And Then Life Takes a Turn...

I've been teasing you with a promised post on Christmas ornaments for a few weeks, and I promise I did start writing it today.  But then I got an email about a job opening that would be so PERFECT for my husband and I got completely carried away and Christmas ornaments just don't sound that interesting anymore.

What's the job, you're asking?  Well, I'm not going to tell you everything because he hasn't even filled out the application, but recently he told me what he really wanted to be doing was working in the great outdoors.  He's always loved biking, hiking, skiing, and is crazy adventurous.  This job would allow him to do all of those things plus a whole lot more...for a living.

What would the job mean for me?  He'd be gone A LOT.  It'd mean a summer of me and 4 kids figuring things out on our own.  It could mean giving up our house and bumming couches from friends and family all summer instead of continuing our search for a bigger place we can all fit in.  It could mean a lot of traveling to where he is, including a trip up the ALCAN Highway with my minivan, a 5-year-old, 2-year-old and 9 month old twins.  It could mean saving a lot of money or turn into having absolutely no money.  And most importantly, it would mean being so incredibly proud of my husband for giving up the security of a decent paycheck at a ho-hum job to do something that he really loves to do!  It'd give me hope for my own dreams coming true in the future, too!

I'll let you know how it all turns out, but for now know that I have a HUGE grin on my face.  And forgive me for not getting around to that very "settled down and domesticated" post I'd been promising...maybe in a few days when I come down off this high..

Thankful Thirty #28 (Home)

It is time to find a new home.  We love the house we've been in for the past 3 years, but it is time to pack and go before the walls burst at their seams.  We need an office space that isn't splayed across the dining room table.  We need a laundry room that doesn't play the role of kitchen 6.5 days of the week.  We need outdoor storage so our strollers, camping equipment, fishing gear, golf clubs, picnic toys, spare electrical parts, life jackets, ski boots, bike trailer, roller blades, fondue pots, spare wallpaper, backpacks, and air mattresses aren't all jammed into one uninsulated closet in our bedroom.  And we need to be able to walk through the whole place without tripping over baby things (or, worse, babies).

The hunt has begun, and of course we had to start out with nearly irresistible temptation.  There is a house for rent 1 block from where we live now that looked as close to my dream home as I can imagine ever finding.  A long driveway so it sets off the road.  Next to the elementary school with a gate in the fence to get through.  A wall of windows on the north side overlooking an expansive hollow and ravine.  And totally remodeled on top of everything.  The problem?  It's above our budget but just enough to make it impossible to walk away from.

The past two weeks have been a sincere test of willpower on my part.  That's how long we made ourselves wait before going to look at it.  We figured if it didn't get snapped right up, maybe it was meant to be.  Of course in the back of my mind I knew that if it didn't get snapped up there might be something wrong with it, but the idyllic abode I'd built it up to be in my mind kept me dreaming.

We looked at it this morning.  It took two minutes to get from our driveway to the front door and my kids didn't think it was strange at all because they could still see the park they play in and the neighbors they know and love.  And as soon as I walked in the door I knew this isn't the next place our family will call home.

Don't get me wrong, the layout was great, the windows and view were amazing!  There was a basement with two large pantries we hadn't been expecting, and also a patio out the back door.  Past that red flags went up in almost every room.  The bedroom walls were freshly painted, but the stucco walls were crumbling and black mold was poorly hidden.  The bathroom vanity that looked high quality in the listing photos was actually wooden, fading, and showing signs of rot due to the lack of windows or ventilation fans.  And the kitchen with it's new stainless steel appliances and marble counter tops were only a distraction from the matted carpet and exposed electrical wires behind the cupboard doors.  As we finished up our walk through,   I couldn't ignore the thought gnawing inside of me that the amount of cosmetic improvements done on the house must be covering up an equal amount of structural or mechanical problems with the house.

And that was it for me.  All the dreaming I've done since first seeing the listing, and worrying about falling in love with a place we couldn't afford, were mitigated instantly.  Not for one moment did I consider moving my boys into a bedroom with mold.  As we drove the two minutes back home I talked to my husband about the reasons we were comfortable letting this house go and he said that he agreed with me.  Before he left to go to work, though, I need to be sure.  I asked him,  "Are we on the same page?"

