Pink Squirrel Farmstead

Growing up I have always dreamed of owning a Bed and Breakfast. I never thought this dream was attainable until we found this house. We only have one more child in school then we will somewhat be empty nesters. Oh, that makes me feel so old!  Anyways, On the top floor of the house is 4 bedrooms and a seating area. We plan to turn three of those rooms into rooms for the bed and breakfast. We plan to turn the fourth bedroom into a luxury bathroom with an antique claw foot tub and a walk in shower. When you go to a bed and breakfast what do you like to see in the bathroom? Bath bombs? Bath salts? Sugar Scrubs? Old Fashioned Soaps? Please give me some ideas for items to have available.

In the seating area upstairs, the plan is to have library/coffee shop feel with large bookcases filled with books, board games, and movies. There will be some comfy chairs and a large TV for the guests to enjoy. I want the guest to feel comfortable and at home.

Of course, I plan to have homemade pastries available for the guests at all times and a large breakfast with their stay. I love baking and cooking in general but I love, love, love to feed people so this will be amazing for me.  The rooms will all be similar but different at the same time. There will be a farmhouse theme in the décor and of course there will be animals for the guests (and me) to enjoy. I want people to be able to come and have a farm life experience with their time at the farm to be special. I think that memories are made with experiences that can last a life time.

There will be tons of work to do to get this ready but we also have several years until Chad can retire. We did not get a loan to buy this house and with my car being totaled out we will have no debt; my car was our only debt. We plan to work on the house as we have the funds to stay debt free. We have other vehicles so we do not need to replace my car at this time, not saying I will not miss my fuel-efficient car. But on the flip side I will also not miss my car payment each month.

In addition to the upstairs, we will also have an amazing basement for the guest to relax in but that will be for another day. Please leave me some comments on suggestions for the upstairs retreats. I would love to know what you would think would make the guest stays unforgettable.

For the Amish people their top priorities are faith, farm, and family. The old order and new order have strict rules that are different from community to community. They do not use electricity, drive vehicles, or even have phones in their homes. The Amish still use horse and buggies for transportation or hire someone to drive them. The Amish live more plain simple lives and still do things like their forefathers. They also dress very plain without buttons; some communities can only wear black or white dresses while others allow muted colors. By restricting access to television, radios, and phones the Amish are able to keep the modern world from intruding on their lives.

The Amish lifestyle is very interesting to me. The Amish thrived during the last year while others worlds were turned upside down. They were not worried about toilet paper or food during the pandemic because they know how to survive without the modern conveniences. The Amish have a strong sense of community spirit, and often come to help out those in need. Much of society could learn so much about family values from the Amish. Though the Amish are very private people.

The home we are purchasing from an Amish family does not have plumbing, it does not have electricity, and is in such a peaceful place. It does however have an outhouse. When I was there viewing the property, I could just feel the calmness in the community. People were not in a rush to get somewhere; they were genuinely nice. I did not come in contact with one unhappy person. It was refreshing to watch the horse and buggies go by loaded with 2-3 Amish men talking to each other, not with cellphones in their faces.

We do plan on modernizing the home with electricity, along with indoor bathrooms and internet but we look forward to a simpler life style and enjoying time with each other. As I observed some of the tasks the young woman was doing while we were touring the house it amazed me.  They only had a few outfits each. They did not use a closet so the items they had were out and visible. The house had minimal furniture and was not cluttered in any way. The couple had a gas-powered refrigerator and a gas-powered washing machine. Right out the front door she had a wood heated water tank that she used to heat all their water for laundry, cleaning, and bathing. Inside she had a small stock tank that they used for bathing. When the power goes out, I feel like I am dying without AC and worrying about our food storage. Now, I will say that I will continue using air conditioning but I will live a simpler less cluttered life when we do finally get to move there. I do think that when you are not accustomed to using it like the Amish then they don’t really know what they are missing. I think their beliefs and faith are amazing. I love how outside influences do not change them.

The simple things in life are often the most important. This philosophy is what I hope to accomplish as I envision the next step …….

