Family Adventures

I kept telling y’all we had some big news!! Remember back in 2017 when I was Seven months pregnant and we bough 13 acres of farmland? We decided that it’s time to make the big move and build out there. I suppose we’re doing it now because there’s no time like the present, right? But actually, it’s a combination of three main reasons:

1. Our perk test on our land that runs out in early 2020 and we don’t want to have to re-perk the land.
2. Sawyer starts Kindergarten next fall and we are hoping to avoid too many school switches. I’m that kid who lived in one spot my whole childhood. The friends I knew in Kindergarten are the same people I graduated high school with. I loved it and want something similar for my children.
3. There’s that small garden we tilled last spring, planted, and watered at the farm. The one where I drove out to that farm at least once a week during the big drought in June and lugged 5 gallon jugs of water through chest-high grass to water the newly planted berries? Yeah. Almost all of it died. Things got CRAZY in our lives with swim team, summer plans, vacation, school starting (mid-July for us) and I gave up on watering. We decided that if we want anything to grow out there, we need to be present to tend to it.

HOW WE CHOSE A BUILDER

Back in August we started talking to builders. We thought we’d go with a modular build, which contrary to our initial thoughts is actually a cost-effective way to build with less waste. Apparently you can build just about any house as a modular home, but the companies we talked with seemed to have trouble turning plans on their own website into actual homes on our land. Hmmm…

We looked at custom builders, but at close to $200 a square foot they were definitely out of our price range.

We ended up settling somewhere in the middle, with a company called America’s Home Place. They offer quite a few plans, and after you choose your plan you can then customize pretty much everything about it. Even bumping out walls, adding rooms, changing layouts. They cost less than the custom builders, and as of right now I believe our home comes in at about $124 a sq. foot.

 

THE HOUSE

I don’t want to think about how many hours I spent pouring over plans this summer. Too many! Ha! We finally settled on the “Ugly House,” which despite its ugly exterior had an open-ish layout with the kitchen/dining/living areas at the front of the home. The way our house is positioned on our lot, it was important to us that we maximize views out the front (west) and right side (south) to see the pastures (maybe vineyards someday) and the pond. And that we had a long southern exposure for tons of natural light and for the possibility of solar in the future.

You can head over to see the original plan HERE. We jokingly call it the ugly house because the upstairs windows are spaced much too far apart, and it’s generally off center. But no worries, we fixed those minor details by adding a garage, wrap around porch, and re-centering windows. Now it looks like a farmhouse!

There are LOTS more details to share about the new house plan itself, what we added, and what we wanted in a house, but I think they warrant a separate post so stay tuned.

OUR TIMELINE

When we mulled over this decision and when would be the right time, it was a no-brainer to try and time our move between school years. In order to finish the new house by late May/early June, we had to sign off on plans by November 1st. And THAT meant that the entire month of September and October I was consumed by house plans. I drew about 6 different plans on giant graph paper, changing things to meet our needs and aiming to meet our budget (I’ll post more on what we’re looking for in a functional farmhouse in a separate post).

September/October

I spent every evening after the kids were in bed drawing and re-drawing plans. Also meeting with the design consultant about twice a week (sometimes with small children hanging off my legs and spilling candy jars in the showroom) to nail down our plans.

Late October:

The week of Halloween was insane. We were working on a tight deadline to nail down ALL the house details (before the designer had a baby and went on maternity leave for 10 weeks). I lived in Pinterest for a week straight. I’ve never pinned so many photos. Then I compiled them in Photoshop and printed pages for each room: kitchen, bathroom, dining room, etc. with paint colors, floors I liked, fixtures. Nothing kills my soul faster than being buried in a computer or cell phone, and my soul was dying. BUT, these are important decisions! I don’t want to move into a new home and hate the paint colors and cabinets because I punked out of doing my research.

November:

We’ve been working on getting our loan nailed down. Having never built before, we are in completely uncharted waters. We will end up with a construction loan for about 7 months, then close again on a permanent loan in early summer. And for this to happen, they needed our first born child. Joking! Just our entire financial existence. I scanned files for days. Also, I met the builder at the farm last week to stake out where our home will sit. With two toddlers in toe. In 40 degree weather. For a two hours. STICK A FORK IN ME.

December:

I’m exhausted. Hoping to get some rest and relaxation! The builder should be pulling permits. We closed on our construction loan before Christmas. We debate daily about whether to sell or rent our current home. And we are working daily to get it re-painted, clean, and all the tiny broken things fixed so that we can do either. And in all the hustle to start cleaning up our current home and the mess that four children have brought, we broke the all time record for annual rain. Durham, NC got more rain last year than Seattle. And our backyard is a mud pit. SO… being the crazies that we are, we decided to remedy that problem by digging a new walkway over Christmas break. Yeah…

January-May:

Building. Not sure yet what will happens when, but you get the idea. Hoping to move in late June!

