2020 - If You Give A Girl A Homestead

The Holidays

It's hard to believe that it has been almost 10 months since Jeremy left us and 2020 started it colossal spiral downward. I have had people asking how I am doing and so I thought I would check in with everyone. Plus I am finding sharing my heart with you all here, is healing. It helps me put words and clarity to some of the thoughts and feeling that seem to be swirling about in my heart and head. I have been dreading this season, not wanting to walk it, but knowing the only way to healing is to walk through it. Maybe even limping through it. Maybe even crawling through it some days. But in order for healing, I…we… have to move through it. Embracing what we can and recognizing what we just do not have the capacity for and being ok with that. Moving into last year’s Christmas…

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December 9, 2020

Travel

What’s in a Picture

I love this picture. And it isn’t because, having just left Colorado where humidity is non-existent, my hair was on point. There is another reason. Or rather, reasons. We were driving from Denver and heading to the Grand Tetons in the northwest of Wyoming. We had just gotten into Wyoming and I realized that I hadn’t put the actual campground’s location into in my GPS. I had just plugged in Grand Tetons. Um…the Grand Tetons are kinda, well, grand. I probably should have been more specific. I realized my mistake and cleared out my directions only to then realize I had made a bigger mistake. My data wasn’t working (I realized later I had hit a button that had turned it off) and there was no cell service. I could not pull up ANY directions. So there we were… in Wyoming, headed in the right direction, but completely without directions.…

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October 14, 2020

Daily Life / Travel

13th

Dates. People observe them as markers to life events. Birthdays, first meetings, first dates, job changes, house buying, sobriety, weddings, deaths, national and global tragedies. There is something about the marking of time with those life events that remind us of joy or pain or even a shift that occurs within us. For me, that day is the 13th. It was Friday, the 13th , that I sat at a picnic table trying to get a hold of Jeremy knowing he was in the hospital and they had just done a CT scan. I knew it was bad. I had known since Labor Day that something was wrong. I had a field trip to Williamsburg planned for the kids and I was not sure if I should still go. He ended up going to the doctor before I left because I felt so uneasy about going. He went in and she did…

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September 13, 2020

Uncategorized

Day 3

This morning I woke up at 6:30 (7:30 back home) and was able to climb one of the sand dunes to have my morning coffee. It was beautiful. I was able to catch those moments of magic light but chose not to pick up the phone to try to capture it. I sat in it. Once the sun was well on its way, I went back down to the camper to get the kids going. After they got dressed, they grabbed breakfast to eat outside and then run and play on the dunes while I prepared us to go. I was just about done when they came back. I noticed a lot of yellow jackets being attracted to the water that had dripped down from the roof of the camper so there was a little bit of maneuvering to make sure we didn’t get stung. The yellow jackets in TX…

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June 24, 2020

Uncategorized

Day 2

Day 2: This morning I woke up around 6:30 with dread. Last night when I went to bed I was seriously questioning my sanity. Ok, I’ve always questioned it but REALLY questioned it. We got a later start than I had wanted and I looked for a place to get an extra tire, but struck out. I think because it is Sunday. Walmart’s tire department was closed due to covid though, so maybe both. I made sure to keep my speed at 60 mph, praying not to have another blow out. Today was fairly uneventful, thank goodness. We stopped at LeTourneau University and I could tell that it was soothing to my older two. I don’t really know how to explain it. I watched as they took off on an empty campus and I could tell their hearts were full imaging their dad as he walked around campus. They wanted…

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June 22, 2020

Travel / Uncategorized

Day 1: 2020 Trip

Day 1: I am thinking what was I thinking!!??😂 Today was the longest stretch for the first three days of our travel and it was looooong. Georgia and Alabama was pretty uneventful other than getting ten minutes down the road and a guy telling me the door to my electric was flapping in the wind. Shortly after crossing the Mississippi border another gentleman flagged me over to tell me my spare tire cover decided to fly away. Aaaaaand. Even though I thought I was going slow (well below speed limit) I had a tire blow right after crossing into Louisiana. Thank God for the sway bars I had put on my truck. I had been staying in the right lane so it was easy to pull over and limp along to the exit. I had been warned by numerous people that a blowout was not a matter of if but…

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June 21, 2020

About the Homestead / Daily Life / Travel

Happy Father’s Day, Jeremy

Today is the first Father's Day my kids spend without their dad. I am not sure if they even realize it is Father's Day. I will probably be sure to bring it up because maybe with our day of travel and it being a distraction, it won't feel as awful? Maybe it will help getting this first out of the way When we knew Jeremy was going home on hospice, I was sitting there talking to him about the things that had impacted me about him, the things I loved about him. I shared with him how I was proud of him and the father he had been. That our kids would never doubt for an instant of his love. A little while later when I asked him what he would want to me to share at his memorial service, he said with a smile, "That." So below is the…

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June 21, 2020

About the Homestead / Daily Life / Travel

A Mountain Called Grief

A week or so after Jeremy’s memorial service, I decided I needed to take the kids to the mountains for a hike. It was something that Jeremy and I loved to do. He loved the mountains. When it came to vacation time, he would have opted for the mountains rather than the beach every time. I tried to make our big vacations at the beach, but weekend getaways were in the mountains for him. Hiking didn’t happen too much over the last 14 years, just because the littles were, well, little. Our hikes or rather walks were usually easy when we ventured out as a whole family. We were just starting to come to the age with all the kids that we could do little more adventurous hikes because they could keep up. No more having to carry anyone halfway through our excursions or listening to an excessive amount of…

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May 11, 2020

About the Homestead / Daily Life

Grief

I get asked a lot how I am doing and I know some of them are not just a polite, “How are you doing?” but rather a “Dee, my heart hurts for you guys and I want to make it all better for you in some way and I don’t know how. And I really want to make sure you are OK” type of how are you doing? I know by social media appearances I am doing OK. I am getting up every morning and I am getting stuff done. I am posting the successes and the happy moments. But I am not posting how that every morning even if I don’t see it coming, I cry. Or every night, I am sure to have some tears well up. And that there are several times during the day that I am hit with it all and I crumble. I see…

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April 16, 2020

About the Homestead / Daily Life / The Animals

Isolation

I have had so many thoughts going through my mind lately as I have been home, trying to stay busy as the world is mentally and physically spinning from the COVID 19 pandemic. I have had a few people contact me and tell me that they are so glad that we had Jeremy’s service when we did, because it was after that weekend that things started ramping up. I have to say though, that I am more grateful that sick Jeremy was spared this. I think about how I no longer would be allowed to take him in to his procedures or be with him through his treatments or even stay with him in the hospital. I know that would have killed me and honestly him too. I know how important it was for him to have me with him. I was his voice, quite literally. I knew how to…

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April 2, 2020