Friday morning July 9th, I had a text from Chad to call him when I wake up. Oh great, that usually means bad news. And it was. The insurance company decided to total my car out. The motor would have to be replaced and it would cost more than the car was worth. This is heart breaking to me. I loved my car. It was my first new car, and I only had 3 more years to pay it off. The settlement amount is less than the payoff amount. I have no idea if we have gap coverage. I am freaking out and wondering why nothing ever seems to go smooth. It is always one step forward and three steps back. Sigh!

I look in our fire box with all the important papers and try to figure out if we have gap coverage. Oh, thank goodness we got it! Now that we have it, I have no idea how that even works because I never thought I would ever need it. I call the company and start a gap claim and they let me know that they will be emailing me a list of documents they will need.

I am not one to put things off, if I do, I will forget about them. I pull up the email and see a list of documents needed from the finance company and a list of documents needed from the insurance company. Okay no big deal, I’ll call and get them sent to me so I can get them turned in ASAP. Now the finance company is also the gap coverage company so I am not sure why I need to even be involved on getting the documents but whatever. So, I call and I get transferred, and transferred, and transferred over and over. They even transfer me back to the gap claims department. At this point I have been on the phone for over an hour and a half, I am fuming and I lay into the person on the line. Luckily, he is very understanding and decided it would be best if he stayed on the line with me while I talk to the other department so if they won’t give me the documents then he would be able to talk to them. Of course, they still won’t give me the documents I need and after the guy from claims talks to them, we find out it is because insurance has not sent anything over to the finance company yet so they don’t know anything about the car being totaled out. Why didn’t they just tell me that to begin with?

 As soon as I get off the phone with them the insurance company calls to let me know that I would need to make arrangements with the repair facility to get my personal belongings out of the car so the procurement company could pick the car up. The car is located an hour away in Lubbock and I have Chad’s truck here for my transportation. FYI, I have a strong hate for driving his truck. It is a giant truck that I definitely do not want to drive through Lubbock. I called Chad and let him know I was going to come get our SUV from him.

When I get there to switch out keys with him, he took me to lunch. I’m sure he could tell I was trying to hold it together and I needed that time with him. We talked about us getting a new car if I wanted to and just being able to talk to him made me feel so much better. I drove and got my belongings out of the car, went and picked up and said goodbye to my car. I went to Walmart to get a few items we needed, and found some red shorts on sale for my daughter Cheyenne (red is her favorite color). Chad had mentioned that the cheesecake factory had several flavors of cheesecake if I was interested. I put the Cheesecake factory in the GPS and went to get us one. I mean why not? Cheesecake makes everyone feel better after a bad day.

Once the offer was signed by the sellers, the closing date was set. We close on the house on July 21^st. There was a cute little Amish family that lived in the house. The young woman was there when we went to look at the house. She had told us that she just gotten married and moved in to the house in February. She and her new husband were building a house but it was not yet finished. She had the house decorated with only a few things and it was adorable how she had her and her husband’s names on everything. You could see the love in her eyes as she talked about her life with him. She showed us around the house a little and on the porch, she had a couple plants hanging. She was so proud of them. She went back to working on her laundry that she did in a gas-powered ringer washer and I went to explore the house and property.

At first, we did not have a closing date set because we wanted to make sure that the sweet couple would have time to get moved in 30 days or if we would need to give them 60 days. The seller assured us that they had a brother right down the road that they would be staying with until their house was completed. It was supposed to have been done already.

We got the closing documents emailed to us on July 9. I called around trying to find a notary that is open in the evenings because Chad and I both had to sign at the same time. And well he works all the dang time. I called one place and they closed at 5 pm. Well Chad doesn’t get off work until 5:30 and has to drive 45 minutes home. That wasn’t going to work. Chad suggested I post on Facebook blog shops asking about it. I am not on many of them here because we have not been here in Lamesa very long. Chad got home and asked me if I wanted to run and get a drink from this adorable coffee shop here called Tin Bucks Coffee (if you are ever in the area, you should definitely stop in, everything is amazing!). So, we hopped in our SUV and went to get coffee and tea. While sitting there waiting for our drinks and chatting with the owner and the baristas I saw that someone had finally commented on my post with a mobile notary. I saw a brochure on the counter for the company and we gave them a call. Talk about being at the right place at the right time. We were able to get the documents signed, and then mailed off first thing the next morning.