 

 

My older two started sleeping in big beds around age two. They were great! A few nights setting a gate up at the door to the room and they caught onto the rules. But #3? My wild child and perpetual mischief maker? Noooooooo. She has been sleeping in our room in a pack n play for nearly a year. She needs to go. And by go, I mean move in with the big kids. I fear if she moves in with Bodhi she will bother him all night long and that kid will never sleep again.

Problem number one is she’s a terrible roommate and a night owl. Larkin will stay up in the dark, reading books in that pack n play until 9pm every night. We can’t go upstairs to sleep until then, because heaven help us if we walk into that room and she begins the endless cycle of “I’m thirsty, I have to go potty, etc.” This is probably part of the reason we have such trouble moving her to the big kids bedroom.

Nevertheless, we tried again over the Thanksgiving break. She was so excited to sleep in a big kid bed with the big kids. It all started well… and then we had to go up there because she’s using the potty and the older ones are trying to wipe her. I’m ok with that. Then she wants to drink more water. Then she’s getting in bed with the big kids. We tried to ignore it and let them work it out on their own until SHE DECIDED TO SIT IN THE CAT LITTER BOX. The box that happens to live in the hall bathroom. That girl sat right in the cat litter because “that’s what the cats do.” GROSS. Covered in poo at 9pm.

And at that point we moved her back to the pack n  play. She won’t still be in that thing as a teenager, right?!?!?

You say fall break started the first week of October? Hmm, so it goes with our crazy life, but I want to make sure I write down the details of this fall break roadtrip before I forget them. This was the first road trip we’ve taken with four kids. Years ago when Pippa was three and Sawyer was an infant we dared to drive to Deep Creek Lake in western Maryland to stay in a lakehouse with my inlaws for a week, and then we took the mountain roads down to the NC mountains for a vacation with my family. At the time we didn’t realize the reason Pippa screamed in the car since she was a baby was because she was getting carsick. BUT… all it took was ten hours on winding roads and several stops to clean up puke to realize why that girl hated car rides. Man, that was a BAD road trip.

Maryland

We have since taken much shorter vacations (to the beach, anyone?) but finally decided to make a longer trek this fall. Remember that we are in year round school, so our fall break is three weeks long. It makes for amazing travel opportunities when the rest of the world is in school! First we headed north to Maryland to stay with my inlaws for six days. We took the kids hiking at Cunningham Falls state park — a place John and I both went to a lot growing up (we’re both MD born and raised).

Then we did something I never thought I’d get to do: visit John’s grandparents house one last time. We went down there to pick up a box of his dad’s things. I have such great memories of his grandparents, because they became my grandparents at a time when all my grandparents were already gone. I lost my last one when I was in college. So all those beautiful moments when we were engaged and we would sit on the couch for hours listening to stories about the war, and how they lived in military housing in Europe, and how they worked in the factories outside of DC. Grandparents have the best stories and I wish my own had been alive when I was just a bit older.

I never thought I’d get to see that house again. And then, we were there. The place was completely unchanged! The walls were still mint green, the original kitchen appliances from the 1940s still in place. I admired how small it was compared to today’s homes and how three kids grew up there, and I felt a little silly for thinking I need a bigger kitchen.

I think of all the places I would love to visit just one last time.

We took the kids to the Enchanted Forest (another place from my childhood – ha!) although it’s been relocated to a farm. The kids rode ponies, played with goats, got foam swords. We went to the local farm – Larriland – to do an awesome hayride and pick out apples. Man do I wish we had stayed just a bit longer to pick pumpkins and apples from the fields. Sometimes being a slave to nap times makes me a grouch.

Pippa and Sawyer spent countless hours riding skateboard scooters down my inlaws’ driveway, and honestly I’m surprised it didn’t end with a trip to the ER with how fast those wild things went! Wish I had a video of that.

