Never a dull moment!

It's been an interesting day here at Camp Nelson.

It starts with the un-seasonably warm weather we've had the past couple of days. The 50 degree heat and rain melted the snow and turned my yard into a lake again. Granted, I'm happy with the warm weather, but the amount of water is CRAZY!

Lake Nelson

I'm thinking about stocking it with some bass!

Next thing I know, I look out the window and see horses that once were in the round corral happily munching on my hay stack. The same two horses that the neighbors had to wrangle up for me while I was at work a few weeks ago. Apparently one of them decided that 10am was WAY too late for breakfast and that the hay looked much greener on the other side of the fence and took out a few boards.

Horse-made gate

So I go out and wade through the swamp and put them in the other pasture that they had originally escaped from. What's especially irritating is that these two particular escapee horses are the ones that aren't even mine. They were supposed to be gone last weekend but, because of my lack of horsey transportation and cooperation from the guy they now belong to, I still have them.

STAY horsey!!!

When I got contained again, I notice that some of the wire on that pasture is really loose. The same section of fence I asked my husband to fix while he was home. But I digress.

I decided that, since it was so warm out and I was feeling good today, that I'd go fix the fence while the nice guys from the lumber company were stacking my firewood. It'd be nice to take advantage of the rare weather and get out and do something in the sun shine. However, have I ever mentioned how much I loathe, hate and abhor fence stretchers? We just don't see eye to eye. I ended up on my big ol' pregnant rear end in the mud because the stupid wire slipped out of the stupid stretcher. I'm sure it had absolutely NOTHING to do with the stupid operator, but that is completely besides the point. And do you see the color of the mud around here right now? And don't ask me why I was outside wearing my only pair of good jeans that fit me right now, instead of my holey work jeans. I don't have an answer for that. Now they are muddy. Keep reading to see why that is a BIG problem.


While I was outside frolicking in the mud, my boys were in the house playing. I knew they were in the toy room, and once they get playing in there they are content for an hour or so. But when I came in to check on them, I see Wade go flying into the bathroom and slam the door. He says he's washing his hands. I ask him why. He says because they are dirty. I said, I just bet they are!

When I finally open the door and make him show me what he needs to wash off his hands, I notice he's a little more colorful than usual.

This is my naughty face

Wade's story is, WES climbed up and got the finger paints out and opened them up and painted all over everything. Including the carpet, the stairs and WADE'S jeans and boots. I doubt his story but, upon questioning, Wes had no rebuttal. Just this silly face!

"Look what we did mom!"

Luckily, the paint is fairly washable and will probably come out of everything. Including Wes' clothes....

"Someone painted my butt mom!"

The problem with washing things like painted pajamas and muddy jeans right now is, I have no washing machine! The next step in today's adventure (after I put two naughty boys down for a nap, of course) was to have a plumber come out and figure out why my sink and washing machine aren't draining out. $120 bucks and some nasty black pipe-gunk later, the guy tells me that the pipe isn't clogged and that I probably need to dig up the leech field because it's a billion years old and most likely needs new perforated pipe and gravel. Fantastic. I'll just go grab my shovel....

So I still don't have a washer or kitchen sink, I still have mountains of dirty dishes and laundry including the stinky laundry that the boys created in our round of the stomach bug this week. I wont go into details of the epic nastiness of the laundry. Just take my word that it's really not something you want laying around your house. More like in a nuclear waste plant.

In the meantime, Chuck is all grouchy because he's irritated that he can't just fix it himself and calls a good friend of ours to come help me re-design how to run the pipes downstairs so that the washing machine and sink drain into the actual septic tank where the bathroom drains into which is functioning correctly.

For now.

I cant make any promises for tomorrow.

Right now, I'm going to go wash dishes in my tub.

Then children.

Then muddy dogs.

North Dakota, like it or not.

Our next big change will be moving halfway around the world to the arctic tundra of North Dakota. Ok……….fine………so it’s only a few states away. But one of those states is Montana and that’s a BIG state! 753 miles to be exact. And it’s actually just on the outskirts of the arctic tundra. But still.