His reply? "But it has an ice maker in the refrigerator door..."

This house-hunting thing isn't going to be easy...

I'm grateful for the home I've loved and the excitement of looking for another one.

Thankful Thirty #20 (Humility)

"I want, I want, I want!"  I'm sick of hearing it already.  The Toys 'R Us toy catalog came in the mail nearly a month ago and I haven't had a quiet day since.  Every time I think I've hidden it, thrown it away, or incinerated it the blasted magazine reappears, a little more banged up, but still readable and enticing.  My kids are begging me for things they've never heard of and I guarantee would hate as soon as they found it underneath the Christmas tree. To try and combat the vacuum of materialism that can put a damper on the holidays, we sat down as a family tonight for a lesson I called "I Want/I Have." First we did an activity I adapted from the Groovy Storytimes blog.  She said,

For an object lesson on greed, build a small "table." Use building blocks at either end for legs, and a rectangle of thin cardboard, (I used a postcard) for the top...Place a small pile of small stones beside the "table."(We used building blocks) Pick up one of the stones and say, "I want a _______." Fill in any item that you know your kids like. Place that stone on the cardboard tabletop. Pick up another stone and repeat.  Again, fill in the blank with anything, from a bicycle to a Playstation to a pet dinosaur. Place this stone beside the first one on the cardboard. Continue in this fashion until there are so many stones on the cardboard that it collapses. Explain to the children that, if we're not careful, our "wants" can overwhelm us.

Everyone in our family took a turn doing this and then we talked about how when we want things, we'll never have everything we want.  We'll never be happy enough.  Then we did the activity again, but this time I moved the "table" legs together to make a sturdy base for the postcard to lay on.  With each block we stacked this time, we said, "I have ______."  When all our blocks were stacked steady on top of each other, we talked about how focusing on the blessings we have to be thankful for help us to be happier and stronger.

The second part of the activity was to draw a turkey on the chalkboard.  Each person named a thing they are grateful to have and added it as a feather on the turkey.  Then I explained to my boys that every time this week that they started a sentence with "I want...", I would stop them and we'd add another "I have..." feather to our turkey.  They were excited and I thought I was a genius.

Then my great activity kicked me in my own behind.  As we ate our family night treat and got ready for bed, I caught myself choking on my own "I wants...".  Real art when we move into our next house, a newer car seat for my toddler, new pans on Black Friday, and on and on and on.  Apparently, I'm as bad, if not worse, than my kids with their toy catalogs.

I didn't add more feathers tonight because I was able to stop myself before sharing all the material things I was wishing for.  But tomorrow morning, I will add a few important things to our turkey and hopefully by the end of the week our entire family will be focused a little more on the many blessings we have to be thankful for.

I'm grateful for the lessons I learn when I thought I was teaching my kids.

In My Heart On Thursday (Escape)

The Journey That My Heart Is On

My husband is in Seattle this week.  My boys and I were going to meet him there for the Easter weekend and go exploring on the Olympic Peninsula, but the the weather forecast was for low 50's and rainy.  We're not going.  We were going to go to the Redwoods for my 2-year-old's birthday, but we didn't.  I wanted to drive to San Diego, leave my kids with family, and go on a cruise this summer before the baby comes.  Completely off the table.  And the year-long adventure I've been dreaming about?  Most definitely not going to happen.

In full disclaimer, my kids and I are going back to the Sparks Flea Market next month to hang out with my family.  I used all my frequent flyer miles and all our free hotel nights to get us there.  They were going to waste and it's not looking like I will be using them for anything else anytime soon...I don't travel anymore.

Would you mind being the bounce board for my therapy?  

First, I never have renewed my passport.  The money always kept going elsewhere.  The cruise I mentioned earlier would require a passport and applying now would probably not see that beautiful blue book back in my hands until I'm too pregnant to be sailing.  One weekend I had an idea to fly to Canada and go camping in Banff National Park this summer, or to drive to Alaska to visit friends, but those are things I also can't do without a passport. Please don't offer the advice that I could expedite my renewal.  I know.  That adds to the cost which has been inhibiting me all these months and appears to be staunchly implanted in my brain as an excuse not to go get my new photo taken tomorrow.

