It's a Boy!

There's been a new addition to the Caudle family... we've been waiting since the end of March to bring him home and finally, this last weekend, we were able to! Meet MF Jones! (Yes, MF stands for what you think it does... if you've seen horrible bosses, you might understand the reference)

Look at the precious baby tongue!

 Jonesy is (going to be) a wether... nuetered. He comes to the farm just to keep the gals company and be cute! He hasn't had as easy of a time adapting as Sage and Willow did but then again, he came here all by himself and he has a teeny tiny rubber band wrapped around his manhood. (He is banded, a form of castration where the rubber band cuts off blood circulation to his testicles and they pretty much just dry up and fall off)

 

When we first brought him home, the girls were all over him... flaunting their "tails" and circling him, but the poor guy had no interest in them and laid in the corner of the pasture for a while. But after a few hours, he finally started sniffing around and grubbing. Once Sage and Willow realized he didn't want what they had to offer, they didn't really pay much attention to him either.

Jonesy is very mild tempered so far. He treads lightly around Sage (the crazy matriarch), but with every passing day, he is taking more and more of a stand against her. She occasionally head butts him when we feed them their alfalfa but over the past couple of days he got her back a few times and she tends to leave him alone after that (He is growing some balls as his real ones are withering away) He is a lot bigger than Sage and Willow were when we brought them home even though they were all 3 months old at the time, so I give it a month or so before Jonesy is taller than both of them and calling the shots. Willow (my gentle soul) is kind to him, she lets him eat from the same alfalfa and trots along with him a lot, wagging her tail. He will approach me when I'm not paying attention but he still wont let me cuddle him... I can tell, though, that he's going to be a lover once he comes around. I'm very used to being all over the girls and them being all over me so I told him that I am the "goat mama", just so he knows. 

This defines Sage

Check out that chin dribble

Baseboards and Such

Hello again! Like I said in the previous post, we have definitely been taking our time finishing up the inside of the house these past couple of months.We finally got the baseboards installed and they weren't as much of daunting task as I thought they would be. Don't get me wrong, cutting and installing baseboards isn't fun by any means, but we got the task done over two nights after work and despite many incorrect cuts, we literally didn't waste a single stick. In fact, we have enough pieces left over to use on the spare room in the shop wen we do decide to tackle that project. So yeah, the baseboards went smoother than I thought and all that's left on those is to do some touch up painting where we nailed them in. (No pics on those yet, first of all, baseboards aren't super exciting to look at and second, we still need to do touch up paint!)

We have a few more small paint projects... still need to paint the door trims (which should be a one night job) and we still plan on painting the interior of our front door black (the husband's idea, and I think it's a grand one). Other than that, our last big project left (for now) is the shelving in the kitchen. We've procrastinated on this long enough so I'm really hoping to start that soon. We did by the lumber for the shelves, but after bringing the wood home, I decided that it was too thin for my liking and so we plan on searching the lumber yards around town for some thicker options.

James installing the new doors and frames

Me painting

But on a more exciting note, we finally got the exterior of the house and shop painted and they look great! We went with the medium toned gray (my favorite color) and a bright red front door (apparently kosher with feng shui for a south facing front door). Our friend Russ (with Russell E. Schader Painting) did an awesome job on everything and finally the outside of the house is up to par with the inside! Russ also gave our deck a coat of stain and it too looks great! (Sidenote: before Russ painted he pressure washed everything and our deck looked amazing after being cleaned... I couldn't believe the difference in color of the wood before and after, I wish I would've gotten pictures of that because it blew my mind) Oh and if you need a refresher on what the house looked like before, here ya go!

We are just loving that everything is really coming together just in time for the insanely busy summer ahead... which brings me to what I think will be a small shift in the direction of the blog. I plan to keep posting about all of the updates that we will be doing to the house and property (probably for years to come) but I also plan to start posting a little more about our personal life and especially on all of the fun trips and activities that we have planned for this summer. Our calendar is almost completely full for the next 3 months already so the work on the house is definitely going to slow down, but that doesn't mean that we are going to! 

