Hey Y'all

My husband Adam and I got married in October of 2019, on our 10 year anniversary. We have 5 amazing, beautiful children. Four boys and one tough and sassy little girl. Yep, and she's the baby. We love spending time together, the outdoors, yearly winter vacations, and all things family.
 

We weren't always planning to remodel, much less remodel a single wide trailer. We had a beautiful log home with a wraparound porch, but as baby girl took over our bedroom, we realized we needed something bigger. We thought about adding on, but apparently it's a little tricky adding on to a true log home. So, while the market was hot, we sold our home, bought some land and moved our family of 7 into a 234 sq ft camper. Yes, our family of SEVEN plus 2 large dogs and a cat into a CAMPER! We'd planned on only being in there maybe a year while we built our forever home. But things kept coming up and others getting pushed back. We had quite a bit of problems finding someone to draw up our home. Finally, we found someone and FINALLY our perfect home was going to get started. We were so close! At this point we had been in the camper for just over two years. 

 

We had been pretty goal driven there for a while. We worked too much, we missed too much, but we wanted to give our kids everything...or a lot of what they wanted. And I wanted so badly to give them a larger home. Their own spaces. But sometimes we're blinded by what we think we need and sometimes it takes something drastic to remind us of that. In our case, that reminder came as a medical emergency when my husband at only 39 years old was taken from work to the hospital with symptoms of a heart attack. I met him at the hospital where they ran tests for several hours before confirming that he did not have a heart attack, but why after all the meds he'd been given was he still in so much pain? They ordered a CT scan and in about 30 minutes my husband was on a helicopter to Barnes Jewish Hospital where he had emergency open heart surgery. I was later told by one of the surgeons that had he not gone in that day he wouldn't have made it. He was 2 days at most away from no longer being with us. I almost lost my husband. My kids almost lost their dad. It's really hard thinking just how close we were. He had a dissected aorta. Basically, the aorta tore. They repaired the arch, what was life threatening but during surgery that tear tore more. That, however, he'll always have. It's no longer life threatening and can be controlled through medicine and diet. Praise the Lord! But after 28 days in the hospital, as medical bills started rolling in our dream home was no longer possible. But you know what? That's okay. Adam is still here. I still have my husband, my soul mate. My children still have their dad. Any home is a dream home as long as we're all here together.