Nostalgia and Guilt

It is this time of year that undoubtedly makes me nostalgic for my elementary school years. I think of the warm, inviting classrooms that were decorated with each season and holiday. My teachers were kind and patient, they made me feel special. I remember the smells: construction paper, glue, crayons, freshly sharpened pencils. The cafeteria.
Story time at the library. The innocence of childhood. Can I just live at the elementary school?

And here I am, homeschooling my own kiddos. My heart mourns that they aren't experiencing what I did. How can they make life-long friends and memories of shenanigans? But then my heart rejoices because I can shelter them a little longer from the bullies. From those girls who sought to make your life miserble when all you wanted was to fit in and be liked by a certain boy. (Some of those girls may be reading this now. Yes, I'm talking about you. You are forgiven.)
Or boys who made fun of you if you weren't athletic enough or were sensitive. Kyle and I bear many scars still today from elementary school.

There are days that I question our decisions in raising our kids. Sometimes I get impatient with Caed as we work on reading or impatient with Quinn because she doesn't even try to color in the lines when she's racing to get her work done. I feel incompetent when I don't incorporate enough art or activities into my Kindergartner's day. Or if I don't know the funny little songs to help remember the days of the week. I don't even have my degree.

But what I can give my kids is my best. They have a fun-loving mom who would rather go play than clean house. Knowing that they are smart, and I can't mess them up too much. I was once talking with a friend whom I secretly looked up to as a mom and she was also homeschooled. I asked her about her thoughts on the "Your Baby Can Read" program. She just shrugged and said, "I just let my kids be kids." Meaning not forcing them to grow up too soon. They will get there eventually.

Also, my kids learn about life and work. For a couple years we had a morning paper route. On Sundays, the biggest day, we would take the kids with us. We called it family paper route day. They still talk about it. We would bundle them in their blankets early in the morning and set them up with a sippy cup of milk and cup of cereal and off we would go listening to worship music and watching the sun rise.

To this day I take them with me when I haul weekly ads to Rapid City. They enjoy helping me unload and we try to see how fast we can get done before the train comes. Kyle will take a kid with him to go feed cows or just to ride in the tractor. We teach them to work. Before we had kids we wanted jobs that allowed us maximum family time. That is why we both decided to be teachers. We didn't care about income. But God had other plans for us.

I am pretty active about getting together with my friends who have kids that my kids enjoy being around. And I can also get to know their kids. I often get asked, "So, you homeschool. What about socialization?"  Eye roll. My kids will go up to any child at a park, no matter the age, introduce themselves and start playing. Caed saw a kid that was about ten years old wearing black leather gloves pretending to be a ninja. He introduced himself, said he had a hunting dog named Tank and asked if the kid could show him how to do the monkey bars.
They love conversing with adults! All of our hunters that come up will be asked to play tag at some point or will get their toes tickled when dozing. A recent guest, a surgeon, commented on Caed's maturity, perceptiveness and memory being far above his chronological age.
 They are more socialized than I am! If I bump into a person, whom I am friends with on Facebook but rarely see in real life, I'm awkward. I don't know how to act. I don't want to say 'Hi.' I've been defriended, probably, because of this. Sorry if I have done this to you.

And finally, by homeschooling. I can give my kids a solid biblical foundation. Not the skewed morals and good intentionsof the world. That our Faith is in Jesus Christ, not mankind. That God knew us before we were born. He knit us in our Mother's womb. He gave us our quirks, passions, personality and looks for a reason. We are not a mistake. And He loves us. If I had had this character-building foundation in my home as a kid I may have faired better against enemies and hardships as an adult.

In the end, I love learning. And at the very least, I hope to pass that love on to my kids.

Home, home on the.....farm??

It has been about a month since we have been in Canada with a short trip home thrown in there. The first couple weeks went by fast. Our hunters so far have been pretty great and gracious. It is fun building relationships with people! One man even gave the kids a small tip for walking his dog, Winnie, every evening.
We are in our camper but are using a bunk house on a farm to house hunters and prepare meals. Its quite the juggle with homeschooling kids, cleaning the rooms and preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The kids absolutely love it up here. The farms are beautiful. All houses are surrounded by tree rows. This farm in particular even has an apple orchard. The kids love playing with the daughters of the farmer who are close in age. Kind of like built-in child care when I need time to cook dinner! Everyone here is so laid back and non-chalant. So far it has been pretty relaxed and sometimes I find myself quite bored. I had left a box of books in our storage unit because I didn't think I would have time to read. Booo.

The weather has been cold, rainy, and at some point we got a few inches of snow. We remain snug and cozy in the camper, however. So far, I love how fast it takes to pick up such a small space. Even the kids mentioned that it doesn't take as long. Which means less yelling from me. Imagine that.

Eventually I will add interior pictures but right now everyone is nappping and I am in desperate need of a shower. 'Til next time!

Home Sweet Home

"Okay. We are doing this. Breathe. Don't look at the loan papers. Or your bank account. Ignorance is bliss....except for the one time you ran out of birth control and thought everything would be okay."

My mind often has interesting trains of thought that I rarely speak out loud. I amuse myself if no one else. I'm at the bank wiring money to the guy in Canada that we are buying our 31 foot camper with 4 slides and an outdoor kitchen from. Because I am impractical, that's why.

