Tiger Lily

I have a confession to make.

I have been keeping a secret from you.

I haven't told you something for fear of you thinking we are totally nuts.

But I am going to tell you now because I think I have gathered enough evidence to win you over to our craziness.

In the end of December..

we got...

a kitten.

I know, as if two dogs and two cats weren't enough.

Keep in mind though that at the time we were sure that we would soon be moving to a house with 10 acres and what is one more cat when you have 10 acres?

And you really can't start too early on your barn cat collection, right?

Also, our cat Bagheera spends all his time outside and Giselle spends all her time inside.

Giselle seemed to be getting really lonely.

So we got her this:

Meet Tiger Lily

AKA T. Lily, Tiger Smack, Squeaks, Trouble, Tiny and many more



The name of course is continuing our Disney theme. (Tiger Lily from Peter Pan)

And here are some reasons why we love her and you should too.

She and Giselle are friends.

Giselle cleans and cuddles her all the time.



They kind of blend together, it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.





Then they play/fight.





Here is Giselle holding on to Tiger Lily while they sleep.



She totally had both arms around Tiger Lily.

Tiger Lily loves Lilo

She is always rubbing up against her and wanting to cuddle with her.



Lilo usually lays there and growls but doesn't do anything.



She still isn't too happy about sharing her water bowl with her.



But she puts up with it.



Tiger Lily plays fetch.

She LOVES paper balls.

If she hears paper crumpling she comes running.

If you throw it for her she will take death defying leaps to get it.







Then she will bring it back.





She is a great lap cat, she is currently on my lap now.

When we first got her she would wake us up by nibbling on our faces, thankfully we trained that out of her.

Her and Giselle sleep on our bed at night, usually curled up together.

So hopefully her cuteness is enough to forgive our craziness.

I claim temporary insanity caused by cute fluffy cuddliness.

Snow

Monday I woke up to this:





One of my favorite things about snow is how its always something you wake up too.

There is something so magical about waking up in the morning and looking out the window and seeing everything covered in white.

Especially when you have no reason to leave the house that day.

Snow is still kind of a novelty to me.

Growing up in California I rarely saw snow.

It never snowed where I lived.

Once it hailed and it was slushy and covered the deck so we shoveled some up and put it in the bathtub and made a tiny snowman.

I know, Californians right.

A couple times we drove up to the mountains for a day trip to go sledding but that is nothing like living in a place where it snows.

My first winter in New Jersey during Grad school was quite an experience.

There are so many little things about snow that I love.

At the time, I worked at Starbucks at 4:30 am every morning.

So when I would get up it would be completely silent outside and the snow completely undisturbed.

I love the sound of the snow falling.

That wonderful crunch sound when you step in it.

The beauty of a pure white landscape and the snow "highlighting" the tree limbs.

It was magical.

That being said, I hate how cold it is when it snows, I hate the gross dirty snow on the side of the road and I hate trying to get the ice and snow off my car.

I have decided I want to live in a place where there is one good snow a year.

Not a place where you get snowed in.

Or there is snow on the ground from November to March.

Just one good snow.

Because someday I want to see Stephen play with our kids like he does with the dogs.

Well maybe not the exact same way...

Stephen throws snow in Lilo's face and she tries to catch it by biting at it.



Then there is this fun sequence:







Stephen holding on to Willow about to toss snow all over her.

If you look closely at this picture (if you click on it you can see it bigger), there is a pleading look in her eyes that say "Please, have mercy! I'm a Hawaii dog and I don't do cold and snow!"



Then she runs to me for protection.



Lilo, on the other hand, was made for the snow.



This picture makes me laugh, it looks like Stephen's about to tackle her and wrestle her to the ground.





Snow or no snow, Willow loves to run.

Weekend Getaway

This past weekend we had our first vacation/getaway in over 3 years.

Some of you may be thinking "What do you call living in Hawaii for 3 years?"

I get your point but we still had work and a house to keep up, animals to take care of and dishes to do.

