noun: serendipity; plural noun: serendipities
the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.
The only way I can describe the events of the last few years is serendipitous.
Have you ever had things just fall into place for you? Have you ever come against an obstacle that you just weren't sure how to overcome it, and then suddenly, everything just seems to work out?
That is what has happened to us.
To begin with, some introductions are in order. I'm Trevor. Jennifer, my wife and I have been married for almost 20 years. We have two sons, Brennan, 18, and Hunter, 15. We have two puppers, Lily Belle, a yellow lab, who is 6 and Luna, an Australian Shepard and probably Tasmanian Devil mix, who is 9 weeks old. I grew up in Kansas and Nebraska. Went to trade school in Wyoming. I've been in the automotive collision industry for 24 years now. Jennifer grew up in the Kansas City, Missouri area, a hair stylist by trade, but now holds a degree in Early Childhood Education.
A family photo at Islands of Adventure.
Our family, from a cowboy action shooting competition in Colorado.
Throughout Jennifer's and my marriage, we have dreamed of having a homestead. Not just a garden in the backyard, but an honest to goodness homestead. We had looked at multiple properties over the years that may have suited us, but none of them worked out. In July of 2019, my paternal grandmother, "Grandma Dorothy" passed away at the age of 90. She left behind the family homestead to my Dad. For quite a while, my Dad wasn't sure what to do with the home place. He is at the age that maintaining the property was more work than he wanted to tackle, but also didn't want to see the property fall into disrepair or be sold off to become a wheat field. His younger brother, Jim, lives about 35 miles south of the home place, but his business and the health issues of his wife limit his time to care for the property as well. Jim's suggestion to my Dad was to pass it on to me, as he thought I would be the only grand-kid who would appreciate the place, and I can say I do. I have so many fond memories of spending time at my grandparents. From shooting black powder guns with my Uncle Bob, climbing an old crab apple tree that was planted in between the houses, and getting scolded from my Mom for drinking out of a rusty old tin can my Grandpa Thane kept on a hydrant in the backyard.
Grandma Dorothy and I, looking at pictures
At first, I was reluctant to accept the gift. I was so incredibly busy with my own business, the boys' activities, being President of the County Ag Society, and other volunteer things you seem to fall into in a small town, but then one day, something in my mind changed. Beyond having a place to fulfill our dream of homesteading, this was the opportunity to keep our families' claim to the land alive for another generation and to prepare it for following generations.
After two seasons of maintaining the homestead, we noticed one thing in particular about it. Gophers. Pocket gophers are a scourge in the area. Each spring there are mounds of dirt where they have been hard at work tunneling under the surface to create the network of tunnels that they live in, forage for food in and raise the next generation of their family. And every spring, like Carl Spackler, I wage war on the rodents. In trying to determine a name for our homestead, it dawned on me one afternoon. Gopher Holler. We've got gophers and if you are from the South or have visited there, a holler is a valley, which is where our homestead lies.
Now to the serendipitous part of the story. Why we are moving to our homestead.
As I said before, I've been in the collision repair industry for 24 years now. Fixing wrecked cars is the reason I have Jennifer as my wife and the boys as my sons. For the last 8 years, I've owned my own shop, in the small town in Nebraska were I spent my teenage years, the town I graduated high school in. It hasn't always been easy, but repairing damaged vehicles was the career path I chose, although I have always felt I was meant for something more. Jennifer was a hair stylist when we met (she cut my hair for my sister's wedding, then again a couple of months later, we went on a date and have been together ever since), but she had left the field when our boys were born so she could be a stay at home mom. She started volunteering at our boys' preschool, then was hired as a preschool teacher. She has quite the way with the little ones. A couple of years ago, she decided that she wanted to better herself and enrolled in the Early Childhood Education program at Central Community College, and we are so proud of her for doing so. She graduated this May, Suma Cum Laude, with her Associates Degree. She plans to continue on with her education and obtain a bachelor's degree next.
In March of this year, the trade school student who I had hired the previous summer called me. He wanted to let me know that he wasn't going to be back for Spring Break to work like he and I had originally planned. The reason, his parents had divorced and his mom and step-dad had moved into apartments after selling the home, he had no place to live. Instead he asked if I would be upset if he took a job in Lincoln, at a collision repair center there. Although it put me in a pickle for help, I told him that he needed to do what was best for him, and that I would do whatever I could to help him obtain that position. And there I sat, without any help in the shop and no prospects either. For the last seven years, I had worked six and half days a week and it looked like that was to continue. In short, I was feeling burned out and disenfranchised with my chosen career field.
While all this was happening, the home we had been renting was going up for sale. It was offered to us first, and initially we agreed to purchase it, but as everyone reading this knows, the current housing market is ridiculously high and interest rates are the highest in a generation. After working with a lender for six months, we came to a shocking revelation. It was going to cost us $1000 more a month to own the home we had rented for 7 years, and it would drain our savings account to cover the down payment and closing costs. Basically we would be stuck living paycheck to paycheck. That is a place that neither of us ever want to be again, we've been in that situation before and have no desire to ever be there again.
The rental house we had called home.
Meanwhile, I happened to come across a job board for Northwest Kansas. There was a listing for an Executive Director of a new Early Childhood Education center, just six miles down the road from our homestead. I debated sending her the link for the listing for about a minute, then sent it to her. Jennifer applied. I closed the shop early one Wednesday and we drove the three and half hours down so she could interview. The interview went smashingly well, and two days later, they offered the job to her. She asked for a few days to consider the opportunity and we embarked on a series of serious discussions about closing my shop and relocating.
It was not an easy decision to make. Our oldest son was graduating in May and our youngest was finishing his freshman year in high school. I was (and still am) worried about him changing schools, but after including both of the boys in our discussions, we decided that moving would be the right thing to do. The terrifying thing to do, but the right thing to do as well. We spoke with the real estate agent that was handling our home sale, let them know that we couldn't in good conscious spend the kind of money that purchasing the rental house would entail and started mapping out a plan to renovate the 1870s school house that was my grandmother's home and would soon be our home as well.
I truly hope that you will join us in this adventure! I leave you now with photos of Gopher Holler:
