So, now that we are moved onto the property, I want to give you a little taste of life at the Maddox house.
The first thing Grant does in the morning is put on his shoes and head outside to play with the dogs.  Since we have moved here he has learned to put on his own shoes, which he insists are always on the right feet.  If you want to find Grant in the morning, just follow the sounds of a toddler laughing and dogs playfully yipping.  Thank goodness he isn't a quite child...  I know he is okay as long as I can hear him.

Bella is as sassy and independent as ever.  Today she grabbed the box Matt's new high wheel line trimmer (more on that later) came in and anounced it was the "playhouse".  She then proceeded to take every last arts and craft item in our home out to her playhouse and decorate it inside and out.  (Where was her mother as she made this huge mess, you ask?  Good question.  And since I'm not positive at what point in our morning she decided this was the activity of the day, I'm not sure.  Maybe I'm getting a little too secure in the whole if you can hear them, they are okay theory.)  We then spent the rest of the day arguing over who should clean up her mess.  Her stance was that it was too big of a mess for a four-year-old to tackle and mine was that if she made the mess, she can clean the mess.  Ever the negotiator, she managed to get Gwenny to clean it all up for her when she came home from school.  Gwenny mentioned this to me, and now Bella is off crafts for a week.  To which she replied, "That's okay mom, I did all the crafts I need to this week today, anyway."  Oh Bella... I have my work cut out for me. 

George is definitely adjusting to life with room to run.  I don't have to tell him not to "battle" in the house.  Battling is what George calls his imaginary play.  Mostly because it always consists of some type of fighting, whether he is in a jousting tournament at Medieval Times or using his sharp Kung Fu moves on an intruder.  It drives me crazy when he does this in the house because he runs everywhere, jumping off of any piece of furniture he can get onto and making all kinds of loud and interesting sound effects.  It seems like since he was old enough to walk I have been telling him, "No battling in the house."  Well, that ended when we moved here.  I don't have to tell him to go outside to battle because he is always outside. And now he can use sticks as weapons without me throwing them away or hiding them from him because there is plenty of room for him  to swing sticks without killing any siblings (at least so far). 

Sweet Gwenny....  Ever the pleaser, she has adjusted well and taken the mommy role in so many ways.  She taught Grant to put on his shoes in the mornings when I was still trying to get my sorry self out of bed.  She helps pick up everything, and that really is a short end of the stick for her since she is only with us about 1/3 of the time and with her other mommy the rest.  This means she doesn't make nearly as many of the messes her siblings do and she ends up cleaning up lots of them, like today with Bella's little playhouse decorating mess.  Since the room the kids are sharing right now is pretty tiny, we have 2 loft beds for George and Bella and a port-a-crib for Grant to sleep in.  Gwenny's bed is a mattress that we put on the floor when she is with us and up against a wall when she isn't.  I didn't want her to feel like she wasn't a permanent fixture in this house, so when I told her about the mattress bed, I told her she could pick whatever bed she wanted to sleep in and George or Bella could sleep on the mattress.  I never would have guessed her reaction.  She stated firmly she wanted the mattress on the floor and when George and Bella complained that they wanted to sleep there, she was firm.  That was her bed.  It would be okay if they borrowed it while she was at her other house, but when she is with us that is where she will be sleeping, period.  That was a pretty firm stance for our girl who often can be talked into anything.  Who knew the mattress on the floor would be the coolest place to sleep!

Matt and I are... tired?  Excited?  Happy?  Overwhelmed?  I think all of the above.  We love it here.  There is a tremendous amount of work to be done, but we are enjoying every moment.  We have never worked so hard, slept so little, collaborated so much, or communicated so clearly as we have in our new home.  Work is everywhere, so we are having to be intentional about making sure we spend time doing other things, both just the two of us and with our kids, but we are managing.  We have kind of accepted that the work won't ever be done, but that it will sometimes keep until tomorrow.  So a date with one of the kids, or a night out for us is worth puting the work off for one more day.  It will be there tomorrow.

Matt knows how hard it is for me to relax with everything such a mess in our home, so last weekend when we went to the Black Hat fundraiser for his work, he also rented a room at a Bed and Breakfast in Sonora.  The kids had gone overnight with his parents to our nephew's first birthday party, so we had a night away with no kids.  He researched every bed and breakfast until he found one with a big jacuzzi bath tub.  I love to take baths and that really isn't an option here, so he thought I would enjoy a hot, relaxing, quiet bath.  And he was very right.  The night away was wonderful, and I wasn't surrounded by clutter or a to-do list a mile long.

Matt has started clearing the weeds on the property...  And that is quite a job.  They are already about waist high.  He started with his weed eater and got quite a bit done, but then decided his birthday present this year needed to be a weedeater on wheels.  So he bought one Saturday and has really gone to work.  That poor high wheeled line trimmer has no idea what it is in for.  Today Matt built our compost container while I got to work prepping the garden for planting.  It was pretty over grown, so I started pulling everything up.  There were some old herbs, but they had gotten pretty woody, so I pulled them up along with some strangler berry bushes and a whole lot of weeds.  It was quite a days work, but it felt so good to begin work on our very own garden. 

Matt saved my neck (actually my back) today.  Last year when I planted the garden we have shared with my Grandmother at her house for quite a few years I got a very interesting sunburn.  Not my face, or shoulders...  It was on my back.  Don't you wear a shirt in the garden, you ask?  Why yes, I do.  The shirt however kind of crawls up as I work the ground and my pants kind of crawl down, so it leaves a very tender area of skin exposed that I never think to put sunscreen on because it is covered by clothes when I go outside to begin working.  Now this wonderful little sunburn I acquired last year had some very interesting names...  Plumber-burn, tramp-sun-stamp, crack-peel...  I could go on and it became quite the source of fun for my family as they watched me grimace when I wore jeans and every movement made the waist band rub on my sunburn.  It was quite memorable, and very uncomfortable.  How I could have forgotten about that in a year, I have no idea, but I was headed there again today.  Matt came home from getting a hair cut and kind of grinned at me like he had a big secret as I pulled weeds in the garden.  He laughed and asked if I was using protection.  I'm thinking, gloves?  He pointed to my back and asked if I had used sunscreen on my back.  We wouldn't want a repeat of last year's tramp-stamp experience.  Will I ever learn?  I am happy to report that I made it through the day with no waist band burns, however, and I do plan to use protection tomorrow!

So that's life at the Maddox house these days.  Spending time outside, working, figuring out how to fit all of us into a tiny mobile home.  It really is wonderful, and we are loving it.  But I can tell you one thing...  We sure are looking forward to moving into the "big" 1100 square foot farmhouse!

It has been quite a while since I have posted and our life has been full of changes.  First off, we moved into the mobile home on the property.  As we got further into redoing the main house we realized that we wanted more time to do the kind of job that the house really needs and paying rent and mortgage for another month or two seemed silly.  Also, now that we are on the property we don't have to go home for naptime and bed time and try to keep the kids on some sort of schedule, which makes finding time to work on the house much easier.

Having said all of that... Having six people in about 700 square feet has been quite the adventure.  We are definitely learning to be close to one another and how much stuff we have that we really don't need. 

We moved in officially on April 21st.  We spent the middle part of April prepping the mobile, painting the master in the main house and packing.  After we moved in here, we spent the next week getting all our stuff into storage cleaning the house we had rented for the next renters.  Then Matt had to leave for a week on business, so the kids and I were on our own getting settled in. 

There are two important things that came out of that week:  First, I am no longer scarred to be alone out here.  Having the buildings full and people around has cured that, thank God!  I was a little nervous about being here on our own for the week, but we did great.  Now, lets be real...  I don't walk around this place after dark without the lights on, but I haven't ever done that anywhere, so while there have been no miraculous changes in my personality, I am really feeling at home here.

The second thing that is important to note is that I have decided this mobile home will never be clean, picked up, or have a place for all of our belongings.  I have to get over my compulsive need for everything to be in it's place and just get to work on the main house so we can move in.  My children's playroom will be organized when it is a play room and not their bedroom.  Our clothes will all be put away when there are places to put them and our home office will be tidy when it is only an office and not the master bedroom.  This is an exercise in overcoming OCD and I am going to embrace it and use it as motivation.  (Anyone who knows me well is snickering right now.  I hate being in a cluttered environment, but the good news is that I am finding myself spending lots of time outdoors!)

So, we are moved in and honestly, we are loving it.  Tonight Matt and I were talking after the kids were in bed and Matt said, "Who would have thought a 700 square foot mobile would be my dream home!"

We are so truly blessed.