Second, life happens when you don't realize you're looking right at it.  For 15 years I've had a personal philosophy that people don't need to settle down until they have children that start school.  And with today's technology, that's not even a resolute reason to change your wandering lifestyle if your family is still out there  having fun.  Five years ago when I had my first baby my ideals didn't change, but since then the trips have become routinely shorter and closer to home.  I HATE when people tell me having kids changes things.  I don't think it's an excuse to quit doing things.  How could I have let that happen to me?  

Now I have my soon-to-be kindergartner registered in an online curriculum  that would enable us to keep taking off on far-away adventures.  So what happens?  Life, again.  All the money we'd saved and sacrifices we've made to pack up and leave town weren't for nothing.  They've just turned out to not be for what we'd thought they would be.  Medical bills for new babies and broken arms and who knows what else is to come turn out to cost just about the same amount of money as backpacking around the world for 9 months in bliss.

As for the third and final reckoning in my brain?  My husband has decided he likes living a comfortable suburban life with a safely predictable job, all of his hobbies, and extra-curricular responsibilities.  He has contentedly settled down.  He won't tell me that matter-of-fact, but it's time for me to accept and start dealing with it.  How do I know that's where he's at in his life right now?  He's quit getting excited when I call out of the blue with a hair-brained plan for where we should take off to on the weekend.  I used to jump in the car and show-up unexpectedly wherever he was working out of town, but now he as much as tells me it'd be more responsible if I stayed home and saved the money.  He's in his fourth year of a job that was always supposed to be the hold-over until a great new adventure came along, but now he talks about a year from now when he'll be working more in the office and less on the road.  The final blow?  The year-long traveling life change I believed in wholeheartedly never evolved further than a passing whimsy to be discarded quickly in my husband's mind.  

Having now had my equivalent hour on the couch, how do I evolve from here?

I have no idea.  Always in my mind are the thoughts that I'm being tested and need to learn to be happy in the moment with the circumstances surrounding me.  That it is noble and normal to live in one house & one town with predictable days forever.  I feel guilty that my vision of motherhood, marriage partnership, and family life is so different from everyone else.  I struggle with wondering why I have to be the one that pretends to be something different than what is deeply rooted inside me.  I dread hearing people tell me not to give up on my dream or lose the wandering part of my soul when I don't see how there is any other option for me.  I don't want to be one of those, "When the children are older," or "We'll do that when we retire" type of people, but that is exactly what is happening. 

That is what is happening to me.  Part of me is being buried and the tightening I feel in my chest when I admit it so I can let it go confirms that I've barely embarked on the most challenging journey yet that my heart has been asked to travel.

In My Heart On Thursday

                                          It's 10 minutes, but worth it. 
 I started crying at 4:29 and the tears kept falling
Thank you, One Mom's Moxie, for posting it for me to see

I Wandered Off, but I'm Wandering Still...

If you were hanging out with me a year ago, you might remember that I was walking around with a pretty dismal view of the New Year.  In the end, however, 2011 turned out to be a pretty great year.  I had the privilege of teaching some extremely powerful Relief Society lessons where the class taught me more than I possibly could have given to them.    I got to go on a shopping spree.    I traveled with my family to the Grand Canyon, San Diego, all over New Mexico, and a gigantic swap meet in the Midwest.  And I finally found a way to love my hair.  Going into 2012 I have a thousand reasons to be happy and  grateful.

As I think about what I want to accomplish in the coming year, the word that keeps coming to mind is "responsibility."  Nearly every area of my life could be marked with bright red "LAZY" stamp across the top of it.  In cultivating that laziness, I've neglected a lot of people and a lot of opportunities.  It's time for me to get busy being the person I'm supposed to be.

My new resolve breaks down into five basic categories:

~Making my physical world better (one little step, or maybe two)

~Fixing the damage caused by considering myself a stay-at-home mom instead of a homemaker

~Testing my grit as a homeschooling parent before I make a decision I hate

~Realistically making our extended travel plans

~Blogging the way I'm supposed to be.