Our home has been my focus for close to a year now... it was around this time last year that we decided that we wanted to put our last house on the market and ever since then our lives have been a whirlwind. We've been so so busy and it has been an absolute blast, but it is going to be so nice to be able to just relax and enjoy some free time. (And yes, by "enjoy some free time" I actually mean use that free time to plan out the warm months fully into the fall).

I think that I chose the name "Chasing Foxtails" for this blog because it didn't limit me to just writing and sharing about our house, it was more about chasing our dream of living in the hills and therefore leads to all of the things we've wanted to do. We plan to grow a garden and harvest our own fruits and vegetables, we also plan to grow and harvest our own meat one day, we plan to have chickens and baby goats and a mini dairy. We plan to travel, to see the parts of this state we've never seen, as well as other side of the world. Three of our best friends are pregnant right now.... THREE... and one just gave birth to twins this week! We have babies to meet and  and we plan on having our own to add to the lot not too far down the road... there is just WAY too much to be excited about and I can't help but want to share it with the world. Social media is too small of a platform to share on (and can also be pretty irritating sometimes) so I hope that everyone who has taken the time to read my blog up until now can give up some house and take in a little more of our adventures we plan on going on!

Today, I am Grateful For...

Morning coffee on our deck

Work on the house was slow the last month… not only were we busy with other life happenings but mostly, we were delaying starting our baseboards because I think neither one of us wanted to do the project. Things did pick up quickly, though, when we decided to the start the process of refinancing out of our FHA loan. To be able to drop our PMI (mortgage insurance) we need the house to appraise for as high as possible and therefore, we decided that we definitely needed to bust out the last of our big projects beforehand. I will be posting soon on all of that… nothing too exciting, just some finishing touches… but I am so excited to say that (as I write this) the first coat of paint is going on the exterior of the house and I cannot wait to see what it is going to look like finished!

All of that aside though, I wanted to do a quick post on gratitude. I want to say thank you to everything, to everyone, to our realtors, to our friends and family who have helped us so much along the way, to synchronicity and to the universe for giving us everything that it has. Sometimes I have a hard time remembering to take a moment and really be present… but when I do, I am absolutely overwhelmed with how amazing this past 6 months have been. The process, the people and the results have all come together so fast that I almost didn’t realize it was one of my dreams coming true.

There is still a long ways to go on the house… there will forever be work to do on our property and that is much more of an exciting thought than that of remodeling the inside of the house (which was exciting as well, but also pretty daunting). I get butterflies when I think of the possibilities like having a garden next spring, picking blackberries from our bushes by the creek after they ripen, decorating our backyard for summer soirees and most of all, everyone knows I can’t wait to be able to milk my goats and start making loads of cheese, cream and butter once they have little babies of their own!

On a personal level, I also have work to do. My new job finds me commuting to Roseville every day and although I do like the new company I am working for, the almost 3 hours of driving a day is really bumming me out (for lack of a better term). Not to mention almost 10 years working in a cubicle is taking it’s toll on me physically and mentally (I am a firm believer that not having at least a window to look out of for 8 hours of the day can drive a person crazy). I struggle to find and use my passions, I struggle to communicate my frustrations and I struggle to not take it out on the people I love. I have no real plans for change as of yet but I feel like I am on the precipice of something.

Regardless of all of this though, I feel like I have really come home on Foxtail. I am at peace when I look outside. I feel so much joy when my goats run up to meet me at their gate. My whole body relaxes as I drive farther away from the highway and the closer I get to Somerset. I feel like everything James and I have done the past 9 years has been to lead us to where we are now and I know my husband feels the same way. For me it’s more of a mental state, but for him, it’s different. His physical being was meant to be in a place where you cut wood for the fireplace and weed whack to get ready for the dry summer. He may not have even realized it, but I see it… Somerset is his element.

I recall one night, probably around a year ago, I was crying to James. I was frustrated about who knows what, probably PMS-ing and just not particularly happy with my surroundings.  I said, “I just want to live in the woods and have my goats”. Cut to the present, a friend visited our new house for the first time recently and she kept pinching me. It made me realize, “oh yeah, this is it. This is what I wanted. And now we have it. And I am happy.”

Sometimes I have a rough day… but then I get to come home. And I am so so grateful for that.