Hello Friends,

Well, let’s not pretend that it’s been a hot minute since I’ve written. Life has a funny way of speeding up when things go sideways.

2020 hit us hard. 2021 hit weird and 2022 things finally stopped being a crazy roller coaster of crap.

Not Covid, but how complicated it made life. It did, however, lower the bar for social interaction in public and we’re thankful for that. Ha! Wal-Mart now delivers groceries, which is the best thing to come out of Covid. Hashtag momlife. It makes my life so much easier to have our groceries delivered to our front door.

In a previous post, I talked about how I joined the Air National Guard. It was a lifelong dream to join the military, but it was not without its challenges. Essentially, I had to do BMT twice due to leadership having murky regulations. That’s a whole other blog post that I’m not ready to emotionally process publicly yet, but it’s coming. Promise. But it did mean that I was gone from my beautiful babies for 3 months longer than necessary or planned. Which sucked. My kids handled it like a champ, as did my husband, but it was tough on the family.

I graduated from Tech School in 2022 and went right to work full-time. If you know anything about the Guard, full-time jobs are the sweet spot and I am so thankful to have a full-time job, insurance, and benefits that come alongside it. My hubs is the stay-at-home dad and is loving it! He does realize how difficult it can be to be the primary parent and manage dishes, laundry, appointments, when one of the kids pooped last, etc. A small vindication for me comes with that lol. Because being a stay-at-home parent is so rewarding but also super difficult at times.

Right after I started working full-time, we also moved into our dream home. We did most of the paperwork via email while I was on classroom breaks. My cadre loved that. But being 36 and surrounded by fellow tech school students that I could have physically birthed without it being a weird teen pregnancy, they finally understood that I was an adult and had adulty stuff to do.

We moved two weeks after I got back home into a beautiful house with 70 acres, 5 cows, and ended up with 18 chickens, a salamander, and another dog. It’s beautiful.

We dove headfirst into farm/range/homestead life and have been winging it ever since! We’ve definitely learned a lot. We A.I.’d our first cow and Mama (our cow) gave birth last month to our calf, Lando Cowrissian. My kids love Star Wars, can you tell? We have eggs coming out of our ears and are learning to water glass them. We started a garden and are learning how to garden in Wyoming, which is tough. The climate is tough to grow due to the lack of moisture and the arid farmland we have. The soil stinks too. We’ve chased our cows all over our neighborhood when the kids forgot to close a gate. We’ve dealt with electric fences, weed spraying, septic tanks and it all feels a little over our heads, but we’re thankful for the opportunities to learn.

The property also came with a shop where we were able to expand our food/water storage. We can finally do a proper layout and assess our needs and fill in the holes. I’ve found that any level of preparedness is better than none at all, and it seems so much more critical now, even than it did a few years ago.

In my next post, we’re going to dive into how the needs have changed in the past few years. The political climate has also drastically changed. We’ve had to tweak some social media pages and posts to attempt to not be shadow banned or taken off entirely. Thankfully it hasn’t impacted our firearms business. That’s exploding in a different way, however. We’ve dialed back concealed carry courses and have taken on more church security team training, which is where our heart has always been truthfully. Safety and security without looking like CIA agents and being committed to keeping the welcome environment that churches need to ensure they have.

All that to say, I apologize for it being so long since I’ve posted, but I’m sure these last few years have been difficult for you as well. Life can be tough, times are uncertain, and the truth is harder to find than ever.

Keep your head up, stay tuned for more posts.

Cheers,

Nila