We Need Your Help!!

Hello everyone!!

I am posting to request your help with something. :) My dear friend, Julia, and I are working on beginning what we're calling a "Young Patriot" team. Our goal will be to educate, inspire, and encourage other young people to stand and fight for the preservation of liberty. We hope to do this through helping others gain a better understanding of our country's Christian heritage, learning about the men and women who have fought for liberty, and helping others to increase their knowledge and understanding of the U.S. Constitution. We also want to provide information on current issues in our country that we could take action on - thus helping to make a difference for the betterment of our nation. One of the first ways we plan to begin doing this is through starting a blog and then branching out from there. We believe it is the young generations' duty to preserve the liberties that have been won by those who have gone before so that future generations can also enjoy these liberties!

We are planning to launch our team within the next couple of months and are very excited to share more with you! First though, as I stated above, we'd like your help. We need a name!! We have narrowed down our name ideas to a couple of different choices (believe me, this was NOT easy!) and we'd like you to tell us which name you think would be best.

1) Young Patriot Liberty Team (YPLT)
2) Young Patriots for Liberty (YPL)

Here is a quick background behind our names (to help you make an informed decision :):

Please keep in mind that we're wanting to create a team of young people that are passionate about our country. So the name is really not just a blog name, but the name of our team. For example, just like a sports team, this is a Young Patriot team.

1) As you can see, our first name (Young Patriot Liberty Team) contains the word "team" in it. Having a team mindset is really what we want to emphasize - we don't want this project to just be about us, but about other young people being inspired to get on board and join us in preserving liberty!

2) That being said, we came up with name number two (Young Patriots for Liberty) because we weren't sure that our first name flowed as good as we wanted it to. We also thought that perhaps the fact that we want it to be a team effort could be implied without having "team" in the name. We realize that a name is important and we want not only ourselves to be able to identify with it, but others as well!

So, our thinking is that "Young Patriots for Liberty" may flow better, but do we lose the sense that we want it to be a team effort (something that maybe "Young Patriot Liberty Team" expresses better)? That's our thinking - tell us what YOU think!!

I have a poll in the sidebar that we hope you'll participate in!! For those of you using mobile view, you can either switch to the full web view at the bottom of our main page to access the poll, or leave your vote in the comment section of this post. Thank you so much for your help - we're looking forward to hearing from you!! You'll be hearing more from us again soon. :)

The Cochran's Now...

Many of you have already seen our yearly letter and picture for 2015, but for those of you who haven't, I thought it would be a nice update on our family.  After this, we'll be finished with our review of the past couple of years and ready for posts from 2016!!

Greetings Family and Friends!

This is Savannah. ☺ I have the pleasure of typing our letter this year!!  I’m going to keep it brief because of time (or rather, lack thereof!!), but hope to give you a good update just the same!! 

As you may remember from last year’s letter, we bought some land. Our biggest news for this year is…we’ve moved!!! We went from 5 acres to 160 acres - wow! It has been an exciting year between selling our home, temporarily living in a small apartment in downtown (right down the street from a coffee shop – what could be better?!), and building on our new land. We’ve done the vast majority of the work ourselves (with the help of friends!), so it has been a big learning opportunity for everyone. We certainly know our building inside out and from the ground up!! We are currently completing a shop/apartment which we will live in while we build our house (can anyone guess what next year is looking like for us?!). Thanks to being a military family, we have taken to calling this building our TLF (temporary lodging facility for those of you who don’t know)!  