We really wanted to just get away, the two of us with nothing to clean, no computers to distract us, no animals to annoy us.

So Friday after Stephen was done with his classes we drove up to St. Louis.

Lilo we left in the backyard with a big bowl of food and water and a bark collar on.

Stephen's dog house is built so she would have somewhere to get out of the cold, which is good since it got down to 7 degrees during the weekend. (don't feel bad for her, she has a serious fur coat and the dog house is very well insulated)

We were hoping to leave Willow in the backyard too but a couple days before we left I noticed she had started digging under the fence, so we had to have her boarded.

When we got to St Louis (a 2 and a half hour drive) we went to a jazz club and had dinner and heard some good jazz music.

That was nice since there was no good jazz in Hawaii.

Then we checked into the Hyatt where we had a very small but nice room.

This was the view from our window.



(That is the Arch, in case you couldn't tell)

Saturday we went to a place called Roosters for breakfast.

I had some amazing french toast with caramelized bananas and nuts.

I have a thing for good restaurant breakfasts.

Then we went to the Missouri Museum of Art.

Stephen, who now has a license to conceal and carry a gun (I'm so proud), decided to bring his gun to carry this weekend for the first time.

Sadly when we got to the door of the museum it said "Weapons prohibited" so he had to go back and put it in the car.

But he did get to carry it the rest of the weekend.

It's a silly sign since the kind of person who would respect it is not the kind of person who is a threat.

It's not like a guy coming to shoot up the museum would see the sign and say "Dang it! Guess I better go home."

It just means that when a guy like that comes to the museum there wont be anyone there to protect people.

Anyways, back to the museum.

It is hard to be satisfied with museums after going to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, that place is amazing.

But still it was nice to see some beautiful paintings.



I particularly liked this one:



Stephen liked this one of a civil war period school house.



Whenever we get to the modern art we can't help but talk about how stupid it is.

A canvas painted solid black is somehow considered art...just don't get it.

It shouldn't be allowed in the same building as the genus of Monet and Van Gogh.

We were unfortunately limited on what we could do because it was very cold outside.

I really wanted to go to the zoo but that will have to wait till another trip.

After the museum we went to a big used book store, that was sadly overpriced so we didn't get anything.

Then we went to a brewery and had lunch and tried a few different beers.



Then we went back to the hotel to take a nap to prepare for the late evening.

Back in September of last year we looked up the St Louis Symphony.

We had wanted to go to the symphony for a long time (neither of us had ever been) but sadly the Hawaii symphony ran out of money and shut down.

So we were excited that once we got to Missouri we could go to the symphony.

So we looked at the schedule and saw this:



That's right, the symphony doing Disney music, pure awesomeness.

We bought the tickets right there and then.

So we had been looking forward to this for a long time.

Sadly we were disappointed.

Instead of it being the symphony playing the awesome music of Disney in its pure beautiful arrangements, they had 4 broadway singers singing most of the songs.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy broadway and the singers were very talented but if I wanted to go to a broadway show, I would have gone to a broadway show.

Their over the top singing and acting completely took away from the symphony.

The few songs the symphony did without the singers were amazing and gave me goosebumps.

The singers just ruined it.

So that was sad but we still had a good time.

After the show we went to dinner at a really nice restaurant called Sidney Street Cafe.

At this point it was about 9:30 at night, which is past our usual bedtime, it was a good thing we took a nap.

Dinner was amazing and we had a really good time.

I had some amazing short ribs (which are one of my favorite foods ever and one of the reasons I could never be a true vegetarian).

It was one of those sad situations though after appetizers and bread and salad I wasn't able to finish the short ribs.

I really tried but it just couldn't be done, and there wasn't enough left to box (without looking silly that is).

So I had to say "darn you!" to my small stomach and say goodbye to the last few bites of juicy, melt in your mouth, beefiness.

Yes, I am still a little sad thinking about it.

We were the last ones to leave the restaurant at around 11.

The next morning we packed up and checked out.

We went to Roosters again for breakfast.

