This past winter, we moved to Pennsylvania to live near other homeschooling Catholic families. In our past blog, I highlighted the great opportunity this was and the process of making that decision for our family. As we settled into the community, we enjoyed our time interacting with the families both in prayer and fellowship.
We began running our home back in Wisconsin as an Air BnB but unfortunately it wasn’t very successful. The warm winter weather definitely played a factor. Our home is near a snow mobile trail, many fishing lakes, and a ski resort. We were realizing that living off of one income paying a mortgage back home and renting a house was not going to work long term for our situation.
Though we were enjoying our time in Catholic community, we also missed our home back in Wisconsin. Though the house we were renting was bigger, we loved the coziness of our cabin in the woods. For a bit we considered selling our home in order to buy the house in Pennsylvania. We talked it all over as a family. Despite gaining new friends, we all agreed that we couldn’t sell our cabin in the woods. We all missed the northern woods of Wisconsin. I was amazed that Calena and every one of our kids had the exact opinion.
We ended up making the hard decision. We moved back to Wisconsin in April. Calena’s dad Clete was extremely generous and out of his own kind initiative helped us with the move. It wasn’t easy but God helped us through it. We ended up moving the day of the eclipse. Luckily traffic was not an issue and we experienced part of the eclipse including a temperature drop of around 20 degrees.
We are grateful for Wayne completely understanding and respecting our decision. (You can read more about him and his work in our previous blog). I am hoping to return to the House of Prayer to visit, pray, and perhaps perform a concert sometime in the future.
While it wasn’t an easy process by any means to move and then move back, it did overall have a positive impact on our family. We were able to experience Catholic community, even if it was only for a short time. The primary grace that I received was gratitude and peace. Living away from our cabin in the woods for those four months made me appreciate the gift that it truly is. I am content with the solitude. I am happy to be surrounded by my family in nature. I am seeing my wife and each child as a reflection of the beauty of God.
Further, I am content with the humbleness of our lives. We live in a small house in the woods. We are all content to stay where we are at for now. We do not have plans to move or pursue anything new.
I am working from home now and helping out quite a bit with watching the children because Calena has been experiencing morning sickness. We are so grateful we are expecting a new child. As a gift to the children for being so good during the transition, I was able to get them a new basketball hoop, trampoline, and we put together a bunch of Ninja Lines for them to play outside on. I even got a Ninja Line installed for myself.
God blessed us with healthy Australian Shepherd puppies who all found good homes. About half of them found homes in Wisconsin and half in Pennsylvania. The children pleaded for us to be able to keep one of the puppies. Blaise has promised to take good care of him.
Our new puppy is named Diego. He is named after St. Juan Diego. It is a fitting name for him since his mother is named Lupe after Our Lady of Guadalupe.