Luray Caverns

We left Maryland and drove the mountain road through Shenandoah, and guess who didn’t get sick! Three cheers for a car trip without puke!!!! We stopped in Luray at the cutest deli for lunch, then took the kids on a tour of the caves. When you have four kids, you worry that the oldest will miss out on fun things if you always wait for the youngest to be age appropriate for something. So the heck with it, we thought. Pippa and Sawyer will love to see a cave! So we signed up for the tour. And then there we were… stuck with a group of 60 year olds on a one hour tour where we couldn’t leave the group behind for fear we’d get left in the dark in a cave. Larkin was laughing hysterically. So much so that we couldn’t hear the tour guide. We faded to the back of the group when Bodhi started fussing, because EVERYTHING ECHOES. It was bad. Then they went to play this underground organ that echoes over three miles of caves, and THAT is when Larkin decides to scream and run away down a side cave. It was super embarrassing, but we were stuck. Those poor people. We won’t be touring anymore caves for a few years!

Watauga Lake, TN

After Luray, we drove south and stopped approximately every 20 minutes so that Larkin could use the bathroom. PS: don’t take a long road trip with a potty training toddler. YOu’d think we’d have learned that by kid #3! At dinner time we decided to stop and grocery shop, because the cabin we rented was in the middle of nowhere. We grabbed a rotisserie chicken, chips, and veg tray and headed to a park for a picnic. Then after two more hours in the car (and a total of 12.5 hours from Maryland where we started our trip) we arrived at this super cute cabin.

The owners lived down the lane, and their four sons had built this cordwood cabin from scratch. How cool is that? It was beautiful and rustic and the kids loved climbing up to the loft and playing in all the secret nooks. We were there while Hurricane Michael was coming up the east coast, and of the four days we spent here it rained three of them. We lost power the first day and those sweet owners invited us down to their home to play with toys. They had chickens, peacocks, miniature horses (which we spent the better part of three days feeding), and a dog named Lollipop (which Larkin talked about non-stop for the rest of our trip). We cooked dinner on the charcoal grill in the rain until the power came back on.

Day two we drove to Johnson City to a children’s museum. Finally the rain stopped enough for us to have a campfire, so the rest of the nights we ate s’mores for dessert looking up at the mountain. The kids played nonstop in the mud puddles and we took lots of baths! The last day here we were supposed to go to Tweetsie Railroad, but the weather was going to be super cold and windy! So instead we drove to Roan Mountain and hiked up to the grassy bald. It was one of the most beautiful hikes I’ve been on in the Smokies, but it was about 35 degrees with constant wind. It was so gusty that Larkin kept getting blown over. We didn’t have winter coats with us so we were bundled in 3 pairs of pants and blankets to make the half mile hike up there. The kids were such good sports! And afterwards they agreed that it was a really cool hike. We hit up the state park playground after and warmed up.

Carowinds

Then, because we are crazy, we decided to make up our trip to Tweetsie (that the kids had been bummed to miss) by stopping at Carowinds amusement park on our way home… which really was 2.5 hours out of our way. The day was beautiful, but it was so dang crowded! I think everyone was there for the fall festival stuff they had going on. And watching three kids (wearing Bodhi in a carrier) was super stressful. We waited about 40 minutes per ride, which we thought was long and torturous. Is Disney this bad? Hmm….

The highlight of the day for the big kids was definitely riding on the wooden “kiddie” roller coaster. I had fun on it, so it wasn’t so little 🙂 We didn’t realize how early the park closed for their scary nighttime event, so this mama was bummed to not get to hop on just one big roller coaster. Next time, right? Ha! We drove 2.5 hours home and got home well after bedtime, which brings me to the worst greeting ever upon returning from a road trip….

Mold in our House

Yep. We had lost power for 48 hours because of the Hurricane, and before that I had set our AC to come on at a higher temp THAT OUR HOUSE NEVER REACHED. Then we got all the rain and no power for two days. Anyway, everything felt damp. We went right to bed, and the next morning as I was sitting on the couch nursing Bodhi I noticed that everything was GREEN. Mold was everywhere. We spent a crazy two days cleaning everything in sight and renting the upholstery cleaner… the whole nine yards. It was terrible. As if gobs of laundry isn’t enough to handle after two weeks away!

Wow, that was a long post. I’m trying to be better about documenting things like this, because it is so fun to look back on all the details. Thanks for joining the journey!

I think we might look back on 2017 as “the crazy year in my mid-30s that we said to hell with doing it by the book.”

Go big or go home, right? Sure we had a FOURTH baby on the way (umm… still not entirely used to that one!) but last summer we took the plunge for something we’ve been saving towards for years. Years my friends!  WE BOUGHT A FARM. And we didn’t buy just a little bit of countryside (although it is undoubtedly small compared to a true farm!), but 13.5 ACRES.