Then we went to this beautiful church Stephen found online.

I love cathedrals.

I have always thought it was sad that more protestants don't have cathedrals.

They invoke such a sense of awe and reverence that is so appropriate when entering a place where a community of believers gather to worship the holy God.

This church was a Presbyterian church (the conservative kind of course) and it had a beautiful building.

We really enjoyed it.

Then we went to lunch at a tasty pizza place called Pi.

Then we went to a chocolate shop called Kakao because it wouldn't be Valentine's Day with out some amazing chocolate.

I got this tasty box of truffles.



I got a little distracted by eating the truffles before I thought to take a picture.

Then we headed to the mall so I could walk around Anthropologie and drool.

Stephen really loved that part of the weekend ;o)

Then we went to Whole Foods to get things that can't be found at the grocery stores near Ft. Leonard Wood.

Then we headed back home and listed to War of the Worlds on audiobook.

All the animals survived our absence, that was a relief.

Overall it was a good but too short weekend.

We're going to...

Thursday morning Stephen and I sat down with a man called a "branch manager".

This man decides where everyone in Stephen's branch (which is the Chemical Corps) gets assigned.

Stephen had filled out a form with his top 5 choices and bottom 3 choices (we had got the list of possible assignments earlier that week).

Of course the top of the list was Ft Bragg, North Carolina.

We talked with the branch manager for about 10 minutes telling him where we wanted to go and why.

Then I went home and Stephen went back to his classes and we waited for the assignments to be posted that afternoon.

I was incredibly impatient to hear what we got.

It's a strange thing being a military wife and having some random person decide your future.

It's a really good (though painful) way to get over being a control freak.

Then around 5:00 Stephen sent me an email.

Just one line.

"He gave us Germany."

I flipped! (and not in a good way)

I emailed him back and said "You're joking right? Though that would be really mean."

He unfortunately was still in a class and couldn't reply or answer his phone.

Which left me to sit at home losing my mind.

Now some of you may be confused by this.

Germany is considered a very desirable assignment.

People always talk about how great it is and how you get to see all of Europe and all that.

And had this been our first assignment, I would have probably been happy about it.

But as things are, I am not, because:

1) I am not the most adventurous person and living in a foreign country kinda freaks me out.

2) I have gotten a little tired of being so far from home and living in strange/different places (Hawaii is pretty much a foreign country).

3) With getting the house in North Carolina we were making our plans to settle down. Going to Germany is like the opposite of settling down.

4) I don't want to have kids that far from home and family.

5) When you get an overseas assignment you are required to say in 3 more years and Stephen is planning to get out when his time is up (June 2013).

6) We would have to go to the post chapel which is notorious for bad theology and preaching.

7) I would have to say goodbye to getting my license as a Marriage and Family Therapist.

Because of these reasons I was sitting on the couch crying when Stephen got home.

He was not happy about the assignment either.

But he wrote an email to the branch manager telling him that we would take any assignment in the continental US over our assignment in Germany.

This was a bit of a risky move because the slots that were left over from everyone getting their assignment were the more undesirable ones (such as Ft. Drum which is way upstate New York and very cold, Ft Wainwright Alaska where it is currently -29 degrees and Ft Sill Oklahoma that is not in the nicest part of Oklahoma, not quite sure if there is a nice part of Oklahoma...)

Thankfully though we got an email the next day saying we are assigned to Ft Campbell Kentucky.

It's funny how it all turned out because if he had given us Ft Campbell straight off we would have been really disappointed because we wanted either Ft Bragg, North Carolina or Ft Eustis, Virginia.

But after the Germany scare and possible assignments like the ones mentioned about, we were thrilled to get Ft Campbell.

Ft Campbell is half in Kentucky and half in Tennessee.

It's only an hour from Nashville.

I have never been to Nashville but it's always nice to live near a big city.

It's a habit of mine when we are going a new place or have the possibility of going somewhere I always check the same things to see if its I place I would want to live.