I feel the need to explain this move. To justify it to everyone. So many people have had such negative reaction to it (including myself, at first) and I’m tired of trying to explain it.

I really hated the idea of moving when the idea was suggested. I was completely and entirely against it, said I wasn’t going to do it, that I was keeping my butt planted in Idaho. I fought it, made Chuck feel like crap about it, threw a Wade-worthy fit. But to be completely honest, my temper tantrum was mostly out of fear. I’ve moved away from home before, I’ve moved states away from everything I knew before, but this time it’s really scaring the crap out of me. I was so content with making this place “home”. My friends and family are close, I love the town, I love my church, I’m comfortable here. Recently though, the feeling of “home” is gone. Even though I have my boys and everything else I know here, without Daddy, it’s just a chunk of dirt. It’s lonely with no feeling of purpose. Everything is in limbo, like life is going on around us and we’re standing still, just waiting. As Chuck puts it, it doesn’t feel like home because “I have no one to argue with”. While, ironically, I cant argue with his logic, it is so much more than that. It’s impossible to freeze a family in time, but that’s what we’ve had to do. A marriage just doesn’t function correctly when you’re so far away from each other. This is the main reason our separation scares me more than I can explain. I’ve experienced, first hand unfortunately, what extended amounts of time away from each other can do to a marriage. It ain’t pretty.

Not to mention how hard it is on the kids. Just last night, Wade was talking to Chuck on the phone and I heard him say “Maybe tomorrow you can come to my house and play!”. As painful as that was for me to hear, I know it broke Chuck’s heart. And it’s just going to get harder when his baby girl is here.

And I cant leave out my own selfishness. As much as my husband gets on my nerves and annoys me to no end sometimes, he IS my other half. And while we definitely need our time apart from each other to keep from killing the other, I still NEED him. Next to me. With me.

Doing the chores. Haha!

Since last August when Chuck left for Montana, I knew in my heart that the possibility of moving would come up. Idaho just does not have the economy to keep someone with a career in construction employed year round. We simply cannot afford to live on unemployment six months out of the year. I don’t know how anyone can. So when he got this job in North Dakota knowing that they work FOR SURE through the winter every year, it was hard to argue with him when he started talking about getting ready to move. Especially since they hired him with the intention of using his knowledge and talent, considering a lot of companies just hire “bodies”. And the money is really REALLY hard to argue with. It’s more than we could ever dream of making here in Idaho. Job security and money to support a big family is all we really hope for. Just so happens that it’s not exactly located where we wanted it to be.

For a long time now, I’ve been praying about this situation. You would assume that I’d be praying to stay in Idaho, that somehow we could find a way to stay here, that some awesome job came up that he couldn’t pass up. But I don‘t. I pray that God would put us where we’re supposed to be, whether that be Idaho, North Dakota, or Africa. Whatever, just let me know what we’re supposed to do! Now, I don’t get stingray’s in the sky type of messages or anything, but I am starting to feel that we are supposed to move. That my fears are just that. Fear. Maybe I cant see clearly enough through my fear to see what might just be a really good thing for our family.

And ND cant be all THAT bad. Sure, they have miserable nasty winters (that, coming from a Utahn/Idahoan…..), sure, it’s middle of nowhere. But at least Dickinson is actually on the ND map. My little town here in Idaho isn’t! Lol!

So I’m starting to push the fear aside and concentrate on the great possibilities. Getting a little excited and maybe even starting to embrace it. It’s still small town living, so my boys will have the benefit of growing up “country”. It’s still got great hunting. Maybe even better hunting! (Other than the elk. We’ll still have to come to ID or MT for that! ;)) Dickinson actually sounds like a neat place to live from the research I've done. Now I am actually starting looking forward to exploring a new place. Making new friends, seeing new places.

So my house is going to be listed soon. We’ve found one in ND that we are looking into buying. It’s looking like it’s really going to happen. It will be our BIGGEST new thing for 2011!!

