Well, I finally have a moment to write, while my Hub is away attending a family funeral. What a voluminous book of life has happened in the years of my writing absence.

Our timeline includes:

1) renovating our Mountain home in Colorado. It was a beautiful spread up at 8400ft with no neighbors for miles and a small lake of our own. We spent two years renovating the place after it had all but been abandoned by a Chinese family (who inherited it) but didn’t realize the problems that happen in an Alpine Desert, if a home is left to the elements.

We had quite an adventure cleaning out coyote nests and pack rat yuck.

When we, finally, moved from Missouri to Colorado, we began to experience break-ins and troubles. We soon realized that we could not take the Egg down our half mile drive … and not have the all of the valley floor know we were away. Though we loved our 200 isolated acres of piñon pines and the exquisite Mountain Views in our private valley, we realized we needed to be armed at all times…and not just for protection from the beautiful bears and mountain lions we saw each day. If we stayed we would have to secure live-in house sitters each time we wanted to camp…there went our signature spontaneous get always. None of that was easy since we knew no one out there.

So, I sent up a prayer for us to learn all that we needed to learn about the ranch and have a clear sign if we were to leave. Boy, did God provide signs. One tough thing after another happened. What doesn’t kill you keeps you strong, right?!

So, then, another prayer went up. I prayed for just the right buyers at just the right time. And they came. A family was moving back to the valley from the East coast. We were able to be out by the holidays.

2) We began to live in the Egg. We traveled all throughout the West. We had so many wonderful adventures. I had big plans of writing them all up but I was so exhausted by all the CO happenings, I just couldn’t get myself to write.

We learned we are really home base kind of people. So, we began to wonder where we should land. That is a huge question if you have few family ties and a world at your feet. We started to take inventory. We love the four seasons, we love the trees, we love mountains and rolling hills, we love rivers, lakes and oceans but not the crowds of people that flock to them. We learned that privacy should not mean isolation. We also learned that a 5 hour round trip to Home Depot is untenable.

3) So, it felt right to just come back to the Midwest, find a little place in the woods not far from where we still had friends, and settle with the aim of being out in the Egg for months at a time.

Well, we were looking right in the middle of a crazy housing market. We wanted something a little unusual, in the country but not far from the city. Let me tell you, that was not an easy ticket. In a year of looking, we only found a handful of homes that felt right and each time we were over bid by so much that the value to cash outlay was comical. We lived in the Egg while house shopping and met some lovely people doing the same: nomads, a group of nomads. A lot of that was quite fun.

Finally, we found a home in the lower Ozarks that felt right…on which we still had to overpay… and that needed way too much renno. (I’m beginning to think we either like renno or we are gluttons for punishment.)

But, all the signs were there. I’m big on asking for signs. The first sign was that the home had a very unique mailbox. It’s a custom box, only a few were made…and it is the sibling of the box that once stood outside my parents home in Michigan. From the start, I was calling the house: “The Yellow Submarine” because it’s yellow and has a long narrow shape with a high point in the center. The day we put our offer in, I opened up Youtube and a video showed up in my favorites box, from a creator I hadn’t favorited. The intro was a little yellow submarine running across the screen. Well, those kind of signs can’t be coincidence.

4) We became the proud owners of a Missouri home, tucked up on a hill, in the woods, on a little creek. Renovations ensued. I still managed to get us out in the camper though…about once a month…even in very cold snowy months.

We are nearing the end of the to-do lists…like that list ever ends. There is a little old shed in the woods that needs turning into my she-shed art studio/guest camp. I already have a fun mural in mind for the back wall …after I install some awesome windows I found on Marketplace (for free!!) Fall projects. Fall projects. Lol

It’s a serene place, birdsong and wild things greet us every morning. It’s very much like luxury camping. We are very grateful.

I’ll be posting from time to time but with as much an aim to inspire connection to each other, hopefully offer some uplifting thoughts and to tell stories of our travels, as it will be to talk about the Casita.

We do have a little flat grassy spot down on our creek in the Oaks and Hickories, if you are traveling south of Saint Louis and find yourselves needing a camp spot. (That is if this crazy, muddy rain pattern ever let’s up!)

I hope you will enjoy the new direction this blog is taking. May your travels be filled with as many loving signs as ours are!

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