I check if the town has a Target (that usually means its not a rinky dink town). check

I check if there are any good churches nearby. check

I check craigslist and see if the rental houses available in our price range are nice. check

I check if the nearby big city has an Anthropologie and a Paper-Source (my favorite stores). check

So Ft Campbell here we come.

Well not till June but were coming.

North Carolina

Oh where to begin...

It is quite amazing to look back at the little circumstances that led to our North Carolina adventure.

It all began a few years ago.

Stephen and I started talking about where we might want to settle down after Stephen gets out of the military.

We both grew up in Napa, California and our families are there.

As much as we love CA and want to live close to family, we knew we never wanted to raise a family there.

With the immigration problems, the state going bankrupt and how liberal it is there, it just isn't the place for us.

Not to mention we could never afford to buy land there.

So we started talking about finding a part of the country that was more conservative but not too redneck, where the weather wasn’t too cold or too hot and where it was pretty and farmland would be more affordable.

That is when we decided North Carolina was a good fit and everyone we ever talked to that had been there loved it.

Then we came across the Duckweed farm (I blogged about it in Sept) and we were sold.

Unfortunately the Duckweed farm was bought already but it started us thinking and we began researching living there.

We figured out that after our time in Missouri we would have one more station until Stephen gets out of the military.

So we knew he could try to get Ft Bragg in NC but after he got out of the military he would need to be close enough to a school to get his Ph. D and possibly to teach at.

That led us to an area that was right in between Ft Bragg and Chapel Hill University.

Then Stephen came across an organization that was starting sustainable agriculture communities around different preserves.

There was a 10 acre property that was right in between both places and we could buy it and build a house there.

Somehow or another this led to some tunnel vision on our parts because we never looked around at anything else, we just worked on figuring out all the details of getting that property.

So with this in mind we flew to NC for a few days to check out the town and property.

We landed Wednesday night and Thursday morning we went to check out the town and the property.

The town was ok.

A typical small town America place that was a little run down but had a few cute shops and buildings.

The chicken farms and processing plants had been the main source of work for most of the town but they were starting to shut down so you could see that the town was struggling with that.

Then we drove out to the property.



Heartbreak.

The first thing we noticed when we got out of the car was the smell of the nearby chicken farm.



The realtor had said over the phone that it didn't smell...yeah right.

We walked around the property and realized that it would be a lot of work and money to clear the trees and put in a house and the land was really nothing special.





So we stood there while our dreams crashed around us (that was a little melodramatic, it wasn't all that bad)

So we got back in the car and tried to drive away but we were stuck in the mud!

I started freaking out as the tires spun more and more.

Then Stephen made me get in the drivers seat while he pushed.

I had the window open so I could hear his directions and when he said “Go!” I stepped on it.

In my anxiety to get out and clear of the mud I must not have heard Stephen yell “Stop!”

As soon as I was safe on the gravel road I stopped and looked behind me and Stephen was covered in mud.



Then we both started laughing hysterically.

We were driving down the road back to the hotel trying to figure out if we should call Stephen's dad, who was going to fly in that evening, to tell him not to bother coming when we drove past a house with a “For Sale” sign.

I said “That's a cute house.” and completely on a whim we turned around and pulling into the driveway.

We had no idea how much it cost or even if it came with any land but we called the realtor anyways and she told us the house was being sold with 26 acres and that we could walk around and check it out.

It used to be a campsite and RV camp.

It was perfect.

I had this adorable check in house that I wanted to turn into a craft room or something fun.



There was lots of cleared land as well as forest.



There was a building that was used as a bathroom facility for the campers that could easily be turned into a guesthouse.

And a barn.



There was a man made pond (had some fixable drainage problems).

And the house was cute with 3 bedrooms and a big attic room that could be used for anything.



It was secluded enough that we couldn't see any of the neighbors, which was something we really wanted. Or as I always said, I want to be able to walk around the house naked without having to worry about having the blinds down, not that I would necessarily be doing that, but that we would have that amount of privacy ;o)

It was everything we could want and more.

