Saturday, January 26, 2013

Chapter Two: Heading North



We quickly realized after we started packing that maybe we have severely underestimated the amount of things that we had.  It didn’t seem like so much when it was packed into all those nooks and crannies.  Now that we were being forced to pull it all out…  well, it became almost embarrassing as to how much stuff we had.  I’d always hated the materialistic side of American life that focused on name brands and fancy items and while we didn’t have very much of that at all, we did have a lot of the stuff that I liked to refer to as “purposeful.”  Can’t leave the apple peeler behind!  Or all the canning equipment and jars that I’d stocked up on several years back!  We had to have had at least 10 dozen empty jars that we’d collected in anticipation for the hot bath.  Because…  you know…  mason jars are absolutely essential to a homesteader! 

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Chapter One: It started with a Homebirth



I knew (obviously) that December would be a busy month.  I knew that if everything went as planned, that I would have our sixth baby and then hopefully move just a few weeks later all the way from South Carolina to northern Minnesota shortly after Christmas. 

December 10th was the first milestone.  I wasn’t technically due(ish) until the 17th, but I figured number six would come at least a bit early.  Besides…  number five had been born early.  Our other son’s (we were about to have our second son) birthday was the tenth and I had thought that it would be cool to have the baby on that day.  Remy, who was about to turn four, also considered it to be a cool possibility.  I am not entirely sure if he would have thought it was near as awesome when he was fifteen…  but it didn’t matter, because the tenth came and went with nothing.