to Maui, for the second time in 10 months.

We came to the island to celebrate our 10th anniversary in December 2012, and it was a little bit of a letdown. The ocean was too rough to get in, which limited beach time, Cheeseburger in Paradise was closed the entire week we were there, and of course, the power outage our first day. So basically, this trip was Happy Anniversary, Redux.

I’ll let the photos do the talking. For more photos, check out my Flickr set.

I have to remind myself sometimes that this really is a knitting blog, even though of late it’s been more about house progress and a travelogue. I mentioned a few posts ago that the majority of our belongings have been boxed up for storage for possibly a year, but that also includes my yarn and fiber stash. There’s simply not the room to spread out and take over the house with my knitting and spinning like I did before.

As I was packing away my stash in tubs, I was as brutal as possible about what would make the cut to stay out. If I picked up a skein and said, “Oh, yeah, I was going to make X out of this,” and I still was interested in making X, it got to live in the shelves again. If it was a “Oh, this is really pretty and I want to make something with it but don’t know what,” depending on the yarn it might or might not have been packed away. Some of my Dancing Dog Dyeworks yarn fell into this category. If it was skeins of sweater yarn that I knew I didn’t have time for, or yarns I really didn’t have a plan for, then to the tubs they went.

Now, of course, what will happen is a new pattern will be released and that the perfect yarn is carefully packed away. I imagine I’ll get into those tubs a few times over the next year. But for now, I have a plan.

We have a well! Well, ok. Steve and Ginger have a well, and when we build, we’ll have shared well rights with them. That’s one more thing we don’t have to worry about when we start!

We knew that Steve and Ginger were going to break ground for their new home before us, which was fine with us because that meant they get to figure things out first and we benefit from their experience. However, since we’re building on adjacent land, we’ve got a vested interest in their process.

First up, as part of building, we needed to have electricity run to our property. The utility company installed a new pole from the existing wires across the street, no problem. We want to have our lines buried, however, so that meant having a 4-foot deep trench dug from the street to the approximate backs of our future homes.

Did I mention that our land is situated on top of what must have been part of the Ozark Mountains? Yep, there’s some pretty solid bedrock under the dirt. Steve’s and Ginger’s builder was able to have most of the trench dug with the exception of three spots that required some additional heavy machinery. But it’s done, and that’s one less thing we’ll have to worry about when the time comes for us to start the building process.

[Time for another series of posts to catch up with everything.]

As I’ve mentioned, we’ve purchased some acreage where we plan to build our “forever home.” We thought we’d probably have to wait a couple of years before starting to build, but God has a way of using challenging situations to provide amazing blessings. In short, about a month ago we started moving into my dad’s house, where we’ll stay until our new home is built. This move allowed us to put our house on the market sooner, and hopefully sell it quickly as the market starts to rebound. A small inventory of homes our size, with a basement, and our price range is a good sign for us as sellers.

But a temporary move is not without its own issues. There’s no need to decorate, so after going through all of our belongings (and divesting of multiple car loads of things and furniture), we’ve packed up what we don’t need now, but probably will need later. It’s going to be like Christmas finding our personal items and photos and such when we do finally unpack them, but I imagine the divesting will continue as well. One thing we’ve learned is that we don’t need so much stuff.

So the majority of our belongings are now contained in the ubiquitous Rubbermaid tubs and a plethora of Chick-fil-A fry boxes. Our house is on the market, and we’re hoping to have an offer soon.

Oh, and the furbabies are doing just fine with the move. Fred hid under the bed the first few days, but he’s adapted well, and Wally is happy to have a bed all to herself and access to a closet. As for the dogs, they agree with us – moving is hard work.