Finally an update, we bought a house!

I feel like since we moved back from Saco, life has been on fast forward. I’ve sat down to write a blog post plenty of times, but I always run out of time to finish it. One time I wrote a whole post and it didn’t save, and I chose not to rewrite it then because I was too darn frustrated. All of that said, I NEED to take a moment to press pause, and fill everyone in on the next couple of steps on our Montana Adventure!

A view of the front of our new home, photo taken this summer.

Today, Josey and I signed papers to close on our first home! This may be a surprise to some, so I’ll give you the whole story.

This past summer, a friend of ours let us know about a home they knew would be on the market soon. The house is near where I have been a nanny for the last two summers, in a lovely subdivision in Belgrade. I’ve spent a lot of time there, and it is a neighborhood that reminds me a lot of the neighborhood I lived in growing up in the Tri-Cities.

We met the family living in the house, and decided that for the right price, it might be the home for us. At 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, it wasn’t too big, but it had everything we were looking for. There is even a formal dining room, where we can fit our baby grand piano. For Josey, there is a regular garage, as well as an additional deep, detached two-car garage. He still hasn’t decided which garage his tools are going to live in. (He has his heart set on a pool table in there too, oh boy.) 

Above the garage is a spacious, studio apartment that we aren’t sure what we are going to do with yet, but it’s possible Josey’s brother will live there. The yard is big, and largely unlandscaped, so we get to make it what we want.

Since we wanted to move forward with the house, we made an agreement with the sellers back in the summer that we would close on the house in late January and rent it back to them, so they could have a place to live while working on their new house, and we wouldn’t have to throw away months and months of rent while we were also paying a mortgage. We knew in the summer that we wouldn’t be able to get out of our rental contract. We were able to work with a real estate attorney, and since we found the house on our own we didn't need a realtor. 

I keep hearing this song on the radio, “If it’s meant to be, it’ll be, it’ll be, baby just let it be.” This really rang true with our process of buying the house. Sure, we had stumbling blocks, but truly, I think it was meant to be ours. We will move into the house in April!

The view from the back deck - the fenced area on the right of the picture is also our yard.

From the back door/back deck of the house is a fantastic view of a red barn. This barn is a fixture of the neighborhood, and since there is a section of the yard that is not fenced, the barn looks as if it’s in our yard. I love it so much, I can’t believe the home is actually ours!

While we are both excited, it is also frustrating to not move in, like right now! I am dying to share pictures of our new house, however since we are renting it back to the sellers, we don’t want to invade their privacy.  Luckily, Josey and I both have lots to keep ourselves busy until move-in. I may even be coaching some high school track and field in the spring… I’ll share more about that when it’s all official. 

I have also been very busy with my new teaching position. I spend the morning at Meadowlark Elementary school, teaching 3rd and 4th grade general music, and 5th grade band. Teaching that many new band students has been an adventure, but they are making amazing improvements! In the afternoon, I teach 6th, 7th, and 8th grade choir. Teaching choir feels like something I was born to do. Yes, I’ve been trained to be a K-12 music teacher, but my piano skills are really put to use in the choir setting, and I absolutely love what we can create. Middle school students can be a lot to handle, but they also really need educators who care about what they are going through and give them a place to hopefully feel like they can be themselves.

Other things I’ve been doing in Bozeman - church choir, photography here and there, and the latest and greatest, I’ve become an OULA instructor! Here is a description of what OULA is to me: Oula is an hour-long dance class for all of us who want to be dancers, and who want to get a workout. It is also a time to experience the feels - and sometimes you just feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. Other times, you feel like you nailed the choreography, and you can take on the world. Sometimes, you feel like yourself, and sometimes you feel like someone totally different. In high school, I was the band kid in the stands at football games who poked fun at the dance team, but really because I was jealous that I wasn’t part of it. 

Hey look, my back is on a canvas at Oula Studio Bozeman!

