In January

January/February are the usually the months when Cabin Fever hits me hard.  I am restless and ready for the dark gray season to be over.  This year brought a particularly distracting element that took my mind off of Cabin Fever and on to a bit of a crisis when it came to "the future".

First, with the breech of the Capitol in Washington DC, the protest of more than 500,000 Trump supporters calling for election integrity became a tarnished mess when a group of them went rogue.  The liberals immediately set about trying to impeach the president even after the new administration was sworn it.  Biden set to work undoing everything the previous administration had worked to implement signing an astonishing 30 executive orders in the first 3 days...many of which are a mockery to the word of God and thrusting us back into a globalist and relativist (morality is relative) way of running the country.  The Democrat led lock downs in the blue states immediately began to ease up proving how highly politicalized the Covid virus really was.  And, the experimental vaccine roll outs began along with the propaganda to receive it. 

There was so much speculation leading up to Biden being sworn in as President...was Trump going to pull off a miracle and retain the presidency?  Why was the national guard deployed and the White House fenced in, were they expecting an uprising?  What would become of our country on a national level and what about all the bills being introduced into the Oregon legislature further stripping freedoms and ever increasing tax spending. 

What a mess.  As friends watched all this unfolding, several families that we know begin to plan their move out of Oregon to Republican run states.  I got caught up in this as well, wondering what chance my children have to start their adult lives in a state, in a country, that is losing its grasp on being a constitutionally run Republic and tumbling instead headlong into socialism.  We have lived in Oregon under the dictatorship of the governor and her lockdowns for 10 months...deciding what is essential and what is not, destroying businesses, forcing face coverings, shutting down education, and completely dismissing the riots that have plagued Portland since the summer all the while the homeless population has exploded and there are parts of the bigger towns/cities that are starting to resemble the slums of a 3rd world country.  Is this what the future of America looks like?  

I mulled all this over and it kept me up at night.  What is the best way for our family to move forward in such a time of change and uncertainty?  Phil asked me to set up a notebook with pros and cons and research different regions in the United States where we could go where the effects of this country's decline would be last felt.  

And to make matters worse, our small church fellowship hit some turbulence which caused a good month of unrest.  The co-leader's family decided that they really wanted to join up with another group.  We didn't want this because we didn't want to church plant nor did we want the additional responsibility of managing another 20-30 people/several more families to teach and coordinate plans with (Phil was the other leader).  It just "lost" something for us.  Almost immediately after this change was implemented, the family that wanted the change decided to start attending Calvary Chapel and they ended their Thursday night high school group as well.  This honestly left us in the lurch and the kids in great disappointment.  There was a lot of time spent over texts and phone calls before the rest of us were able to sit down and all the remaining families came up with a plan for the next 6 weeks to continue meeting (with set homes, potluck days, and Phil continuing on with Sunday School lessons he had been doing).  We have met twice now and it just felt so much more comfortable.  For the time being, we are wanting to stick with this fellowship group while we wait and see the direction in which things head.  The most unfortunate part for me has been watching Sawyer lose that friendship and fellowship time.  He has so enjoyed having a friend to spend Sundays with and he is back to being the isolate.  Luckily, for the time being at least, they are still making plans once a week or so to just hang out together. 

In the meantime, the new president was sworn in peacefully.  I did a ton of research and created a notebook with data and information.  Phil and I talked and talked and came up with our Plan B.  I "let go" of the disappointment of losing friendships and prepared my children for this loss as well.  I listened to some prophetical sermons.  I begin to sink into peace and felt a sense of stillness that I haven't felt for months.  It really helped to finally "be done" with the chaos of the elections (2 solid months of speculation and drama), to approach that Plan B with some logic and rational thinking when I had had so much emotional investment, and to realize that the things happening in our country are the necessary and prophetical steps to the second coming of Christ.  These things must come to pass...even if it is a disappointment and a "worry" that my children will be making their way in life and raising their children under what is likely the downfall of our country.  

So what is our plan?  Ideally, I would like to buy 50ish acres of forested land in Idaho and just have it as an emergency back up.  If the time came that we felt we needed to leave our state because Phil no longer had employment (either by mandates or the liberal education system forcing him to participate in something that violates his consciousness before the Lord), or if we felt our safety was threatened, or if our children were unable to raise their families either because of the stripping parental freedoms or the inability to get a job, then we would sell our house and "flee" to a more remote place where we might be able to hold out a little longer.  Unfortunately, we don't have money to make that investment.  Our plan is to stay here.  We love our property, we have invested greatly into our home and farm, we have a community here, Phil has a job where he can do good and support his family.  The Lord placed us here and until several things come to pass, this is where He wants us.  

We started letting the ducks out again.  We kept them locked up because a hawk got one of them last year.  But, they are so much happier to wander about freely and so much healthier eating bugs and plants rather than only grain.  And we had a slug population explosion last year when the ducks weren't eating them.

 

The ducks breeched the electric fence and trashed my fish pond. 

Breakfast view

Sawyer finds it easier to do his math on the big white board.

Beauty Salon (Brighton fixing his sister's hair LOL)

Home dentistry

Music class

The Kitties are getting so big!

A little spring dreaming

New dishes!  Really, I have an obscene amount, but there are so many colors to choose from!

We drove to Independence to pick up a chair that I found on Facebook marketplace and we drove by this little cafe.

A Winter-like sky

A spring-like sky!

The first bouquet of the new year.

We had the fiercest windstorm yet blow through.  Surprisingly, we didn't lose power until the tail end of it.

Boiling water for dishes, the power came back on after I hauled tons of water and got it all heated up.

The debris was blown way out into the front yard and our trampoline cleared the 10 foot deer fencing and is in the neighbors pasture.

With this heater, I can sit outside on a clear night and be toasty warm.

A little spritzer of snow...the other side of Salem saw as much as 6 inches.  What a disappointment to not even have accumulation to speak of!  But, it was a beautiful couple of hours of snow fall.

Winter blooms - always on sticks and twigs or short delicate stems so I can't really make a bouquet but they are such a delight and hope of spring to come.  Right now, I have violets, witch hazel, mahonia, winter blooming honeysuckle, camelias, hellabores, cyclomen, and a little geranium that has bloomed off and on all winter long.