At the moment I can’t manage my .5 acres of suburbia. The weeds overtake the veggies every summer in the only garden that gets full sun. It’s about 7×17 feet. How on earth do I plan to take care of 4 kids and farm/homestead/manage 13.5 acres? I haven’t the slightest idea. My mom once bought me a drink coaster that said “jump and the net will appear” and told me that was me in a nutshell. Funny, right? Because it’s true. And here I am waiting for my net … the one that can save my sanity from four kids age six and under … the one that can magically reveal a method for managing this dream farm.

When we bought the land last summer it was unimproved. It has a 1.5 acre pond and .5 acres of woods down by the road, but the rest is pasture. And I mean ZERO trees or big shrubs except for the big Cedar tree that marks the corner of the property, and that Cedar tree is pretty stoic out there between our fields and our neighbor’s tobacco. In November we planted three Maple trees on top of the hill, and last weekend we loaded up the kids and planted about 20 raspberry canes and the six blackberries that made it through winter. We’ve been out to the farm several times since Bodhi arrived for picnics and camping and because running through an open field is so amazing! Someday we will probably build a home there, but for now we are going to try and plan the property’s future and tend it when we can. That said…

I have big dreams!

We’ve tossed so many ideas around for years and years, based on “what if” we ever buy some land. There’s wine grapes and a small winery since we’ve been making wine here at home for about six years. I’ve always wanted some farm animals, but then again I love to travel and want my kids to see the world and don’t want to be tied down to the demands of livestock. We do eat 5 dozen eggs a week, so chickens are probably a definite. Maybe some sheep? Because hot dang, that is a large amount of pasture to keep mowed without large livestock. Lately I’ve been falling for the idea of pick your own berries. There are two PYO blueberry farms a mile up the road. Blackberries? Raspberries? A permaculture orchard? Or maybe lavender. For cutting/selling and for photography, because who can resist taking photos of their kids in a field of lavender.

Do you want to take a tour? Of course you do! Here are some photos from right here in the beginning. Follow along as we decide what on earth to do next!

PS: Below is a Mimosa tree in one of two fenced pastures. We were SO excited they had something to climb on!

 

 

If you missed the news, we are about to embrace a full house over here in late September with the addition of baby #4 – a boy! Like most moms, I have a love/hate relationship with selecting a name for my kids. One one hand, there is something so fun about researching name meanings and history and saying it aloud along with a middle and last name and imagining what this baby will look like. What he’ll love. Whether his hair will be curly or straight. But dang, choosing something the kid will grow into and will identify him for the rest of his life is a lot of pressure! 

Growing up there were two Allison Fords in my class (one was always known as “Allison  Ford with two L’s). I don’t want my kids to be the equivalent, so we always opt for a more unique first name to go with Clark. Right now we have two girls (Pippa and Larkin) and one boy (Sawyer). We struggled mightily with both girls’ names (you can read about our top choices for baby #3 HERE), but had Sawyer picked out from the beginning. All of our kids have middle names from family, so we will do the same with this little guy. Right now we only have two options for middles that we like, but without further ado here our top 5 baby boy names:

First Name Baby Name Options

Griffin: One of my favorite sites for baby names is Appellatian Mountain. She highlights Griffin as “red,” “prince,” and of course mythical beast. I also love that it has the nickname Finn (one of my favorites).

Bodhi: This unique name translates from Sanskrit as awakening. It’s the name of the tree under which the Budda supposedly found enlightenment. I love that it ends with an “i” as it goes really well with our last name (I don’t want anything with a hard ending). On the downside, this name ranks in the 300s in popularity in the US and at 30-something on Nameberry, which I’m not super keen about. Bodhi (also spelled Bode and Bodie) is known as a surfer name and has been used for babies of the famous in the past few years, which is probably responsible for it’s boost in popularity.

Kingston: This gem means “King’s Town” and what I love is that it evokes a laid back sense of place. Ever heard that song Jamaican Farewell? That’s what I hear of, and it makes me think of tropical breezes. Yet this is also a strong name AND it has the alliteration (Kingston Clark)! Don’t love that it was number 130-something on the popularity list in 2016.

Apollo: Again I like that this ends in a vowel that is different from my other children’s names. Probably best known (recently) for Apolo Ohno, the Olympic speed skater, this name Apollo hails from mythology, God of the Sun in Latin and God of Medicine in Greek myths. There is also an Apollo of Arthurian legend, adding to the adventurous history. Bonus for this name: it hasn’t yet risen up the charts the way Bodhi and Kingston have, falling at around #500.

Canyon: I also love the alliteration with this – he would be Canyon Clark. It’s outdoorsy, and feels like and adventure (sort of like his big brother Sawyer). It’s not very popular, another bonus! Nameberry has it down around #2300 in popularity, so there likely won’t be another in his class.