Every Oula class, I get to be part of an amazing dance team - a room full of people with hearts and minds and bodies who have dedicated the hour to movement, and to music. The music we dance to is all current or recent popular songs. We have sassy, sexy, fun songs, kick your butt cardio songs, and punch you right in the feels songs. My job as an instructor is to create a playlist that takes the participants through a journey during the class, that invites them to feel something, and to shout and sing if they want to. I love to shout and sing during class, it makes me feel so free!

If Oula is something you’d like to try, there are many opportunities to do so in Bozeman, and even more in Missoula, where Oula was created! I teach every Tuesday night at 5:20 PM at Fuel Fitness, by the Bozeman Goodwill. Drop-ins are only $5, and classes are free if you have a membership there. I invite everyone to try it at least once, and if you enjoy any of it the first time, give it a 2nd and 3rd try. I was definitely frustrated after my first few classes, because sometimes the choreography moves fast, and I wanted to know exactly what was coming next. But after going a few times, I learned several of the songs quite well, and the moves do start to repeat themselves. After my 3rd class I was in love with it - you hardly know you’re exercising because it’s so much fun. 

This fall, Josey and I also helped out with the Spirit of the West Marching Band at MSU. We love band, and game days! It sure kept us busy on the weekends. I also coached 8th grade volleyball, which I enjoyed very much.

Check out all the bicyclists who had to wait for the band to go by, haha!

Josey has been very busy as well since we moved back to Bozeman. He put in many 60 hour weeks this summer landscaping, worked at the National Boy Scout Jamboree for a few weeks across the country, and began teaching 5-8 band at Monforton school, a K-8 district just outside Bozeman city limits. It’s less than 10 minutes away from my schools! He also started up a middle school choir, and won a grant for a very nice clavinova for his classroom. The band room is located inside the brand new middle school, so he has a very nice space. (Although he does need racks for his chairs and stands, and some other instruments and pieces to really fill out the music program.) The position is only part time, so through the fall Josey landscaped a ton. We have been lucky (lucky?) to have had lots of snow this season, so he also has had the opportunity to snowplow for Bear Paw Landscapes quite a bit.

It has been a little slow for him in the afternoons now, but he has been purchasing instruments online and fixing them up to sell again, which is keeping him busy. He also has signed up to be a music substitute for the Bozeman School District in the afternoons. Once we are in the new house, there are many little projects for us both to work on. We are very excited to move into a home that will be ours - we can finally paint the walls whatever color we want! SERIOUSLY I AM SO STOKED. 

Our families are doing well - my parents even flew to Bozeman for a few days at Christmas which was a real treat! My brother Graham proposed to his lovely girlfriend Mikaela, and they will get married this fall. Josey’s two siblings are both at Montana State University this year, so it has been nice to have them over to do laundry visit with them. :P

It was super cold when they were here, but we went snowshoeing anyway!

We have only made it back up to Saco once since we left. It is a lot harder to drive 5 1/2 hours to get there when you only have "regular people" weekends. (Yes, I do sometimes miss the three day weekends we had with the four-day school weeks in Saco and Hinsdale.) It was so nice to see everyone! We hardly slept, since we wanted to visit with our friends into the wee hours of the morning. Our friends the Pippin’s have done a great job with “Pip’s Diner” in Saco, and I am so glad Chris is the new music teacher in Saco. He is doing a fantastic job, and I couldn’t have asked for anyone better to take those kids where they are capable of going. We miss you all!

The Pips of Pip's Diner - GREAT FOOD and service in Saco, Montana.

Skating with the kiddos in Saco during our visit in January.

In Saco, life always was “pause”able. Even at our busiest, we still always had time to lesson plan, and to spend time with our friends. Now, we are living on fast forward, trying to squeeze friends into our short weekends, and workouts, and snuggle sessions with the cats. While that may sound overwhelming, I really do prefer it this way. For me, you’ve got to be busy to be productive, and then you really do appreciate the vacation time, and the weekends when you truly don’t have anywhere you have to be. Maybe we’ll get tired of that in the future, but for now we are 25 years old and living life in the fast lane, or at least as fast as one can in Montana. 

Love,

Chelsea (& Josey)