The next day we leave for Calgary, Alberta to pick up this beauty.

It has the space that we need for the kids but most importantly it is built to be used in all four seasons. Because of this, it's rare. And the exchange rate in Canada is awesoooome. One of the many reasons I heart Canada.

The plan is to leave it at our base-camp in Saskatchewan for when we go up there to guide hunts in the fall and then haul it back to South Dakota when our season ends. We have our camp ground picked out and there is already a full-time rv-ing family staying there.

We are a little different that full- time rv-ers because we are not travelling. We still have our jobs in South Dakota to pay our regular bills. Maybe one day we can be tumble weeds and travel. Maybe. But for now, let's see if I survive a year.

Where do I start?

"Better a house with dry bread and peace than a house with feasting and strife. Proverbs 17:1"

This is our family's verse. It is our mantra, if you will. I suppose I shall start from the beginning. But that is difficult to define. What is the beginning? My wedding day? The day I had my first baby? The day I decided that I no longer want to work because being home with my babies was more important than making $32,000/year? Actually, it wasn't even that after taxes.

Or was it the day that something in me snapped when I was tired of trying to keep up with the Jones' and killing ourselves just to make the rent payment. Yes, RENT. You see, in short, we sold our home and our comfy cracker-box lifestyle to pursue an adventure. A great opportunity was presented to us. But it required a major step of faith, a healthy dose of humility, and for us to put all of our eggs into one basket. We purchased a business to guide upland bird and water fowl hunting in Saskatchewan. And it had been the hardest almost two years of my life. But the possibilities were too much to pass up! Our path was in sight! Almost.

I always thought that the next chapter of our lives would be better than the last. Isn't that the American dream? To prosper quickly  in order to achieve the same standard of living that our parents are enjoying in their pre- retirement years? Only now, that goal is to achieve this by the time we are thirty. And boy does it hurt when you see friends your age glide so gracefully into that lifestyle. And you feel slightly comforted when friends your age share the same struggles that you have.

I love the movie Cheaper by the Dozen.
I realize that this is not reality; but to me, it is. In the opening sequence of the film Bonnie Hunt's voice explains that twelve was the number of times per year they empty their bank account. How many of you can relate to that? I know I can. The warm fuzzies that I get from the movie is that sometimes life is happier when it's simple. This family found that with the higher-paying job came more stress and lack of quality time. Sure, they had the big house with clean walls and new furniture. A bigger bank account. But it wasn't worth the added stress on the family.

This is where I found myself. The big new job promised a big income with a bigger house. And I hated it. Keeping up with appearances was enough to drive me insane. I'm speaking of the cleaning. I will post more on that, later. But with husband working 50+ hours per week I was Parent Numero Uno and I'm not speaking of an achievement. By the end of the day I would look around the house where our children ages six, four and two play and I simply could not muster the energy to pick up. To clean that one last dish. To mate one more pair of socks. To vacuum the yellow lab hair that carpeted the wood floors. The millions of toys that my kids drug out because I'm working; distracted by cleaning and organizing our massive amount of crap. Stuff. I meant stuff. Or picking up the box of Lego's only to have the two-year-old dump it out again.

 Defeat. I felt defeated. I felt that I was failing because I couldn't live up to the standard of those that I look up to. However, my kids weren't suffering because the mirror had water splatters on it or because the base boards were dusty. They were suffering because I wasn't with them emotionally. This is not the mom I planned to be. I'm a free spirit who prioritizes fun and activity before monotonous house work. But every where I turned I was not confirmed in my outlook.

Another breaking point: finances. Running your own business means paying yourselves beans while you take care of upfront costs and business-y bills that don't stop coming. And then rent. Nothing like throwing money away every month than renting. I can understand the short-term need, but long-term doesn't go without repercussions. I felt like we were just spinning our wheels.

Until, one day, when we were visiting with some friends of ours that had recently celebrated being 100% debt-free. They sold their home and bought a 900 square foot trailer. They pared down their lives. The peace on my friend's face was wonderful. She didn't have to worry about job insecurity. She wasn't bothered by worldly possessions or appearances. They lived simply and were happier for it. I made a decision. I was done with all of it. That night I told Kyle to start looking for a trailer. My pride be damned! We had always loved the idea of tiny houses or full-time rv-ing. I'm not sure, really, how we came to the final decision but a month later and a twenty minute phone-call to the bank and we were pre-approved to buy a camper. TO LIVE IN. Full-time. My mother was not impressed. But all of our friends were rooting us on! I so badly wanted out of this rental house. I wanted to not be surrounded by clutter and mess and constant cleaning. I wanted to stop struggling just to pay someone else's mortgage!

I didn't want to stand before God at the end of my life and say, "I know I didn't pay much attention to my kids, but hey, I was a wicked-awesome house-keeper!" This isn't for forever.  I often have to hold Kyle back when it comes to adventure and simple living. If it were up to him we would be living off of the land and raising our own food. I'm not that hard-core!

Eventually, I will want the house, the yard, the responsibility. But for right now, I don't want it. I want to be different, and what better time to do that than right now when our kids are little and love the adventure?

Well, thanks for reading this ridiculously long post that contains undeveloped thoughts and maybe doesn't make sense. Right now I'm just abiding.