June 26^th started like any other day, sun was shining and it was as hot as it can be. Chad was working on building us a storage shelf for our room in the RV. There is never enough storage in an RV and we were lacking a good way to store our clothes. I made dinner and then took the kids to the movie theater. When we got home, we brought the shelf in and set it up in the house because it looked like there was a rainstorm in the distance. The wind started picking up which is quite nerve wracking in an RV. But it was nothing that we had not been through before. It started raining and the power went out.

 I got a call from Payton that the power was out at the movies and they were ready to be picked up. Chad and I hopped in my car and headed to get them. On the weather app there was a notification that there was a tornado that touched ground west of town. Now I am freaking out… mind you I have no idea which direction is west and all I can think about is something happening to the kids. Payton called crying and freaking out because of the storm. Mama bear kicked in and I was going to get to them over hell or high water.

Well, I didn’t really mean I wanted to go through high water but apparently flash floods is a real thing here. As I was driving along the water got really deep really fast. I had Chad call Payton and it went to voicemail. He tried it again and she answered but she was crying. She was so scared, she said it was very loud in there from the storm and she was so scared. I was praying that it wasn’t from the tornado being close to the, I had nowhere to pull over to get out of the flooded water, and the water was flowing like a mini river on the streets. I tried driving through the middle of the road where the water wasn’t as deep but it wasn’t helping. My car is pretty low to the ground and it almost died a few times. I was praying to just get to my kids and know they are okay. I looked to my left and I saw a car being pushed by the water backwards toward my car. I began praying, please God no, please let me get to my kids, the car wouldn’t move, Chad told me to push on the gas, I had my foot to the floor it wasn’t moving. Please God No, I said over and over. The car started going again and the other vehicle barely missed me. I was now about 4 blocks away from the kids. We kept going, the roads are all flooded and I am scared as can be. I still have no idea what direction west is and I have no idea where the tornado is at this point, I just don’t want it to be near the kids or near Chad and I.

We finally get to the movie theaters I pulled into a parking lot that was not flooded and put it in park. I took a deep breath and did everything I could not to cry because I was so overwhelmed. The kids were fine and they ran across to the car in knee high water. Hunter kept turning around and running to get his sandals over and over again. It was a much-needed laughter. We decided that it wasn’t safe to try to get home and we were going to just go over a couple blocks to the hotel and stay there for the night. We are all soaking wet but we were all safe. I went to back up the car to drive and the car wouldn’t move. It wouldn’t go forward or backwards. My head went crazy. What am I going to do? I don’t know anyone here. Phone service is very spotty and I can’t even check to see if the weather is going to clear up soon. Luckily, Chad was able to call a coworker that was able to come pick us up. We all piled in to his truck and thankfully we made it home. Please pray for those that lost everything. We were so very lucky. We will just have to deal with the car being towed to a repair facility tomorrow.

The phone rang and I saw it was from our realtor, my heart started pounding. Did they accept my offer, were the sellers counter offering? Was there another buyer and they took their offer? Ugh my mind was going crazy!  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity (probably only about 60 seconds) the realtor let me know that the sellers verbally accepted my offer. YAY! If I wasn’t driving, I would be literally been jumping with joy. I keep calm and professional during the phone call but the second I was off the phone I called Chad and then Carla to let them know that they had accepted the offer, while my dad called my mom to let her know. This was so exciting well except the part that I was still driving back to my parents’ house. We finally got back to my parents a little after 1 pm. I picked up Payton, who stayed with my mom while we were in Kentucky. I visited with my mom for a few minutes, she wanted me to stay the night but I was ready to be home in my bed with my hubby, and I headed towards home. Another 7 and a half hours to home.  

The drive was pretty uneventful at this point I was just ready to be out of the car at this point. I told Payton not to ask me to go anywhere tomorrow because I refuse to get in the car for any reason what so ever. We got home about 8pm that night and I was ready for a show and to lay in bed and I was beyond excited to see Chad.

