Decisions, decisions.....

Over the last few weeks, we have made some difficult decisions involving our farm and our lives.  We have decided to sell the farm and hit the road.  We have realized that we work too hard to sustain our lifestyle and we are sacrificing our family time in order to do what we do.  We have always talked about traveling and figured why wait?  Why wait until we're 65+ years old when we can do it now?

We have already started selling some of our "stuff"... of which we have a LOT of.  We are constantly looking at our options and realizing that we have more available to us when we think outside the box....freeing ourselves from the societal "norms" that define what we're supposed to be doing.  Our dream has always been to return to Alaska and now this dream could become a reality... just with a slight road trip on our way there. :)

What does this mean for this blog?  I plan to keep writing (I have to maintain my sanity somehow - haha!), but the focus will be more on our travels and our family and of home-schooling.  Over the next few months, I'll try to keep it updated but cannot promise anything.  There's a lot going on here - selling of animals and belongings - so I'll do the best I can.

Wonderful days

After a wonderful visit yesterday with family that I haven't seen in years, I was on cloud nine.  Our boys don't have friends and there aren't any boys around us that are their ages so you can imagine how happy I was to have my aunt and cousin and her family come to visit.  Two of her children are roughly my boys' age and they played so well together!  It wasn't like going to the playground and watching my kids get pushed around by the other kids for being different - it was pure fun... the way kids are supposed to play.  I was able to show my family our farm and do one of my favorite things - cook for them.  I'm sorry, I must pat myself on the back a little here, but I am a pretty good cook.  And I love to do it.  Sure sometimes, usually when I'm cooking for other people, things don't turn out just the way I wanted but every time is a learning experience and I get better with each mistake.  We had roasted chicken (that we raised and butchered ourselves), potato salad (using potatoes, chives, and parsley from our garden and my homemade mayo), a salad (sadly I had to buy the ingredients as we didn't have any in the garden yet - but I bought them at the local farmer's market), homemade apple pie (using apple pie filling that I made from our apples and canned myself.  The crust was made using lard from our pigs.) and homemade ice cream (using raw cow's milk and eggs - from our hens of course).  Everything tasted fabulous!

Then today, Tyler volunteered to get the mail.  He ran back into the house, practically jumping with joy, and exclaimed, "It says 'Tyler Dickson'!"  Sure enough he had received a package.  (My children have inherited my love of the postal service - we all love to get mail/packages.)  To backtrack: I  recently reconnected with an acquaintance from high school on Facebook (it's been 17 years).  After previewing my profile and subsequently seeing my blog, she sent me a message saying how excited her husband was to find someone else who shares a passion for electric poles. (giggle)  She mentioned that her husband was probably somewhere on the spectrum and after reading about Tyler's obsession, he wanted to send him a book.  That was what arrived today.  Upon opening it, he did not react like most children would at the sight of a book, he was intrigued and curious.  I tried to explain it and show him a few pages but after seeing a couple of the pictures, he took the book and set about to reading.  I gave him a couple of minutes before I went looking for  him and I found him like this:

He was actually reading!  He has never shown so much interest in a book!  And here it was, a book about something that he is fascinated with, and he was sounding out words and reading on his own.  This lasted maybe 20-30 minutes but that is infinitely more than he's done before.  I was almost in tears!  Who knew that clicking a simple "Add Friend" button would lead to that?

A time for change.......

Things are always changing around here.  I know my last post was almost a year ago *embarrassed* - I can't believe it's been that long.  When I left off, the workload was picking up and I simply didn't have the energy at the end of the day.  I can't make any promises for the future, but I'll try to do better.

So much has happened in the last year, I'm not really sure where to start.  Let's see: