The Barn Has Life

Not only do we have 2 (and soon to be 3) horses living in our barn. We also have 2 kittens. The boys named them Taffy and Cookie and they are so cute!! What a difference a living barn makes - it smells so good and feels all right. Everyone is happy.

Life is good.

Um, a Clarification, or an Addition

After re-reading my previous post, I felt that, wow, that sounds trite, selfish, etc. Even though I'm the only one reading my blog, my attempt at brevity made me sound um, selfish. Especially after I read one of my favorite bloggers' post about her real estate challenges. So, I need to add something to my below post to help frame things a bit more. Which was what I had intended to do since starting this blog in November last year.

The only way we've been able to pull off our 'investment' is becuase my parents, wonderful grandparents, have retired and moved into the existing house on our property. Not only that, they are helping us greatly financially by providing day care for our kids 3 days a week. And I agreed to go back to work full time instead of part time and I agreed to go back to work 2 months earlier than originally planned. And, we decided that we needed to diversify our retirement investments out of our company's stock. (Both Miles and I work at the same company) into a more varied portfolio. But now we're almost all into real estate, so hmmm, maybe not 100% sound.

But, it does fulfill my lifelong dream of living on my own horse property so that I can have a horse (or two?) on my own property.

So, there will be a lot more posts about the 'farm' and our process of building a new house this year. And know that I am grateful every day for us to be able to fulfill this dream.

Peace.

One Step Closer

Last year was a crazy year. We closed on a 7 acre property with the intent to build a new house the day before Amber was born. I had to sign a power of attorney for Miles in case I wasn't going to be there for the signing. I think Amber wanted that property as much as I did. Visions of horses and 4-H and space and close to work and retirement and not working, etc.

We knew it would be a lot of work and we knew that it would take some time. The property is in the county, but borders the city. In order to build a house, we would have to sub-divide. In order to sub-divide, we would have to annex. This whole process could take months to a year. During the time we were working on our annexation, our land attorney pointed out that there was a glitch on the original sub-division that would prevent us from building our dream house. No big deal, but added several more months to our ordeal.

So yesterday, the city had the public hearing where our project was brought forth to the community. There were several neighbors that came to hear what our plans were and to ask a few questions. Turns out they were more interested to hear what the city had planned for this area. It is in a really hot growth area for the city and people don't want to see those horse properties go. I don't blame them and I'm hoping that our project will set a precedent and the development that happens on these few precious lots stays urban estate with horses. Time will tell.

In the meantime, we've passed our annexation hurdle and we're on to the sub-division. We have a lot of work to do and we have to find a builder, but it feels like we're now actually making some progress.

Maybe we'll be in our new house by Christmas. (maybe...)