I'll write about each of those in the coming weeks.  About the blogging, however, I want to apologize now for letting myself get carried away.  The past year on this blog has been so fun, but the past few months, especially, have been unfulfilling. I started this blog as an outlet for thoughts that were important to me.  When people ask what I write about, I tell them, "a little bit faith, a little bit life, a little bit traveling."  Those are the things that are important to me.  I never wanted Wandering Still to be money-making or popularity inducing.  I just wanted to share my thoughts with the people who wanted to listen.  Thank you to those of you who've wandered off with me.  But rest assured, 

2012 is going to find me getting back to "ME."  

I hope you'll join me on the journey.

Uniquely December: National Pawnbroker's Day

My husband has a friend who bought his wife's engagement ring at a pawn shop.  If I have the story right, she was on board with the idea and went along to help him pick it out.  Since then, when recounting the event, they've heard a wide range of opinions on if that is okay.  

The yeah-sayers tout it as a GREAT money-saving move.  They got a much larger ring at a much smaller price than they would otherwise have been to get.  

The nay-sayers walk away shaking their heads, jaws wide-open.  Building your future on another person's failure.  Where's the upside in that?

I'm definitely of the camp that says, "Go for it!"  My engagement ring cost about $15 from a kiosk in the mall. When I lost that one we replaced it with the same thing and when I lost that one it had been discontinued and I was out of luck.  My wedding ring is a plain gold band and it's perfectly fine.  But, one day I'm going to get myself a big flashy ring and if it can be bigger and flashier because I got it at a pawn shop, all the better for me!

Which side of the pawn shop aisle are you sitting on?

Sleepy Time

Sleep.  I absolutely love it. That has not always been the case.  Here's the journey sleep and I have taken to get us to the symbiotic relationship we enjoy today:

High School: Who sleeps when they're in high school.  I mastered the art of waking up, getting dressed, and rolling out the driveway in 5 minutes.  My sister Kathy was thankful she never had to worry about sharing the bathroom while she was getting ready.

College:  I worked graveyards doing night audit at a hotel, a good amount of overtime covering day shifts, and took 21+credits at school.  One semester my schedule required me to leave for school Friday at noon and not return home to sleep until Tuesday morning at 8AM.  I still tremble thinking of the day I pulled in my driveway after driving the 30 minutes across Des Moines but not remembering a single thing I did after clocking out and getting in my car to head for home.

Early 20's:  Most of this time I was in Alaska. In the summers I lived 2 hours away from any civilization.  With friends, I'd often work all day, drive into Fairbanks for a full night of fun, then head back home in the wee hours of the morning to make it to work the next day.  I'm 100% convinced that I ran over a human foot on one such excursion. 

Winters I lived in Fairbanks working two jobs.  On the weekend friends and I spent our time dancing until closing time at the Greyhound Lounge.  I decided it was time to catch up on my sleep the morning I got up and drove to work thinking I was going to be late for my 7AM shift.  I drove past 4 bank clocks but didn't register the time until I parked in the hotel parking lot and realized it was only 2:45AM.  I'd been asleep for a whopping 30 minutes before waking up in my panic.  

Late 20's:  Sleeping got better after I got married.  My husband and I quickly adopted a routine of not going to bed until well after midnight, but most of the time I could sleep in a little bit and still wasn't feeling like I needed a whole night's rest to fully function.

Now:  After having my second baby my body decided it would go on strike if I tried rousing it before getting 8 hours of sleep.  We could have a party if I let it have 10.  I still haven't figured out how to get in bed before midnight, but my husband is a saint who gets up with the kids and lets me sleep in the morning.  Heaven help me if he ever gets a job that requires him to be gone early.  

And that brings me to this weekend.  At 11:30pm on Saturday night my sore throat decided to explode with a pain I've never felt before.  My husband ran to the store for cold medicine.  I'm very slow to take medicine, and when I do it's usually only a half-dose, so when he gave me a full dose and I swallowed it I should have expected it to knock me out.  

