08/09/2025
Hi everyone!
Not everyone knows me or my family personally- so I’ll introduce us. My name is Katie Thomas. I am a Wilson County native. I grew up in Lebanon, Tn- I went through school there, started a family there.
In 2022, our little family moved to Watertown. We love it here.
Travis Taylor, my better half, also grew up in Lebanon, he went through school there, has lived and worked there his entire life, his family lives there.
He’s a funeral director at a beloved funeral home in Lebanon and serves and meets families all over the midstate.
We’re about as local as you can get to the area.
We are rasing 4 children. My two teenage daughters and my two nephews. All of which we homeschool.
My older sister, (my only sibling) Kristy Thomas, also of Lebanon, passed away unexpectedly in September of last year—just a few weeks after her 47th birthday. She died due to complications of cancer. She left behind her two young sons, Kobe and Knox. They are 10 and 11.
Since her passing, Travis and I have had the honor of becoming the boys guardians. They have moved in with us, and just like that, our small family of 4 became a family of 6.
For the past 10 months, the boys have been sleeping in makeshift spaces we created, while we’ve worked behind the scenes to build onto our house.
We love our home and our location, but our house isn’t currently big enough to fit our new much larger family.
Since construction began, they’ve been so excited!—they’ve never had their own bedroom. They’ve been talking about their future rooms, mentally decorating, and dreaming big-out loud.
They both have birthdays coming up, Kobe in late August and Knox’s in mid September.
When we asked what they wanted this year. Both boys gave the same answer:
“We just want our rooms to be finished.”
That’s their birthday wish.
Nothing more.
And we want nothing more than to make that happen.
Last year Kristy, their mom, was in the hospital on Kobe’s birthday, and then she passed away a few days before Knox’s, on hospice in our home.
Her service was the day after his 10th birthday.
It was all a nightmare. No child should have to experience, especially on or around their birthday.
Birthdays are supposed to be full of HAPPY.
Along side all of this, we’ve also asked my mom to move in with us.
Kristy and the boys had been living with her since our dad passed away in 2017. They were helping take care of each other.
My mother is disabled and a senior citizen. After losing Kristy, it became clear that the best thing for all of us was to be together—under one roof, supporting and caring for each other as we continue to grieve and heal.
✨✨✨To make all this possible, we began building the addition.
We’ve cut corners, downsized the plans, and carefully budgeted—but early on we hit a major obstacle:
Because of a flood zone we live in, we are required to build the addition seven feet off the ground. That unexpected issue raised the costs dramatically and made the build far more complex.
Because my mom can’t do the stairs, we’re giving her our bedroom on the ground floor, and Travis and I will be moving upstairs with the boys once everything is complete.
We’re completely reworking our lives and our space to make this work—for all of us.
Our contractor has been amazing—trying to work within building codes and connect the addition to the existing home like a giant puzzle up in the air. All while trying to help us keep the cost down the best he can for us.
It’s been a challenge at every turn, but we have kept pushing forward.
In the meantime, we’re juggling two households, ours, and the one my mom is still in—until we can bring her here permanently. Keeping up two households, plus 4 kids, plus building on- isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s overwhelming, emotionally exhausting, and financially draining.
✨✨Now for some good news: The entire framework is complete. The structure is up, and we’re ready for the next phases.
✨✨✨The bad news: We’re running out of funds—quickly. We pay by the job, money goes fast when writing checks for $10,000-$25,000 at a time- plus keeping up 2 houses and 7 people in this economy. It’s mind blowing, honestly.
We’re pouring everything we have into this— all of us. Kristy’s life insurance, our personal savings, loans, my mom’s savings,
💛even the kids have been helping. They’ve been holding lemonade stands trying to help us raise money.💛
Working extra hours. We’re selling everything we can. Pinching pennies where we can.
-We are doing everything in our power to make this work out, but the costs and constant curveballs have stretched us to the limits.
💜Before she passed away, my sister made me promise that we would we raise the boys and love them like they were ours- and that part is easy.
💜 We also promised that we would use her life insurance to give THEM BEDROOMS of their own.
The three of them had shared a room together, for the boys’ entire life. This would be a place for them to have a fresh start, their own space, and a place where they could just be kids and not worry about things bigger than them.
She was sick most of their lives.
✨Her cancer took a toll on all of us, but especially them.✨
She wanted us to let them be little, be normal, be happy boys.-And we’re trying our absolute best to keep that promise. -But the creating that space is proving to be much harder than we could have imagined.
It was the last promises we made to her and it’s all we think about. We have to get this done, for her, for them, for mom, for us. It’s so important.
💜After a lot of prayers and tears, it’s became clear to us that we have to set our egos aside and to humbly, transparently, and urgently ask for help.
We’ve always heard it takes a village to raise children, we desperately need our village to help us.
-Donating or even just sharing this post- helps us keep those last promises.
It gets us one step closer to be finished with this part of the journey.
Finishing this would finally get us finally get to a point where we can just breath again and finally start to move forward instead of being stuck in this phase of emotional and financial chaos.
But we need help.
Thank you for reading all of this!
And thank you in advance if you are able to help us or simply just share this post.
Ways to help:
🩵A link to my public shareable post (and updates as things progress)
https://www.facebook.com/share/1AZRMcVAEt/?mibextid=wwXIfr
💛We started a GoFundMe for our project or people can help directly via Cashap, Venmo, or PayPal if that makes them more comfortable.
🩵🩵Our GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/778fe62b
🤍Venmo:
💛Cashapp: $TravisLeeTaylor19
🤍PayPal: [email protected]
💜💜💜💜 And to those of you that have donated already or shared our post- thank you from the bottom of our hearts! It means the world to us. 💛
🤍- Katie Thomas and Travis Taylor
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We need help finishing the addition on our home for th… Katherine Thomas needs your support for Help us finish what we started, a new start for the boys.