So we scheduled to meet with the realtor the next morning with Stephen's dad.

We went out and looked again and Stephen's dad wasn't sold on it.



His opinion was important to us and with the property being a good bit out of our price range, we would need his help to get it.

He wanted to look at other similar properties.

So we looked at this property that the land was nice but the house was awful inside.



I mean like magenta shag carpet and gross smelling and would need to be gutted.

Another place the property was beautiful but the house was not very nice and our neighbors had junky mobile homes.

Another place the house was nice but the land was too close to a highway.

Though there was this cute cow in the field, maybe if it had come with the property...



Another place the land was nice and the house was ok (though a little dreary looking with the brick and the shade) but it was 20 minutes from town and I didn't want to be that far in the boonies.





That was all the properties in that area (Siler City) so we went the next morning to see 2 properties in the town of Pittsboro.

We were very interested in finding something here because it was only 20 minutes from Chapel Hill University.

We first checked out the town.

It is adorable!



I absolutely loved it.

It is the perfect mix of conservative small country town and the liberal arts that we enjoy.

Or as Stephen described it, a rural Berkeley, only not so liberal.

It has cute old brick buildings with cute little shops in them.





There was a school for woodworking with hand tools (so cool right?)

There was even an old fashion soda shop that we went to lunch at.

Everyone was really friendly and seemed to know each other.

It really felt like the small close-knit community we had been looking for.

It also seemed more somewhat artsy which we like.

There is a beautiful new community college there that offers a degree in sustainable agriculture.

We really wanted to live near there.

The first house we looked at was a 100 year old farm house.

We drove up and it looked 100 years old...and not in a good way.



We didn't even bother to look inside.

So then we went to our last house.

The road leading to it was lined with pastures and beautiful houses.

Then we turned down a gravel driveway between the trees and there it was...



our house.



It was a cute little modular home nestled into the woods.



It was very quiet and no neighbors in sight.

Most of the 10 acres is forest but there is some cleared space and we could always clear more.

I can’t say it gave me the same warm fuzzies as the first property we looked at but this fit much better.

The house is really new and won't need any work.

The kitchen:



The living room:



The hallway to the 3 bedrooms:



The backyard:



The back of the house:



The land isn't breathtaking or have a pond but it is much more manageable a size then the 26 acres.

The cleared pasture land that we plan to turn into an orchard and keep our honey bees:



The view from the forrest looking towards the back of the house:



It has a nice big garage that has enough room for Stephen to do his beer brewing.



The view from the house up our gravel road to the main road:



It is only 8 miles from downtown and even closer to the community college which Stephen could maybe teach at someday.

Also the price was significantly lower than the other property and a better financial fit for our future (professors don't tend to make the big bucks ;o)

Across the street there was a whole group of people planting trees so Stephen's dad, who is really into talking to the locals to find out more about the community, walked over with us in tow and we talked to them.

They were doing a workshop on making an edible forest (planting fruit and nut tress etc.).

They were a part of a community called Blue Heron Farm that has about 15 houses on 64 acres across the street from our house.



They call themselves an “intentional community” or as Stephen's dad called it “a commune”.

They were pretty hippie looking but very nice and obviously devoted to the sustainable agriculture movement and living off the land, which is the whole reason we wanted to move to the country.

We were excited that our neighbors are people we could get help and information from for our farm...since we don't have a clue what we are doing :o)

I am also hoping we can barter with them, like I'll give them some of my goats milk and they can give me some apples.

So we were sold.

We put in the offer for the house on Tuesday and waited very impatiently to hear if we got it and we got a call Wednesday afternoon saying we got it!

We’ve had many conversations since like the one we had last night as we were laying in bed;

M: Stephen
S: Yeah?
M: We’re buying a house and 10 acres in North Carolina
S: Yep
M: We’re crazy
S: Yep
M: I’m so excited!

So now we have to wait the long 4 months till we actually get to move there.

I guess it gives us time to read up about farming :o)