That would have been a huge understatement!  I woke up at 10:30 long enough to agree I should stay home from church, and then not again until 12:50.  When my family got home from church I crawled back in bed and slept the rest of the day.  Literally.  I woke up at 7:30.  Everyone was getting into bed when I decided to start my day-still feeling a little groggy.  And then I crawled back in bed with my husband at our normal time.  

This morning I'm feeling pretty great!

A-R

In My Heart On Thursday

"Nurturing her own mind and spirit is more important to a mother's responsibilities

 than the meals she prepares for her family."

Janath Russell Cannon, Women of Covenant

Obnoxious Sales People

I spent the last 5 days working with my sister at a Holiday Mart sponsored by the Junior League of Denver.  In addition to her Etsy store and wholesale accounts, she often sets up a booth at arts/music festivals and craft shows and invites me along to help her out.  Normally a show weekend is fully of obnoxious laughter and hordes of unhealthy food and we love it!  This weekend we definitely had a lot of that, but nothing about this show was like anything I've ever experienced before. 

Brooke and I have a very personable and somewhat laid back sales style.  She believes strongly after 6 years in business that her jewelry sells itself.  Her pieces are unique and her work is beautiful.  We're very good at reading our customer and knowing if they're interested in hearing more or not.  Sometimes it's helpful to explain that everything is made out of recycled flatware, and sometimes it's better to leave that unmentioned.  Whether they see that part of the jewelry or not, she attracts a wide range of shoppers.  In the end, for Brooke it's not about making a ridiculous amount of money.  Instead it's about making sure that the people who make a purchase LOVE the piece they buy, will wear it, and will  tell their friends they love it.  

Contrast that with the aloe vera lotion booth that was located directly across the aisle from us this weekend.  They were seriously obnoxious!  4 salespeople peddling a 9 oz. jar of handcream.  The four of them stood in a line at the front edge of their booth hollering at every person passing by...

"Try it!"

"Free hand massage"

"Mine's better"

"No grease. No fragrance!"

(This was our favorite as one of the salesman was heavily accented and sounded like he was yelling, "No greasy, no pregnant!")

They were loud and they were persistent.  Once they had a shopper's hand they engaged in a literal tug-of-war until they had the customer moved from the center of the aisle to the rear of their store.  Each passer-by suckered into their space was subjected to the exact same sales pitch while having their hand or arm accosted by the saleperson's hand clenched around them.  

It was terrible for our business.  Traffic that normally would have wandered through our space were either reluctantly pulled over to the other side or running past as fast as possible with eyes pointed towards the floor and not risking the chance of making eye-contact with anyone at our end of the row.  The people who did decide to venture into our store were primarily escaping while their friend had gotten hi-jacked across the way or wanted to bad-mouth the obnoxious-ness to us.  No matter how we looked at it, it was bad for business.

At one point on our slowest day the most well-intentioned of the lotion salesman wandered over to offer us a little "sales advice."  My eyes darted to my sister in the back of the booth and I'm still not sure how she maintained her composure as he tried to tell her that he knew better how to run the business she's created and is as important to her as almost anything else in her life.  

For a lot of reasons, we were more than happy to pack up our booth and get out of the building as quick as possible after closing time.  It was the worst-managed show Brooke or I have ever worked.  But mostly we were eager to get away from our over-achieving neighbors and enjoy some much needed peace and quiet.  I will give the aloe vera lotion team credit for being professional.  They travel 52 weeks a year and do what they need to get a paycheck.  I researched their product today and it seems to have a legitimate following.  If I hadn't watched them making sales by pressuring people all weekend I probably would have been interested in trying it out.  Unfortunately, as it stands, throwing my support behind that company is not likely to ever happen...

I'm curious, what type of sales style do you best respond to?

A-N

Making Money

Back in high school I wrote out a plan whereby the world could stop using money.  If I remember right, we would all go on a honest bartering system and we would all be happy.  Sounds nice, doesn't it?  Never feeling like you're lacking or deprived as long as someone else will trade you.  I'm thinking that idea won't soon be winning the Nobel Prize for Economics.