My dad and I headed back to Texas. The drive home was full of conversations about the house. We love it! We are so excited but also nervous about if we will get it or not. On the drive we hit a big rainstorm and were only able to drive way under the speed limit with minimal visibility which added time to our drive. Better safe than sorry. When the rain started to let up our realtor called to let us know that she had sent over our offer and that the sellers had 24 hours to respond. Let the waiting begin. We continued our drive home. We drove and drove and drove some more until we got too tired to drive any longer. We finally stopped for the night with 4 hours left to go.

Of course, I am super excited and I’m talking to Chad on the phone about it and my dad it trying to sleep so I go into the bathroom and take a relaxing bath while talking to him all about the house. I had turned the AC in the hotel room down to as cold as it goes because I like to sleep in a meat locker as my dad says. I am a big girl and he is a skinny man. While I was in the bathroom my dad snuck over and turned the ac up to 74! Who in their right mind can sleep like that? I thought the AC was broken. I was about to go to the office and talk to them about it. But then I had seen it had been turned up. The AC war has now begun ha ha ha (in my evil laugh), maybe he will sleep in or stay in bed longer if its colder in the room.

The next morning my darn alarm clock goes off at 6 am (ugh! I just want to sleep but I know I have a long drive ahead of me) and my dad has already showered and started the coffee pot. He then tells me about how cold it is in the room. I told him I was trying to get him to sleep in later so I could get more sleep. He said Well I did stay in bed about 45 minutes longer because he was so cold. He said he covered his head and tried to breathe heavily to use his breath to warm up under the covers. I died laughing. My evil plan worked. We went next door to McDonald’s for breakfast and continued on our journey.

I got a call from the realtor letting me know that the seller’s agent was still trying to get into contact with the sellers of the property. The sellers are an Amish family so getting in touch was a little harder. Yes, the house we are buying is an Amish house but I will talk more on that later. But isn’t that really cool?

Here are a few pictures from around the farm because I cannot contain my excitement. I won’t post any photos of the house until after closing. We are beyond excited and cannot wait to share more.

Isn’t it just perfect?

We were scheduled to meet with the realtor at 11 on the 21^st of June. My dad is a morning person…. Like wakes up at the but crack of dawn (5 am) kind of morning person. I am not. Mind you we are now in eastern time zone not the central that I am used to. Anyways sleepy me gets up and we go to breakfast at Waffle House. This was such an amazing start to our day. The staff was exceptional! Crystal our server was a hoot. My dad is a veteran and asked if they had a discount for his service and they did. The person in the booth behind us even paid for our breakfast. We felt very welcome in the state of Kentucky. Way to go Kentucky on your hospitality! After breakfast we drive from Lexington to Hillsboro an hour away, it is now only 8am.

Of course, we are too excited to not drive by the house……yes like creepers…rolled down the window and drove like 2 mph past the house. We literally drove by the house like 10 times prior to our 11 am appointment time. Don’t act like you wouldn’t do the same thing.

We still had a couple hours to kill so we drove around and explored the area. We were not the only ones excited, Chad (my husband), Carla (my sister-in-law) and Jill (my mom) were all chomping at the bit remotely. We found a couple covered bridges…. I will touch more on that another day…… a bunch of small towns all around. Everyone was so nice. There was an adorable older gentleman on his lawn mower working on his yard, and every single time I drove by him he waved. Several of the roads circle around and I drove down the road several times. I am already in love with the area. I love the vibe in the area and how sweet everyone is.

It is now 10:45 finally time to go to our appointment…… of course I was only like 3 minutes away. I got there pulled up next to the barn to wait for the realtor to get there. Luckily, she showed up about 2 minutes after us. Went in the barn first and looked around, then we went to the house. As soon as we got in the house Chad called via facetime so he could see the house too. I could not imagine the feeling of not being able to see it in person. I am so thankful that he trusts my opinion and my dad’s knowledge on quality of the structure. I could have spent days looking over everything but I didn’t want to get my hopes up quite yet, as the housing market is crazy right now. We went back down to the barn and talked with the agent in private. We made an offer on the house, the realtor would drive back to her office and start on the paperwork. This was now the scariest time waiting to hear from the realtor.