How did we get here?! Seriously.

My husband, Ryan, and I have never been complicated people.  We like to be together and we've generally arranged our lives so that being together is possible and likely.  We've made many decisions over the years that have been difficult, but our underlying value is that we decided to be a family and that means that we need to create time to enjoy our own company. 

Many of our previous moves have been so that we could afford for me to stay home with our kids, either because of a particular job or an affordable house in a good location.  In the past, we've consciously lowered our expenses by turning off the cable or cutting back on the amount of driving we've been doing.  We've sold vehicles because they're low mileage as the price of gas went up.  And we chose the location of our house for my husband's previous job so that we could all be home together as much as possible. 

When we moved into this house, I was homeschooling our kids.  We lead a really simple life, staying at home or in our neighborhood most of the time.  We usually had one big outing a week to go to our homeschooling co-op, which I think I enjoyed and needed as much as they did!  Our homeschool co-op was about 50 minutes away from where we lived (ironically, close to where we're moving), but living so far away meant that we were out of the middle of the chaos of the city.  This is the way we liked it.  We could keep things simple, spend our time cooking together, and enjoying each others company.  And Ryan was home as much as possible, so that he could enjoy being with the kids, too.  I guess that's one of the reasons Ryan has always gravitated toward education as a profession.  The hours and the time off are much more family-friendly than most jobs. 

Ryan had been in education for over a decade with a three year divergent career in engine sales.  Like for cars and trucks.  He was very good at selling re-manufactured engines and transmissions, earning the rookie of the year designation, a trip to the Bahamas for his area team, and some nice bonuses that aren't part of the education world.  But he was gone a lot.  He was working 12-14 hour days and then traveled for one entire week a month.  I was home with the kids full time, including our newborn son, Josh.  Eventually, he realized his heart was in education and he set out to find a way to be able to afford to feed our family AND contribute to the world in a positive way.  Ryan decided to pursue his masters in Ed Leadership to eventually become a principal at an elementary or middle school.  We thought that this job would give us the financial security we needed and hours that were compatible with our family life.  We also thought this job would be a good fit for his skills, talents, and interests.

We knew that he could get an Assistant Principal job anywhere in the county we were living in, so we decided it would be best to choose a central location when we started looking for a house.  Since we were homeschooling, schools didn't matter and I didn't even look at them.

We found "the perfect" house in a quiet neighborhood on a cul-de-sac street, just like we had wanted.  It was our dream house with a huge expanse of nature preserve in the backyard with nearly 18,000 acres of woods and rivers to explore.  Yes, this was my man's dream come true.  And all three of the men in my life explored those woods!  Like the first pioneers, they hacked trails with a machete (before eventually surrendering to modern technology, using a chain saw).  They even eventually figured out how to cross the river without the help of a bridge, just as the first explorers would have done hundreds of years ago in the native Florida swamps.  My kids know what to do if (when) they see a rattlesnake and my youngest son spent hours on a swing hung from a 200 year old tree at the edge of the woods. My 7 year old also knows what a cypress knee is and what a cypress swamp looks like in a rainy season and dry season.

I know that if our lives had continued on in this direction, things would have been great.  What a life, right?

However, when my husband got his job as an Assistant Principal, he didn't like it.  Let me say that another way- he really enjoyed certain aspects of his job, but it wasn't turning out to be a good fit for him overall.  Perhaps he is too progressive for our schools right now and maybe he was seeing that the schools he was at really didn't have the best interests of kids at heart and that's what he is all about.  Add to that the long hours, a grumpy disposition, and lack of energy for anything other than his job and it soon became clear that he needed another job.  Stat.

In the meantime, I had started driving my kids to the Suncoast Waldorf School about 50 minutes away from our home.  Being in public education, my husband thought that they should be going to public school.  When that option wasn't working for our kids, he reluctantly agreed for me to take them to this private school I had found.  I knew Waldorf and had actually been studying it for years, and even homeschooled using a Waldorf curriculum.  When Ryan would share his tales of woe about the public schools, for years I had been saying, "You know what they do about that in Waldorf schools?"  Honestly, I don't think he heard much of what I said, but he let me take them anyway.  Since they were in different counties and the vacation time often didn't line up, on his time off from work he would go down and volunteer at the school. The longer he was there, the more it grew on him.  I had been saying for years that he is, at his core, a Waldorf teacher.  But he had never given it much thought until he really started spending time at the school.

One day we were talking and I asked him what he would do if he didn't have to worry about making money.  He thought for a minute and then replied, "I'd go volunteer at the Waldorf School."  Pause.  Me: "Honey, I think they'd pay you to work there.  Why not explore that option?"  And so he did and within a month or so, he was hired.

This was GREAT!  This was beyond my wildest dreams!  He had always wanted his kids to go to the same school he worked at.  In fact, when Zack, our now 12 year old, came home from the hospital, one of the first dreams Ryan shared with me regarding Zack was seeing him with his little backpack, hand in hand, going off to work and school together.  This meant that he would finally have that dream realized.

But that also meant that he was going to be working 36 miles away from home.  It meant a long commute, long days for all of them, and a lot more complication than I really wanted in our lives.  But he wasn't ready to move.  And maybe that was wise.  Perhaps he needed to try it out and see if he enjoyed teaching there.  We could wait to see how this unfolded.

So here we are, nearing the end of March, seven months into spending at least 10 hours in the car each week, being away from home most of the time, and we're finally on our way!  Today we get the key to our new house and we start this next phase of our latest adventure!  I'm going to be exploring ways to make our lives simpler, less chaotic and stressful, so that we can spend more time together enjoying each other.  Maybe you'll get some ideas you'd like to try, too, as we move through our journey together.

Why give up what we have?  Because people are more important than things.  Because my kids don't need to be traveling 75 miles per day.  Because time is precious.  We're giving up a lot according to the material culture we live in, but we're gaining something worth more than any "thing" in the world- we're investing fully in our family.  I don't know exactly what tomorrow will hold, but I know that our priorities are in the right place for us.


As I close, a Ferris Bueller quote comes to mind: "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Here's to stopping and looking around!