about our family plans

Just a little more upbeat about our family plans...  we admit that we loved Seattle, but felt unsettled when we were out west because although it was really wonderful in so many ways, it was missing something and we had to find and fill that hole.  Houston was just a halfway house on our journey to find and fill the hole that kept us from feeling settled.  Well here we are in Saint Paul Minnesota again.  We've come full circle, becoming a little more desperate in our financial needs with each leg of our journey, but here we feel settled.  Let me say it again, we found our hole.  We are working hard to fill it up and live the "perfect" life.  Here in our new home in the city we feel grounded and happy and settled. 

We still need jobs and we still need to work on the marital bliss and the kid/adult balancing act of life... but we don't have nagging questions about what we are going to do when we grow up or where we are going to live.  We are grown up, we live here and we plan to stay here.  We are going to raise our children and do the best that we can to grow an urban farm in our urban yard and provide for our family. 

It's nice to be home.

I'm OK

I have been feeling down for quite awhile.  I've been feeling a bit like a failure or a loser or just like I'm not good enough... I don't need anyone to either affirm or negate those feelings.  Those feelings are my own about myself and I am simply writing myself to remind me next time I am feeling down: I'm OK, I make choices, and I do the best I can.

It doesn't matter that I don't have a job and may never make good money again... I made the choice to stay  home with my family and give up the koosh job and that was courageous. 

It doesn't matter that I feel totally out of the loop in the world and don't devote the time that others think I should in getting out of the house and away or even just reading the news.  I may be sad and feel down about this part, but it will only be a few years that my children are so young and needy and at every step I am making transitions and getting more and more connected with the outer world again. 

Sometimes I feel like a loser because I have had to ask for so much help over the past year and a half and I have always struggled with the need to be independent and self supporting.  Well, this is a growth opportunity for me to show me its ok to ask for help some times and I am reminding myself right now that I can get back on my feet and that help won't be needed forever. 

I admit, I still feel down about myself, but running through my head is the song from my father daughter dance at my handfasting reception... "I hope you dance" and you know what, I think that I have been.  I'm not sitting aside at my koosh job living the normally prescribed easy road, I am fighting tooth and nail to live a life defined by me and to find the path right for me.  So screw those down feelings.  I'm dancing. 

On the other side of the mountain?

Marriage, especially post kids, can be very stressful, but I try my best to enjoy these little moments where we are happy.  Thom and I are really pretty good at trying to communicate at least, even if we are not getting our message across very well.  I guess I'm saying that although we both have difficult personalities, I am proud that we are both trying so hard to find a way to peacefully coexist as a team and really let marriage after kids become enjoyable again. 

News and our first reevaluation

After the last post we found out that our new bundle of joy is not one baby, but two!  We are still unsure of what it all means and how this will change where we thought our lives were headed, but we know that we have to start over on our questions from a new perspective. 

For instance, we are pretty sure that with three kids in tow we would not be able to trade much labor for food and shelter at a farm.  Too many passengers!  And we are thinking that we might need more family help in the first few years of the twins life so we are pretty sure that we will be close to family for at least a few more years.

We are still not sure of all the life changes we need to be ready for... we are just ready to be open to new ideas and still try to find happiness together.

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one year in Houston

So to recap, we lived in Seattle for nine years and Thom and I loved it.  But the entire time we were there we questioned whether we should be moving closer to family, moving to a farm and where... where to end up.  By fall of '08 we were disgruntled with our indecision.  I was unhapy working long days out of the house and never getting to take care of Turi myself.  Thom was disgruntle with the runaround he was receiving from the county when he had worked there for more than two years, yet never made a full employee that could count on a job. We were both unhappy with our condo even though we loved the neighborhood and location.  And, we had never found answers to our original questions that we had been asking for years... how close to family and to farm or not to farm and where.

Ready for a change and just wanting something drastic to get us to answer our own questions we decided to uproot ourselves and Turi and move to Houston for a three-year house-sitting agreement with my parents while they are out of country.

Well, this past year has certainly been enlightening.  I know we still don't have our questions answered, but we learned a lot about ourselves and a lot about what we want.  We suffered many stresses and bad luck including unemployment for five months, the loss of our cat, very low income once Thom found a job, a miscarriage, the loss of our new car, and debilitating sickness for more than five months of the last year.  We've also had many blessings in new friends, time with Turi, a month at the beach, and time with a lot of other family that would not have been possible had we remained working in Washington.With adjustments to new weather and a new culture here in Houston we have had a busy year in Houston.


This year I have learned that I have been leaving a lot of our decisions unanswered because of fear.  I put so much stress on getting things just right that I am afraid that if I commit to being a farmer it won't be right for me but that I already committed, that if I never commit that it will be a dream left unfullfilled (that I already told everyone in the world about), and that it we try, and we like it but we make all the wrong decisions we will just be big fat stressed out failures.  I decided to start small and practical and answer little questions that can lead up to the big question...
1. with a not so perfect backyard here, can I commit to and succeed at a vegetable garden.  How much can I grow?
2. In a new culture that is not ideal (not a lot of environmentalist pagans around here) can I branch out and make lasting connections because I will need to be more able to socialize with fewer and fewer people where we live if we move away from the city. 
3. can I commit to being happy with my life at the moment and try harder to enjoy every day for what it is and not just yearn for the perfect life that may exist out there someday (though it probably doesn't)

So that is where I am starting this year and I think that our next step once we pull up our heals here is to trade our labor for food and shelter on an organic farm somewhere so we can try the life that someone else built first hand.  We did this some while studying in Costa Rica, but we would like to concentrate on the farming aspect more and less on the forest studies. 

After that, I'm sure that we will have built up many new thoughts and opinions and answers and of course, many new questions.  I can not answer the questions my family and friends have been asking for years - Where are we going to end up? But, so far, I think even with all the hardship this past year, Houston was the right move for us.  We needed to shake up our lives in order to reevaluate. 

We move into this new year with hope.  We are through with the move.  We have a new bundle of baby on the way.  Thom is really enjoying riding to work rather than driving.  We have adjusted to our new income level.  And we are starting to get answers about the things that have made me so sick over the past year. 

Hope everyone out there is enjoying theirr life each day!

Terrible poster...

Well, we lost the baby just a week or two after the last posting, and I am just really bad at posting.  Don't have much to say tonight, just saying, I'm still here...