My life seems to be constantly tied up with the stress of money.  My brain is taxed to the hilt on payday as I divide a decent amount among an overwhelming number of bills and responsibilities.  My inner self struggles daily against the temptation of shopping.  The weight of unwise credit card debt keeps us aware of our bad choices.  My husband endures a lackluster job that allows us to leave adequately well.  And we wonder how our parents raised families on considerably less.

So what are we doing?  For awhile we've been half-doing Dave Ramsey's financial program.  It worked really well in the beginning and now we've just drawn it out too long.  We do have an emergency savings but need a shot in the arm to continue getting where we need to be.  I know he always says, "Beans and rice, rice and beans" but it seems like it would take eating our food storage every night for awhile before that would get us too far ahead.

We talked recently about moving into a small cheap apartment as a way to build up extra money each month. Truthfully, that's what we've done for our whole marriage.  The place we're living now is the first place we've really loved and for the perks that come with it, we'd be sacrificing more than just shelter to move out now.  

And we've talked about getting part-time jobs.  Indeed, I started applying for seasonal jobs this afternoon.  I'm not 100% sold on the idea, but it seems like a better solution than asking my already hard-working husband to be gone from his kids even longer every day.  If I think about it long, I do start getting excited about contributing again, especially imagining my check's chunk of money disappearing our debt directly.

We will keep on keeping on, but I'm curious...

when in similar situations, what do you do?

Want more A-Z?

No Time For Lazy

Well, I'm back from an amazing vacation in New Mexico and have three days before I leave town again.  The "L" word for today is definitely "LISTS."  I have lists of bills to pay and lists of groceries to buy.  Lists of clothes to wash and lists of clothes to pack.  Lists of things to do with the kids.  Lists of foods to leave for my family to eat while I'm away and lists of foods to buy when I get where I'm going so fast food doesn't break the bank.  Here's a brief overview of the things I'm planning on squeezing into the next 72 hours...

Book a hotel room in Denver

Buy black or gray pants-SCRAPPED

Call and yell at Frontier Airlines for once again not emailing my flight confirmation

Find a baby-sitter for Thursday and Friday

Take the books back to the library before they're overdue

Pre-school during naptime including a Columbus Day activity for today

Change the calendar from September to October

Buy two new blue Books of Mormon for a new reading challenge

Buy a new journal because it always makes me feel happy when I do that

Do October's budget

Pay October's bills

Get cash from the bank for all the other things

Find slow-cooker and soup recipes since winter apparently dropped by while I was away

Costco run for milk, eggs, and bread

Grocery store so my family doesn't have to eat ramen all weekend

Wash, dry, fold, and put away the laundry

Pack to go away again

Fit in a play date-SCRAPPED

Mail a book for paperbackswap.com

Research lodges for my family Christmas reunion

Clean out the car before the milk and french fries start smelling

Plan Family Home Evening because my 4-year-old just let me know he knows that's supposed to happen today

Clean the house before my baby's development specialist comes in the morning

And, oh yeah, squeeze a bath in before nobody wants to live with me...

In My Heart On Thursday

"Curiosity is not a preparation."

-Elder Boyd K. Packer, The Holy Temple

Joy

On my new blog, Eating the Nibbly Bibs, the focus is 100% joy.  Both for my two boys and for me.  I'm working out of a fabulous book named Teaching Your Children Joy where I do a daily activity with them and then record my thoughts and observations on how it went.  

Here is a post from last week:

I'm InWhat I'm learning about parenting is this:  You have to be all in.  Children grow up whether you're intensely involved or not.  The opportunity we have is to be a part of that during the short amount of time we have with them.  And we choose the degree of intensity.

During the past four years I've had ups and downs-periods of complete attention and periods of viewing from the sidelines.  The last year I'd evaluate as fairly well checked out and the results are there to prove it.  Beck and I argue like he's a teenager.  Indeed I look at him and can see exactly what 14-year-old Beck will be.  But the good news is that that's true for the good times too!  I've noticed before, and I'm seeing it now...when I'm anxiously engaged in being mom to my two boys, they smile and laugh and want to be anxiously engaged with me.  It's a lesson worth learning, and one I'm sure I'll need to keep learning again and again.

