Watching the Olympics

Legos

The Weekend

This weekend we took a little break from trailer life and spent the night at John's mom's house. It was nice to have a little more space, different toys for the boys to play with, & the pool to keep us cool.

We also went huckleberry picking (twice!), and went to the beach with friends. It was a great weekend, but I am getting soooo anxious for a HOUSE! I am holding out a little hope that we'll be able to close Friday. The negotiator from the bank said we should have the official approval letter this week, so if we get it by tomorrow we might have enough time to be able to close this week. We have now passed the 3 month mark since we made the offer on our house, so I'm really hoping we can get it wrapped up quickly!

A Few More

I am so proud of the boys! We spent 7 hours at the beach today, and they only had one or two minor skirmishes. Not bad!

A couple more pictures from today...

Day at the Beach

Last weekend we discovered a nice little beach just a few minutes from where we're staying. Today it's supposed to be close to 90 so I decided to take the boys there for the day. We've currently been here for 5 hours and we have had the beach to ourselves the entire time! The weather is beautiful, the boys are playing nicely despite the fact that no one has napped...and we might just stay until John gets off work!

Back to Civilization

We made it back to the buffalo ranch after 3 weeks of roughin' it. We had basically no cell service, internet, electricity (except what we could generate with our solar panel), no septic/water hook-ups. It was interesting but we had a really good time, and I perfected some Dutch oven cooking!

We spent the day before we left celebrating Archer's 3rd birthday (which is tomorrow!) so he got to choose the activities for the day. We started out with a trip to Cabela's for the shooting gallery & a new toy, then went to "the peanut place" (Texas Roadhouse) for lunch where he camped out on the birthday saddle for a good portion of our time there. After that we took a bike ride on the trail to the park & ice cream, and pizza for dinner. A seriously good day for an almost 3 year old!

Yesterday we moved back to the buffalo ranch and found an awesome little beach just a few minutes away. We are planning to go back soon, but it was only in the 60's today, brrrrrrrr.

In house news...we have none unfortunately. The mortgage company is waiting for the official approval letter from the bank with the new sales price, so everything is on hold until they get it. It looks like we will probably not be able to close in July at this point, and we're actually requesting an extension for another 30 days. Frustrating. Extremely. But nothing else has come in the market that we are even remotely interested in, sooooo...we wait.

Teeth and Frogs

We are coming to the end of our stay in the middle of nowhere, and getting very close to the end of our days in the trailer. We had to push back closing due to some additional negotiations (the house needs about $20k+ in repairs...we knew and anticipated about $10-15k but found out about some more at the inspection), but we're still hoping to close by the end of July.

In the meantime, we'll be moving back to the bison ranch to finish up our stay.

In camp news, Preston lost his second tooth, Bryton caught a tiny tiny frog, and Archer's 3rd birthday is coming up in just a few days. I'm sick of taking outdoor solar showers and cooking outdoors... Ready for a few amenities!

Around Camp

We have been spending a lot of time just hanging out at camp. John's schedule is nice, but he has a pretty long drive to work so generally it's just me and the boys 4 days a week. We also had some friends come out to camp with us a couple of times so that was nice and kept the boys entertained! There is a little "beach" and area for the boys to play just a few minutes away from the campground that a lot of these pictures are from. Lots of fishing, but no catching!

Day Trip

Last weekend we went past Avery (almost to the Montana border) to play on the St. Joe River. The river is too deep/fast/wide at our campsite for the boys to play in, but we found an area that was pretty shallow that we spent a good portion of the day at. John got to spend a lot of time fly fishing there too, so he was happy!

Off Grid!

We've spent the last 2 weeks in a little campground up the St. Joe River. We don't have any hook-ups, no cell service, and obviously no Internet. It's been pretty interesting! We are loving the quiet (we're currently the only people there except for the camp hosts), and we have the perfect campsite - full sun for our solar panel but a big shade tree for the rest of the site. There are lots of biting bugs unfortunately, but we have a screen room set up with the boys' pool inside. The days where the temps have been high 90's are a little rough, but we are loving it (and the $6/day rate is pretty nice too!).

We had planned to leave last Monday but decided to stay another week and use up our "14 day max stay" but today they told us we could stay as long as we want since they haven't been busy at all...we might just stay for a while longer!

On the house situation...the inspection wasn't great (siding needs to be replaced, some plumbing issues, and LOTS of minor issues that we will need to address), so we submitted an addendum asking for a lower purchase price + the bank paying for our closing costs. We just heard today that they will accept $1k over what we offered in the addendum so we're happy with that! Still hoping to close on the 24th but we're not sure if that will be possible or not.

So, since I currently have Internet, massive photo dump coming up!