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Well, we bought ourselves a house. We will close October 30th and move that weekend. The house is in Alden Township/Osceola school district and is north of Star Prairie, which is north of New Richmond. It'll take Matthew about 30 minutes to get back to Hudson to work. For now I think we'll still attend FCC on Sundays but....sniff....sniff....it'll be too far at night, on country roads, in the winter to come back for AWANA. Huge bummer but, I'm sure we'll find something local that we like. I'll miss my Sparks soooo stinkin' much. I had to call Kim G. on Wednesday and tell her that next Wednesday will be my last night.

We weren't planning on moving until next summer, after the school year, but it just sort of happened. I'll explain the house saga but first a little look into the housing history of Matthew and Katie Rolli. If I hadn't been there I wouldn't have believed it.

About nine years ago we rented an OLD farmhouse in Baldwin. To save money on the $600/mo. rent (I know) my dear cousin Courtney rented with us. We barely squeaked out the $400/mo. This house was originally a one room log cabin built in the 1860s. Now before you get the wrong idea it was NOT how one pictures a quaint one room log cabin. It had obviously been added on to many a time, typical of farmhouses. The only remnants of the quaintness was if you peeked into the attic, yikes, you saw the original exterior of the home. That was where the quaintness ended. This house had quirks, not quaintness.

For instance, if Matthew stood in the kitchen, originally part of the porch, near the fridge and I stood in the doorway of the kitchen I was taller. Matthew is 6'2" and I'm 5'3". Do the math and you'll see the floor sloped a good 11".

The pump for the house was located above ground and many times during the winter we would have to boil the water from the toilet tank to pour onto the pump, in an attempt to unfreeze the pump. If it didn't work the first time we then would have to boil snow. Later we realized that it we left the kitchen sink drip on super cold nights it kept the pump running and freezing happened less.

Heating the house itself was always challenging. There was a huge oil heater in the center room, the dining room. It measured approximately 4'x2.5'. The way to ignite the heater was a process. We kept matches and newspaper by the heater. We had to first open the oil valve to start the oil flow and then wait 15minutes. When we felt there was enough oil to ignite we opened a little door on the bottom of the heater where the oil ring was located. We rolled a piece of newspaper into a tight stick and lit the end with a match. With the lighted newspaper we stuck the flame onto the oil ring and hoped it would ignite. Sometimes it did and sometimes it didn't. If it didn't start up right away we had to wait longer for more oil to seep in. It took a long time to get the heating process going. Initially the heater had a fan to blow the hot air around the house but the cord was old and frayed. It was fabric. So we constantly had an oscillating floor fan going to blow the heat around.

We also converted an old milk house into a chicken coop and had a little flock of chickens. Even the chickens would run away to the neighbor's house. No kidding. They would run across Hwy. N, risking their lives and go live with the folks across the street. The neighbors would come over and let us know. They could tell which were our chickens because ours layed larger brown eggs then their own chickens. We told them it was fine if they stayed. The Rolli chickens apparently enjoyed it over their better.

There's more but I'll save it for another blog. We moved to an apartment in Hudson when Isaiah was 6 months old. We loved living on Third Street. Lots of fun neighborhoods to walk through and we would walk downtown and window shop frequently.

About 3.5 years ago we moved to our current house on Hwy. 12. We like it here and we've made it work. We were not looking to buy a house when we moved here but we needed a place for the business and the house came with the garage. We've always wanted some land so the kids could have a similar animal experience as Matthew did growing up on a farm. We couldn't make that happen in Hudson so....we're off to Osceola.