There is no place like home.

Our past three months visiting family is unsurpassed in the relationships we nurtured and the memories we made. We will ever be grateful for those three unprecedented months we took between our Oregon Homestead and our Pennsylvania home.

Surrounded by forest and snow, we have arrived in Pennsylvania. I felt like a newlywed as I unpacked our few kitchen items we brought. We are house-sitting for my brother and his wife, who is my dear friend. This will allow us to reach one our 2018 goals for the year – pay off the rest of my student loan. Then we can get into our own homestead and sustainably live in place.

The entire time we were driving through Kansas, (and it is a long time), I thought about Dorothy and ToTo. I have been a collector of Wizard of Oz books for many years. I love to find the very old ones. As I visited my niece before we left the west, I found out she had collected some of these books and had framed the pictures after she water colored them. She gave me three of these pieces of art.

The statement, “There is no place like home” went through my head many times because we were in Kansas,  yes, but also because we had been away from a place of our own for so long. I could almost feel what it might be like to live by ourselves again, but not quite.

When we walked through the house in Pennsylvania for the first time, we went from room to room, taking in the silence, the beauty and the joy we felt. We will ever be grateful to my brother and his wife for allowing us this privilege.

We have a YouTube Channel,

Heartiness Approach, and there is one amazing side benefit to making a channel. We get to have friends all over the United States. No, all over the world. They are not just casual friends. They are true, wonderful, dependable friends to seek out, meet in person, and stay in touch with. They have become our YouTube homestead. Our family outside of our related family.

As we traveled across the county in the dead of winter, I knew if we got in trouble, we could reach out to one of those YouTube family members and someone would respond who was close enough to help. That is an amazing gift to receive. Most of we homesteader YouTubers had no idea this type of family would exist for us when we starting making videos.

There is no place like home, and because of the 3 months we spent with family and because of the wonderful family we have met on YouTube, we have home where ever we go.

Yes Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore, but with a click on our magic slippers, we are home.