July 2021

We look forward to the month of July all year because Will has the entire month off of work.  This year, July was stressful and underwhelming after happily anticipating it for so long.  But, as I collaged the photos for this post, I am reminded of the good times that we still managed to have, and how life continues to move forward, no matter what you are struggling with.  Most of Will's time off was spent getting our house ready for remediation.  I can't even imagine pulling this off if Will was working, and for that we are grateful.  I've known from the day I met Will that he is a hard worker.  This past month he worked harder than I had ever seen anyone work, all to make things safe for me and the girls.  We are fairly organized (I used to work for a professional organizing company!) and that helped us so much.  Much of our items in the basement were already in plastic bins, and so they just needed to be hauled up out of the basement and the plastic bins disinfected.  However, my entire business for The Bees Weeds, Harding Honey and my new Wildflower Moon are all in the basement.  That was a time-consuming task to disinfect what we could save and set up my work room in our garage as we awaited remediation.  Will's workroom was also in our basement, and so every tool, piece of hardware and paint can also needed to be thoroughly disinfected and brought outside.  Thank goodness we have a huge garage, as the garage became the holding pen for what used to be in our basement.  In clockwise order from top left below: facial swelling due to mold, dancing in the basement wearing a respirator as the basement has not been remediated yet but there is a tornado warning, putting plastic on every thing on the first floor that we didn't take out since our floors are old and there is high risk of cross contamination when the basement is remediated, the rafters after remediation looking like brand new wood, our basement during remediation, and finally, our garage stocked with our pantry, my workroom, Will's workroom, kids toys, all the hand me downs we store in the basement, and any other manner of stuff that we had to take out of our house for remediation.

During this past month as we awaited remediation, we grappled with whether we should stay and try to fix the root problems of our house or look into moving.  We started looking online at houses and were floored by how expensive everything was.  In clockwise order from top left below: Lucy sent me a chain of texts with links to houses she found and in that chain was a drawing she made and a fake link to go with it, Violet made a drawing of a blue house we found online, a flow chart for Will and I to try and figure out what to do from here, and finally, Opal with a list of features we would want in a new house.

After some serious prayer, sleepless nights and many conversations, we asked God to give us a sign as to how we should move forward.  Our prayer was answered the very next day when Dave, the Building Biologist that Will works with in the summer, shared his opinion.  We are grateful he was brave enough to be honest, despite how hard it must have been to tell us that he believes we should move.  Will and I looked at each other and knew this was our sign from God.  We trust and value Dave's opinion, and you can't find a better expert in safe homes.  So, we started packing and called my cousin's wife who is a realtor.  Our first goal needed to be getting the house ready to put on the market.  This is no easy feat with four kids and a house still awaiting mold remediation.

Our realtor hired a professional photographer to take the photos of our house, and we were given a checklist of items to take care of before the photo shoot to ensure our house looked it's best.  This was almost as much work as getting the basement ready for remediation.  On the day of the photo shoot, we had exactly 61 minutes left until the photographer came.  I came downstairs after declaring victory on the upstairs, ready to tackle the first floor knowing I had only an hour left.  I then discovered Opal in the living room with a pair of scissors and tiny triangles of paper alllll over the living room floor.  Agh!!!!  She told me, "Look mama!  I made stars!"  Oh, sweet baby!  Yes, you did!  Then, the photographer arrived 45 minutes early!  We ended up just shoving all the last items into our car.  Picture driving to my parents house for dinner (we couldn't be home when the photos were taken) with soap dispensers, random jackets, extra shoes, a toilet plunger, and other random stuff just rolling around in our car.  As Will and I are catching our breath and realizing just how sweaty we are, Opal pipes up from the back seat and proclaims, "Isn't moving fun?!"  All we could do is laugh.  Here is Opal below, this time making the phases of the moon.  She did this all by herself and fortunately we weren't showing the house at that moment.

It was six weeks from discovering the mold in our house until the remediation company could fit us in.  We could not live there while remediation took place, and it took a week.  So we moved in with my parents, into my childhood bedroom with two kids in sleeping bags on the floor, and another two kids in sleeping bags in the living room.  I have no pictures from that week besides the two below.  My parents fed us so well while we were there - three from-scratch meals a day and breakfast was even to order.  Our friends lived down the street too, so we got to see them several times by just walking down the street to play, which was a bonus.  I brought rhubarb from my garden and my mom and I cooked up lots of rhubarb at her house.  My mom even made Will a lunch that was fancier than he's ever had packed before while he worked at our house during the day.  Each day we drove to our house to take care of the chickens, Charlie, and for me to do shipping for my business.  It was strange to feel like we were living between two houses and stressful as well.

After spending a week at my parents house, we went up north and spent a few days with Will's family.  For Christmas, Will's brother gave us all a trip up north together with his family.  The timing couldn't have been better, as it was during our time of being homeless.

It was cold and rained every single day we were there, which was a bummer.  We still made the most of it though and took hikes in between rain showers and dressed warmly to explore the beach.  One evening, family friends who have a cottage nearby stopped by for a bonfire.  Their youngest daughter is just a year older than Opal, and the two of them hit it off right away.  It was so cute to see, especially since Opal really hasn't had a chance to make friends of her own with the pandemic around for half of her life.  By the time the night had ended, the girls were calling each other their requested nicknames of "Fluffy" and "Flower" and I hope to get them together again soon.

Of course the last day we were there, the sun came out and warmed the beach.