Today's Teaching Your Children Joy activity was to "make spontaneity a high priority."  Be open to letting it happen anytime and anyplace.  It's hard to get past the point when you holler "No," or "Stop," "Sshhh!", but when you do it makes the world more interesting for both you and your child.

So try it.  Let them splash in a puddle.  Follow the direction of their pointing fingers and over-enthusiastic shouts of "LOOK!"  Clear the way and let them spin the kid cart while walking through the grocery store.  They'll be happier and you might just find yourself barefooted squishing mud between your toes.  

If you have little ones, or if you don't, I'd love to have you come on over and check it out... 

Eating the Nibbly Bibs

For earlier A-Z posts...

Yummy Yummy Ice Cream

Who on the planet doesn't love ice cream?  Or gelato, or Italian Ice, or frozen yogurt?  Well, anyways, I love ice cream enough for anyone out there who does not partake.

My favorite?  Definitely Chunky Monkey from Ben & Jerry's.

I was going to explain the inner struggle I have supporting Ben & Jerry's (loving their strong corporate culture while hating a number of their political/social stances), but, really, it's just ice cream, and I'm not strong enough to say no. 

In the end, I don't patronize their scoop shops anymore, but if my husband brings a pint home to smooth over our latest disagreement, I'm hardly going to turn down the cold and creamy treat.  Can you blame me?

Missed A-H?

In My Heart On Thursday

"We are all busy.  It's easy to find excuses for not reaching out to others, but I imagine they will sound as hollow to our Heavenly Father as the elementary school boy who gave his teacher a note asking that he be excused from school March 30th through March 34th."

-Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin

A Little Piece of Paper Defines Me

My passport has expired.  I'd lost my driver's license and was hunting for the legal documents I needed to replace it when I came across the well-worn little blue book.  I opened it up to take a mini-trip down memory lane and instantly felt a dagger of pain tear through my traveling soul.  I let out a scream and started to cry.  My husband came running to see what was the matter and then stood in a stupor fearing I'd finally completely lost my mind.  I felt like my life was over.

The truth is that my life has been changing.  I've noticed over the past few months that my travel-planning is more of an afterthought.  The dreams are constantly in my mind, but the opportunities pass and I'm left reflecting on how I let practicality or financial responsibility make the decision for me.  Where in the past I would have spent the last two months spontaneously road-tripping, the farthest I've actually been is 2 hours from home on a Sunday afternoon.  It's a numb feeling inside of me that normally would have me kicking and screaming.  Instead I'm resigning to my current reality.

Which is not to say that all is lost for me!  I've written before about the big plans my family has for traveling. That dream is still alive and well.  And to reawaken the life-breath inside of me, I'm going to share the latest rendition of our plans with you...

I recently discovered that kindergarten is not required in the state of Utah.  This is wonderful news for me!  Our little boy Beck will be old enough to start school  in September 2012, one year from now, and so that has become our target date for packing up and leaving.  Rather than loading up with notebooks and pencils, his backpack will be full of maps and traveling activities (he is adorably in love with reading maps and telling us the way).

We're going to go east first for a stay with my family in the Midwest and a chance for my husband to work and make a little more money before leaving the country.  After that the world is wide open for 9 months of traveling.  Right now we're thinking to spend a month at a time divided between cute comfortable cottage-like rentals and camping;  a temporary home-base where we can get get a feel for community, but also venture out for days at a time and see the most of what there is to see.

More details?  No, not yet.  It's still a year away.  Right now I only have one important job to complete:  Tomorrow's mail will carry my passport renewal form and photos away, along with my 18-month-old son Peyton's first application.  I remember the excitement I felt seeing Beck's photo inside his very own passport, and I know it will be a party the day our mailwoman delivers my travel freedom back to me.

I promise future posts on where we're going to go, how we'll make sure Beck gets his kindergarten education on the road, and many other travel-related topics that get me smiling.  Until then, I'd love to hear anything you have to say!

In My Heart On Thursday

-as seen this week on Blackpurl's Knitpickings

In My Heart On Thursday

"You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough.  You must want it with an inner exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world."

-Sheilah Graham