Spring Break?.....Who needs a break, we've been sitting around all winter?

Natalie has been out of school and we have been busy. The roof in the homestead house started to cave in this winter and we decided that it was time for it to come down. Getting it down was going to be the easy part.

We had to clear out a bunch of dead pines so we would have enough room for a generous neighbor with a loader to get in and knock the house down and pile it up so we can burn it. We might still need to clear some more of the pines out of the way before we burn the pile. I am a bit concearned with the fire spreading so we will make sure that we have ample space.

I pulled out a corner with the pickup just for the fun of it, but I quickly relized that the project was more than what I could tackle on my own.

Last night he came over with his loader and took the roof off, knocked the walls over, and started making a pile for us. It was pretty amazing how quickly the whole project went.

We will still have quite a bit to clean up to do and we are still not quite sure what we are going to do with the area, but it sure opens things up quite a bit.

Time for an update.

Last fall I finally accepted defeat and gave up on the camper trailer project that I had been working on for a number of years. My Grandpa had given me a 72' Rancho Camper that I mounted on a 20' flatbed trailer. It weighed a ton and needed some updating and repairs. During the summer while trying to get it ready for going camping the fridge lit a nest the birds had built in a vent on fire and left some damage to the fridge and roof. Natalie unloaded everything out of the camper that very night. There was no further discussion the lofty dream was over. We hauled the camper to the dump and moved on with our lives.

The past couple months I have been searching around for a practical way to meet our wants of a place to stay out of the weather and a way to haul our four wheelers around. In our seach I had explored toy haulers, fifth wheels, and tent trailers. We went to an RV show in Twin and found our new home away from home. Unfortunately the weather hasn't worked in our favor yet and we haven't had a chance to take it out. We did let the kids spend a night in it out in the yard. We joked that camping out in our yard was probably more remote than most of the places we would ever take the trailer and definately a lot less people. Hopefully April will bring us some better weather and some new adventures to talk about. We are also hoping that our little truck will pull our train.

Sara's Big Day

The other night Natalie had a family concert that we all got to go to. They played some fun songs that the kids really enjoyed. Natalie's professor Chung Park came out pretending to be injured and asked for someone from the audience to come up and help him lead the orchestra. A young boy got to come up and lead the first song. Dr. Park asked for a second volunteer and Sara got chosen to come up and lead the whole orchestra in front of a packed house. I would have been scared to death. She likes the spotlight though and did a great job. Dr. Park made her tell the audience where her mom was sitting and poked fun at the fact that she was going to be leading her and the whole orchestra. It's nice that they have a special concert for families and children to come and appreciate instrumental music.