Boy, where does the time go? Seems like just yesterday we were celebrating Christmas and the New Year; now here we are almost six months later. The girls have grown exponentially, we went on a week long vacation to Colorado to see my (Micah’s) brother , sister in law, and oldest and closest friend Chelsea and her growing family. We had a remarkable time on that trip, we went to the aquarium, Idaho Springs for some Beau Jo’s Pizza, The Denver Zoo, IKEA (a first time for all four of us!), Casa Bonita (because that is always a must in my opinion!). We had a very full trip with lots of memories, yummy food, laughter and love. A trip that was certainly much needed after a long winter and lots of illness.

 

We have decided that with our upcoming transfer next summer (2018) that we had a lot of work that we needed to do to begin preparing our home for sell. One of our dear friends from our church is in real estate, and kindly spent an afternoon in our home putting together a plan to market our home, tips on getting the house show and sell ready. So we have been quite busy in preparation. Unfortunately, the Frazier Frontier decided that in order to get our yard sell ready we needed to get rid of our beloved Chickens (Jean Gray, Rogue, Raven, and Storm…yes, they were named after X-Men female Characters. lol). We first offered them to our neighbors across the street, but their dog decided they looked more like food than companions, so we went to the next friends on the list…and what a fun bunch they are too! My friend Anika, is a Pastors wife, and their next door neighbor is also a Pastor. Their two families welcomed the idea of hens, they had been discussing them for awhile, and God’s timing ended up being just perfect for our gift to them.

The hens made the transit almost 2 weeks ago. They have since gotten 4 more hens, and extended the run of the coop. They all seem very happy in their new habitat, while our yard looks bigger, it is very quiet, and empty. The day they left many tears were shed by all but Aveline (who just doesn’t get it yet). We noticed that Aila had been a little odd and not quite herself, and finally realized that she missed her chickens too. Novella was gifted a stuffed Chicken from Anika and her family as a thank you for the chickens. It didn’t leave her side for the first few days. She still talks about how much she misses them. We went by and visited them one day and Novella got to catch her hens and give them kisses again. What they don’t know is that two days ago we did a “drive by clucking”. We drove by and saw them from the car, and we did our chicken call (yes, we have a distinct call for them), and 3 of our hens were in the run, they came running up to the end of it, perked up their heads, and we could even hear Raven in the coop clucking away at us. We like to think that they recognized our voices and miss us too.

With that being said, we have been busy filling chicken holes and coop spots in our backyard. We finished mulching all the garden spaces and play yard around the house. Then we got soil, and a TON of grass seed. It was a couple of days of hard work for certain. Thank you Dani and Gregg for letting us borrow your trailer for all the loads! Novella even got to help haul the mulch to the garden beds with her John Deere Power Truck (a very generous gift from another Coast Guard family, all we had to do was buy a couple of parts which he graciously installed for us!). Our efforts on the yard have been well worth it, as grass is beginning to sprout and the yard will be lovely as ever when the time to list it arrives.

 

In the meantime, we have also been diligently working on the insides of our home. When you live somewhere for any amount of time, you accumulate things, especially when you have little people. We know that the likelihood of going to another house this size (4 bed, 2 full bath, 2 living rooms, and a ginormous garage) is slim. So we have begun the purge. It has been emotional at times (5 donated bags of girls clothes later, and much much more), but rewarding. We donated, sold, and threw out a ton of stuff already, and we aren’t done yet. This is just the beginning, and as we go through each space we have been working to make it show ready. Lucky for Ryan, he gets a break from the house chaos when he goes to work, but he is about to get working on his large list of “fixes”.

The girls will be celebrating their first and third birthday’s in less than two weeks! My parents are coming up again to celebrate with us, and then the girls, the dog and I will be making the trek back to Oklahoma with them for a couple of weeks. This will allow Ryan uninterrupted time to focus and get his projects done. The sooner we can get it all done the sooner we can list our home. So I am working hard to get as much done before the girls and I leave so that we can try to list our home sometime at the end of June/early July. We decided with it being a sellers market right now we would rather list our house early in hopes to sell it quickly, than to wait and potentially not sell it next year. That would mean the girls and I would be stuck here in Wisconsin with a house and mortgage while Ryan went on to the next place and adventure by himself until we could sell the house. We decided it would be better to temporarily move into an apartment than risk the second option.

BEFORE YOU ASK…no, we do not know yet where we will be going next. We won’t even find out our options until fall, and we will likely not get orders until sometime in February.

So be on the lookout for more blogs from the Frazier Frontier in the coming weeks and months. Birthdays, Oklahoma trip, listing our home, temporary move (hopefully, pending the house sells quickly). Thank you for being patient while we have been slow to blog as of late.