We’re all doing well. Not much has changed on the animal front – we still have quite the zoo (which is temporarily spread out all over the state [slightly less so now that we have the cows and dogs back!] – special thanks to various friends who are keeping the animals for us during the move!). I think it has been a couple of years since we gave an explanation about each member of the family, so I think I’ll do so now! Sabrina is 18 and finishing some final requirements before graduating! She is looking into getting started with meat rabbits and constantly blesses us with scrumptious kitchen delights. Sienna (15) has probably had the most difficult time adjusting to the move, but has been a trooper. She loves all things military and war history and is also quite the wonderful storyteller. We keep telling her she needs to become an author! Stasia (14) is our resident seamstress. She is very gifted when it comes to making her own patterns! Although the goats have historically been Sabrina’s “thing”, Stasia and Sayer are taking over and are excited about expanding the goat operation together. Seth (12) is quickly maturing into quite the young man. He and Sayer have become quite the help to daddy between building and work on the property. He is also one of the primary milkers of our dairy cow (along with Stasia).  I think one of the highlights of Seth’s year is that he is quickly passing all his siblings (and mom!) in height!! I’m still holding out as the tallest of us kids, but not for long!! ☺ Sayer (10) is trying to catch up in height to Seth!! Besides what I’ve already stated above, he has a love of all things flying and the Air Force and still wants to follow in daddy’s steps one day. Shenandoah (or Shen, as she is commonly known) turned 7 the beginning of December. She loves to read and is learning to be more and more of a help around the home. She does her best to get in on building projects whenever possible and wishes she could do more! My father and mother are doing well. I’m so blessed to have them for my parents (and no, I didn’t have to say that!). They celebrated 32 years of marriage in June and have spent most of the year planning various aspects of our building and moving process. They’re excited about seeing their dream of living off the grid come into being (and if it continues to work, we’ll be all the more excited! ☺ Second solar array is on order!)  Hmmmm….as for myself, well, I’m told I should include something about me, but it’s more fun writing about everyone else! I’m now 23 and very blessed to be a daughter in my father’s home. I’m also very excited about our new home and property! I still have bees and actually hope to get a few more hives in the spring. I enjoy working with daddy, helping teach a couple of subjects to the boys and Shen, and pursuing some various interests on my own. In my spare time (haha), I started learning guitar over the summer and quickly decided it was a favorite. I look forward to advancing in my playing ability!

Well, this wasn’t quite as brief as I originally intended – I think I got a little carried away! ☺ We always look forward to hearing from you each year and pray this letter finds you doing well. 

One of my favorite verses is also a wonderful promise: “And the LORD, He is the One who goes before you. He will be with you, He will not leave you nor forsake you; do not fear nor be dismayed.” – Deuteronomy 31:8   

Love and blessings from all of us to all of you! ☺ Savannah – for the crew!

Cochran Construction Adventure - Part 5 of 5

Daddy and the boys built some awesome shelves in the shop. They were a huge lifesaver on moving day!

Packing up the apartment!

Moving out.

Mrs. Thomas, Melanie, Christian, and Elijah were such a help!

The day after we moved into our new TLF, the movers arrived with all of our household goods! The movers took one look at our shop/TLF and said they didn't think everything was going to fit!  We were a little concerned too - we moved from a 3200 sq ft house with a huge shed to a (just under) 2000 sq ft shop/TLF!!  Well, it all fit - barely!

It was a full and busy day, but went great!

Starting to look more like a home.

Lots of boxes!!

Working on making some sense out of the mess.

The Ford's and Mr. "O" helping us on yet another day of fencing!

Daddy and I started back to our insurance work and we were met with a wonderful surprise when we got home the first day - the TLF looked AMAZING!!!

Staining boards for our bunk beds.

The work crew on another day of fencing!
(How do you like my hat?! :) I wasn't sure where my winter hat was, but when daddy acquired this hat, I decided it was perfect. It really keeps your ears warm!)

Sayer and Benjamin

Wallace and Seth
The "O's" dropped by for a little while! That was a nice surprise!

Sarah and I

Knox, Benjamin, and Wallace

Shen and Elly

The mothers visiting.

Mrs. "O" and Andrew

And this is where we are now! It has been a lot of work, but an amazing experience. Many wonderful memories made too. We are feeling more settled and enjoying life in our new (temporary) home!

Cochran Construction Adventure - Part 4 of 5

The task of painting begins!! It was nice to have some less intense work for a change, but the painting seemed to drag on for forever!! :)

We have electricity!! All from solar!!
(we have a backup generator that runs on propane for cloudy days)

We switched from summer heat to winter cold! The inside got pretty chilly before we had our heater in. Sabrina was the *bestest* sister and brought me some coffee in the second shift!!

We cook food inside for the first time!

My wonderful parents.

Fencing!!

When the string gets tangled... :)

Fencing crew!

Window cleaning...

...and door painting!

I think I painted doors for about 10 hours one day!!! 

Nothing like Chik-fil-A for dinner!! (Especially at 10:00 at night!)

Blowing insulation in the attic.

Getting our generator moved into place.

Spraying some foam insulation in the cracks around the sheet insulation around the loft.

Our kitchen starts going in!

The trim gets painted

:)
I did basically all the trim with the help of Sienna and Seth!

Our kitchen!!

Love the cabinets and countertops we chose.

Our first meal in our new oven was on Shen's birthday!!

Working together

Wax coats!

Coffee for the work crew on the way out to the land!

It was special being able to build in a sweatshirt from my grandfather's custom home building business!