Well, per usual I’m way overdue on a post. We’ve been busy and surrounded with friends and that makes me happy. That being said, I’ll contradict myself by saying that we are settling into the bus more every day and life is slowing down. Not having to work every night and weekend on the bus has slowed things down alot for us and we like it. Morgan has the outdoor shower finished, although we still use Mom’s if we are over there for supper or anything so we can save water here. Our outdoor fire and eating area has had a little use, but not much since we’re holding out a few more weeks until its a little warmer in the evenings. We had a birthday party for my Mom here though, on the 14th, our first real deal! Jons, Benny’s, and Matt’s were here and we had such a fun time. Yep, three years of married and we weren’t on a Valentine date. We have spent a good amount of time hanging out with Jon and Alicia, and one evening we had a bunch of young couples over for LA hot dogs. Sunday we had various people come over and stop in at different times, including some girls from Center and some other youth. A couple nights ago we had some 20 more people down and it was a super evening with good foods and favorite peoples. We are having so much fun being in our own space with a place to have people over again!

The almond trees are in full blossom right now, and as luck would have it, we live next to an orchard so I’ve been taking blissful walks through the blooms and sniffing them and I guess I feel exactly like Anne of Green Gables. I have to really refrain from chopping branches off and bringing them into the bus because I’d like to just fill it up. The sky has been so blue and clear, and we happen to live by one of the higher overpasses around so the view from up there has been tops, like I can see Half Dome in Yosemite on clear days. We live on a pretty busy corner where occasionally various vagabonds can be seen riding bike or trying to hitchike with bags of trash so it’s not necessarily a completely calming thing. Anyways, in my orchard ramblings I found a discarded suitcase and some cats so then I began to feel rather like the Boxcar Children finding trash and making cool stuff out of it. It’s so fun. Maybe a boxcar house is next for us.

Mom had spring break this week, and it just so happened that Morgan plus his hired guy had work in Arizona, so Mom and I drove to Phoenix Monday and spent several days thrift shopping and eating at cool little places and admiring how clean Phoenix is. We had such a good time, and went to around 40 thrift stores. We also found this really yum place to eat called Culinary Dropout and I wished while we were there that the Breakfast Club had been along because it was our type of place.

On our way home we wandered through LA and picked summer fabric up. We also saw the LA unit guys because they passed us on the freeway, waving and trying to hand tracts out to us through the windows at 60 mph. Its nice to see the young people taking their work seriously. Haha.

On Saturday’s Morgan usually fills up our water tank which involves hauling it from somewhere else in a different tank since there isn’t a well on the property where we’re parked. We mow the grass around the bus area, and empty our compost toilet. We use coconut coir for our compost, so we buy a big block on Amazon to use that lasts for a couple months. We break off a good sized piece and pour water over it slowly and in about 15 minutes we can crumble it up and it’s about the consistency of potting soil so its pretty easy. We can put toilet paper in the compost, but it doesn’t break down very fast so we have a trash can with a lid that we put most of our t.p. in. I know this is detailed, but a surprising amount of people are curious so here you go! And, there isn’t any smell that we notice besides the normal bathroom smells you notice in your own house. We wash the Jeep and chop firewood and water the garden and admire our garlic cuz it grows so well. And Morgan and I sit on our lawn chairs and watch the birds sometimes and plan our next trips and watch the traffic and wait for Uncle Evan to go by in his truck and honk. Sometimes friends stop in unannounced and those are almost the best of times. Life’s pretty amazing.

In the midst of all, we still have our battles too. I have really been working on myself to look at the big picture every day to put things into perspective. I often feel like I just need a little encouragement so if you have experience with doubts, low faith, relationships (other, not marital), etc., message me. I’m glad to be in this battle with each of you.

Xo cheyenne