Two Home Living

My family of 5 occupies two houses. Now many people would say, “When you have four females in a family, it would take two houses to hold all of their stuff!”. My response to that would be something along the lines of, “You give any girls two houses, she will fill it up!”. Living this life for the past 4ish years, I would say both of those statements are true. I would also add it’s not just because we have four girls in this family…

So why DO we have two places we call home? In the first post, “Introducing Me” (catchy title huh?) I make the comment of being a ranch wife. So, stating the obvious, my husband is a rancher. While we do have handful of our very own cattle, that’s not really where we do most of our “ranching”. While I would love to share with you about our very own cows, that will have to wait for a different time.

My husband, Collin (Pronounced Call in. His name, in no way, represents or sounds like any organ of the human body. The word you would be looking for there is colon, and who in their right mind would name their beautiful baby boy that?!), grew up in the world of ranching and farming. All of our married lives, and a bit before that, he has worked for a ranch that is here locally. Now, I when I use “locally” her, is a relative term. For the sake of this informational story, I won’t get too crazy on the details of the ranch and what “locally” means and could mean.

Anyway-part of the deal with working for this ranch is having the option to live in ranch housing. We were blessed to be able to move into a ranch house just shortly after we were married and then had our first baby girl. This house is set in one of the main hubs of the ranch. It’s at the end of about 7 miles of a gravel/dirt road around 50 miles from the closest town and the girls’ school. It is the house we refer to as “home”. That’s such a great word isn’t it? Whenever I think about it I get all the feel goods. Over the years new flooring has been put in. The orange rust counter tops were replaced with a laminate that looks like black marble. The exterior color has gone from a tan peach (gag) with a dusty rose trim (double gag!) to a beautiful barn red with gray trim. We’ve gotten new windows, new toilets, a new back deck, a new front deck, new kitchen sink, and of course different layers of paint on the inside depending on what my mood is in! So, yes, this is home. The place we have spent so much of our time in. Have had so many late night arrivals at while each packing a girl in to put in their bed then playing rock, paper, scissors to decide who had to go back to get the third on the real cold snowy nights. The place where all of the birthdays have happened. The place the girls were potty trained. The place we just can’t wait to get to after a vacation to see family in the city. It’s just….home.

A handful of years ago we were offered the option to be able to stay in an “in town” house for part of the year. Again, “in town” is a relative term. Like I said, our other house is about miles from groceries, from a gas station, from the school, from the sports practices, from church, from a quick take out dinner. So this other house we were being offered was only about 20 miles from those said things. So yah, in town sounded like a great option for part of the year. Ya know, change it up! This house is also set at one of the main hubs for the ranch. It too has a good amount of gravel/dirt road to drive. In all honestly this road to get to this town house, is so much worse than the road that takes us home. This place was quickly called “Cow Camp” as a pretty good joke amongst our friends. (That’s for another post). This place has a covered riding arena, horse stalls, a garage (no one has a garage out by our other house!), and get this…no chance or rattlesnakes! This is the place we started spending our Christmas’, the place the baby calves are born and we play with, the place the said baby calves come to get warm when they are born on a nasty windy wet night. The place my husband can come into right after he’s pulled a calf and is covered in…well all the gunk that comes with that job. The place the girls all start their fair animals out at. This is the place I feel like we just sleep at most often because of all the things we are running around doing the time of the year we are at this place. So this place is yes, our home. But it’s just not the same home as our other place.

Both of our places have fantastic views. Home has a view of this from our back deck

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This on a wonderful summer evening

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This on an early June run down the road.

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And this on a late winter walk back to the house

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Cow Camp has this on a branding day

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This on a summer day

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This on a spring day feeding the 4-H steers

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And this during a spring storm

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So, yah, two house can be a lot of work, a lot of cleaning (which is another one of those relative terms!), a lot of tracking down the matching shoe that is apparently at the other house, a lot of animal moving, and a lot of list writing to remember what Dad needs to get from the other house when he is out there for the day. But man…it’s been a lot of great memories and a lot of great views…