There were a few changes here awhile back with moving healthy living and essential oils over to Wholesome Families.
I have been mostly MIA this winter and I wanted to share why.

In November, right before Thanksgiving, The Principal hurt himself at work. What we thought was a small sprained ankle ended up being a torn ligament and he was home for 5 months. Then on December 18th I slipped on some black ice and landed flat on my back. I ended up needing to be transported to the local hospital for CT Scan and Xrays. I was diagnosed with a concussion and have since been diagnosed with Post Concussion Syndrome.
It was a very hard winter for us. Physically and mentally. Thankfully we still have the youngest at home and a lot….all of the physical responsibility fell on him. The snow removal that seemed never ending and also the wood hauling.

These two events in an of themselves weren’t the end of the world. Together was the perfect storm leading us to reevaluate our prepping lifestyle.

SPIRITUALLY

Thankful for live streaming from our church. We stayed in a lot. We are both introverts so this wasn’t all that hard to do even when healthy.
We began to crave community though and living where we live, 5 rural acres in North Idaho, we don’t have much of that.
If the SHTF tomorrow we are all we have. Us and 3 of the 4 kids. (One moved to NYC)
I have always wondered if we were making the right choice being out where we are. Will we be able to keep ourselves safe from marauders? There aren’t even enough of us to pull shifts. Yes, I have read many a book that plants these ideas in my head.

PHYSICALLY

We aren’t getting any younger. This last 5 months just proved that living here isn’t an easy lifestyle. The only animals we have left are chickens. Winters are hard, as is the prep for winter, which starts in late summer. We will need wood again (we actually ran out) which means either paying for it or going up to the forest to get it. Regardless, it will need to be split and stacked. The teenager isn’t going to live at home forever. Not to say that we can’t handle it now, but 15-20 years from now is a different story.

FINANCIALLY

Thankfully The Principal was covered under workers comp. at 67% of his income. We didn’t even feel it because it was actually more take home than his normal pay. Uncle Sam gets WAY too much of the cut in my opinion.
We also had plenty of food stores so I wasn’t ever worried about the lack of pay.

Where is this all going you ask?

The Principal and I have decided that life is short. The prepping, while necessary, doesn’t look the same for us anymore.
We are trading in our 5 rural acres in the American Redoubt for a 5th wheel and a truck. We haven’t been living in fear but we do feel we are missing out on a lot of life living where we are living. We did ponder just moving into a house closer to Coeur d Alene, but have decided a year, or two, or even three in a 5th wheel would be a great adventure.

We are in the process of get the house all spiffy to sell it. Downsizing A LOT. Storing some. We will still have adult children in the area so they are benefitting from the preps that we can’t take with us.

*UPDATED January 2020*

We did indeed end up in the burbs, which you can read about here. It has been a God thing as we have enough room for 3 of 4 of our now adult kids to be at home while saving for the future. One is college.

The cool thing is prepping looks different for everybody and everybody has skills they still need to learn. We can’t possibly know everything and we are excited to learn about prepping while traveling.

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