Merry Christmas to me!

Another little new change is our “new” truck. With baby #3 on the way, I had to start thinking about getting a new truck, because 3 carseats wont fit in the backseat of my Explorer. It’s the reason I got an SUV in the first place, so it’s annoying, but whatever. It’s also got something wrong in the front end of it that we assume is going to cost a good chunk of change to fix, and we dont really feel comfortable with me relying on it. So we thought about trading it in on a Suburban, or buying a smaller pickup for Chuck to drive so I could have the Duramax but we just couldn’t justify having another loan with a payment since my Explorer is paid off. I suggested that we get an older, single cab pickup for Chuck to drive instead. But when I said older I didn’t mean antique!!!! This is what he came home with.....



Don’t get me wrong. I truly love the old classic Fords. My dad always had classic Fords (well…..maybe they weren’t classics back then!). The first vehicle I owned in high school was a ‘70’s Ford. My blood runs blue, and always has! (Please don’t tell the Duramax that! I love her too!). But I had something a bit newer in mind for us. I tried to argue with him about it, but he had his heart set on it. Said that there isn’t anything on this truck he cant fix himself (meaning nothing computerized) and he can fix anything relatively inexpensively, which is true. So eventually I consented and he went down to B-Town, Utah on Christmas Day to go buy the new beast!

As much as I rolled my eyes, shook my head and poked fun at the truck (seriously, the hood doesn’t have all it‘s bolts to connect it to the truck!) inside I secretly was overjoyed! I miss my truck, and the rumble of that 390 pulling in the driveway brought back SO many fond memories! Sure, some of those memories involve being covered in grease, busted knuckles and more than a few four letter words, but they were good memories!

As soon as it was home, Chuck started mechanic-ing and I started laughing and tried to resist the urge to say “I told you so!“. Even though it’s in fairly good shape and runs really well, there was still a lot he needed to do to it to make it 700+ mile trip ready in the dead of winter.

But the truck did it’s job, it got him to ND and left the trusty Chevy with me and the boys. Maybe someday we’ll fully restore it and it will be my “grocery getter”!

Trip's new girlfriend!

Our first little change of the new year is the addition of our puppy Tia. She’s a full border collie like Trip, and a pretty cute little thing! Chuck traded some shoeing for her when he was in Montana to keep him company, but now that he’s working the insane hours he is, he doesn’t have the time for her. So guess who gets to take care of her now? That would be me. The caretaker of all of Chuck’s abandoned projects! But she’s fitting in quite nicely with the rest of the toddlers! Pees on stuff, chews on stuff, wakes me up in the middle of the night, needs constant attention, makes horrendous messes in a matter of seconds, picks on her brother, just like having another kid!



She really is a fun addition though. She seems to be really smart like Trip, and that’s a good sign. The last border collie puppy we had, Mocha, was an idiot so she only lasted a couple months here before I sold her to some unsuspecting sucker in Idaho Falls. Evil, I know. Tia, on the other hand, is almost too smart for her own good. She is (sorta) potty trained, but can tell when I’m ignoring her and pees on the floor with much spite. She knows that when Wes fusses at night momma is going to get up, and she usually beats me up the stairs to see what’s up. She has been incredibly spoiled by her Daddy (hence the name Tia=Princess) and thinks she is a lap dog and thinks she needs to be in my bed with me or on the couch with me or Wade all the time. But she also is picking up very quickly on the little bit of training I’ve done with her.


So sometime in the future, we’ll have border collie puppies from two really smart dogs! The plan is that the income from the puppies will make up for the absolutely ridiculously high priced dog food we have to feed Trip!

Happy New Year!!!!!

This New Years brings new change for my family. Sad change. Big change. Scary change. LOTS of change. Maybe even some spare change! Hopefully all GOOD change!

Instead of rambling on in a long post about all our many changes, I’m going to write a few shorter ones instead. Hopefully I wont completely confuse or bore people to death!

2011 is going to be a big year for us!!!