 

Middle Baby Name Options

We are down to two! Both middle names honor family members in some respect, as this is what we did with all of our current children.

Arthur: After my maternal grandfather’s middle name. This name appears to be coming back into vogue, and I love that it has that King Arthur legend quality about it. Arthur means bear and is Celtic in origin according to Nameberry.

Monroe: After my dad (his middle name). Did you know this name actually translates roughly to “red marsh?” Neither did I. If this last baby of ours were a girl, I would definitely be vying to use Monroe as her middle name. Yet I think that it fits equally well on a boy or girl, especially in our case as it’s a family name.

 

Ten short weeks to go! Any name combo suggestions?

Call us crazy, but we took our 5 month old camping. I often feel like being the third kid has a lot of downsides: not as much mommy time, nothing but hand-me-downs, etc. But among the positives are all the cool things this baby gets to do. In her first five months, Larkin has been to the beach twice, spent hours out on a motorboat on a lake, had bonfires, and gone camping. Lucky girl!

Pippa and Sawyer are really into camping. We took them for the first time last year when Sawyer was almost 2 and Pippa was 3.5. For them it was great fun. For us it was a disaster. Sawyer thought it was hysterical to run towards the road and throw his toys towards the fire. Lil’ stinker 😉 But now that he’s a year wiser and Larkin is too small to crawl, we had a blast. And good thing, because before kids John and I were avid backpackers. We camped all the time to avoid pricey hotels. We camped on our honeymoon (ha! look at us, all young and 20-something and covered in sweat as we climbed peaks in Kauai).

We camped most nights of a cross country road trip. And someday we hope to take some amazing trips with our kids that involve lots of nights in a tent. You know what that means…

START ‘EM YOUNG.

This fall we went to Mayo Lake in northern NC for two nights. The kids had a blast. We were the only ones there because we went on a Sunday/Monday night and they spent the entire time running around the large camping area, throwing rocks in the lake, and just being kids. The first night we set up camp and cooked hot dogs over the fire – obviously a win for everyone. They were so excited to get into the tent that the big kids asked to go to bed when the sun disappeared. Not that they went to bed, but hey.

Larkin and I shared the second tent with our battery powered noise maker to drown out the squealing, but otherwise it was so quiet! The second day we spent hiking to various playgrounds, playing soccer on the huge grass field, and even a sunset kayak trip as rain clouds rolled in. I spent the day before we left chopping and wrapping some bbq chicken packets that we grilled on the fire, followed by a dessert I learned a loooooong time ago in girl scouts. Banana Boats! These were a huge hit with the kids, they even said they were better than s’mores. I’ll post more on how to make them soon, but they are so dang easy.

Night number two was not so nice. The tent Larkin and I shared had a hole in the rainfly, so we had to cover it with a tarp (hey, it is almost 15 years old). And boy did that tarp sound like being inside a popcorn kettle when it poured all night long. She couldn’t sleep. It was ridiculously loud. I spend the night awake nursing her so that she could (sort of) sleep. And in the morning everything was covered in mud. The other tent had leaked and all the pillows were wet. At least it was memorable and the kids can’t wait to go again (hence the whole point of camping with young-ins). Because this mama spent the entire next day guzzling coffee and doing laundry and drying out camping gear. That is a chore I do not enjoy.

While we are by no means experts at camping with kids, I figured I’d share some of my tips:

1. Age matters. We found that babies up to crawling are easy, but that from about age 7months – 2.5 years old is a nightmare. They are into everything and are constantly trying to kill themselves. This is a no fly zone for us, lol.
2. Go for at least two nights. Y’all. I spent at least four hours prepping food, packing bins and bags, etc. Then it took us a solid 1.5 hours to haul it all from the car to the campsite and set up two tents with approximately 421 interruptions along the way. And then another 4 hours to clean it all and put it away. We’ve done a single night, and it’s just not worth the effort.
3. Take a noisemaker, especially if sleeping with a baby. It helps drown out noises of other kids/campsites.
4. Slow down your mornings with cocoa or tea. Our kids are up at the crack of dawn. They want to scarf down some food and get going on a hike, to the playground, etc. Which is great! Except that one of the camping luxuries for us adults is lounging around a hot fire drinking a hot beverage in the morning. Next time we will come prepared with cocoa – a good bribe to get them to chill out for an extra 30 minutes.
5. A flashlight for each kid. We made the mistake of bringing one for each tent. The older two fought over who got to play with theirs for HOURS. The dollar store sells them, so next time we will have plenty.

Have you been camping with young kids? Please share!