It was time for us to go home though, and hope that remediation went well.  When we got home, our goal was to continue sprucing up the house so it would sell.  We love our home, and never planned on leaving it.  Our gardens alone were something I had never thought of giving up.  Our asparagus bed, apple trees, peach tree, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, rhubarb and herbs not to mention our wildflower meadow and all of the bulb flowers we planted that come up in the spring.  Our hearts were breaking and yet we still had a peace in knowing that we were meant to leave.

We absolutely love our front porch that looks out onto green space, and the space for a porch swing and just general warm weather living.  I wanted to enjoy every minute we had left with our porch.  In the below, right hand photo below, we are enjoying a thunderstorm, one of our favorite things to do on our amazing covered porch.  Opal is wearing noise canceling headphones so that she can enjoy the storm too.

There was so much work to be done this past month, it really forced us to move through the depression of moving.  Especially since we were moving without the excitement of a new place to go to.  And it seemed like every house available on the market was either too expensive, too moldy looking, too far, too small, or too ugly.  Nothing could compare to our adorable bungalow in walking distance to a beautiful downtown, green space across the street and close to our friends and family.  This was a true leap of faith we were taking - to trust the message that God had given us, even though we had no idea where we were going to end up.  It's interesting how something can be so incredibly difficult, but under it all you have a peace and certainty guiding you.  

Despite these hard challenges, looking at the photos below reminds me that we still smiled, we still laughed and we still lived this past month.  In clockwise order from top left below: Will bringing all of us to check on things at work and Opal setting herself up at Will's desk, acting like she owned the place, running into our friends at the grocery store and chatting for a while, commiserating with my sister via text as she tried to find comfortable shoes for a wedding she was standing up in (seems like the Hines sisters were born with triangle feet but if you see the diagram below, our triangle feet are facing the wrong way for stylish shoes), a train track Violet and Opal built at the chiropractor's, and Violet showing me that she brought healing salve on our evening walk for the mosquito bites.  The mosquitoes have been SO SO BAD this summer.  The worst I ever remember them, and probably because we have had so much rain.

My kids were not happy about moving, but seemed to take it in stride.  They were very unmotivated in helping pack and at times it felt like they were living their best lives while Will and I worked harder than we have ever worked before.  At one point, as Will and I were trying to pare down their over abundance of toys, Violet asked Will if she could go online and shop for Barbies.  Um, read the room Violet!  Read the room!  We are currently trying to pack all of your toys and you are asking about buying more?!  And don't get me started on Legos.  How do you move Lego sets that the kids are insistent on keeping built?  I swear half of our boxes were filled with built Lego sets.

The kids took advantage of Will's and my distraction this past month with more freedom in the pantry and with screen time.  I came downstairs one afternoon to them watching TV with a giant homemade snack bowl filled with all sorts of things I would have never agreed to.  Look at those guilty grins in the top photo below.  Lucy is offering me some, to try and win me over.

I like the above photo of all four girls on the couch watching a movie with Charlie watching in the window.  I will miss this.  Will our next house have a window for Charlie?  Will our next house even be safe for Charlie to continue his outdoor cat life?  My heart hurt about how this move would affect Charlie. More so than it hurt to think about the impact on my kids.  Obviously we would be making real estate choices with my kids as number one priority.  But could we afford to make real estate choices that were the best for our outdoor cat as well?  Oh, my heart.  Plus, what about moving our chickens?  We had fortunately decided in the spring when our bees didn't make it through the winter to take a year off from bees.  It was getting too dangerous having the bees so close to me and having to sit in my backyard with an epi pen was no way to live.  That tough decision definitely made moving easier - having to move bee hives or try to find a place to relocate them would have been just more stress on an already stressful situation.  Plus, we were also worried about what to do with our chickens.  I told God that I could say goodbye to the chickens, but please Lord, I cannot say goodbye to Charlie.  Please.

Will and I kept reminding ourselves that although we are grieving the loss of our beloved home, at least we are all staying together and that home is wherever I'm with you.  We can overcome anything, as long as we are together and healthy.  And the point of the move is for us all to be healthy again.  This amazing man found a slip of paper that I don't remember writing when he moved my workroom.  It read, "Write a well-written book that will help save the earth."  He kept it for me and here he is below, showing it to me through our kitchen window.  He has never looked more handsome to me than he did at that moment.  A man who is willing to move heaven and earth for me to be healthy, and who also supports me in following my dreams.  We celebrated our 17th wedding anniversary this month, and although I don't remember what we did to celebrate, I will never forget how Will and I handled this past month together. 

My finished journal arrived in 12 boxes this past month, and although it is self-published, it is pretty close to my dream of writing a book to help save the earth.  Here I am below in my new workroom.  The printer is plugged into an outlet in the ceiling, and the best part, is Charlie keeps me company while I work.

My First Period Kit was finally complete this past month, and it was exciting to see everything come together after 14 months of planning, creating and producing.  Will was there every step of the way and is an amazing example of an evolved male.  The perfect guy to raise four daughters.  The bottom, right hand photo below is the front passenger seat of my car, stocked with online orders ready to go to the post office.

After our house was remediated, our new fridge showed up.  Will put in new trim in the kitchen and although we were excited to have a real fridge again, it was bittersweet knowing that we would be moving soon.

When you get married young, it is hard to comprehend just how much you and your partner will go through together.  There is no way to understand just how brutal life can be until you have some life under your belt.  While I am grateful that Will and I didn't know what the future would hold when we got married 17 years ago, I would do it all again, as long as he is by my side.