Maybe my New Years resolution should be to write more. Like the title said, it's been awhile! I really do want to write more, but writing is hard. It's really hard to put your thoughts out in the world and feel like they are completely lost, unimportant, or criticized. Just putting myself out there in any situation feels hard. I am naturally a very independent, introspective, quiet type.
I thought it might be a good time to catch up with everyone, being the new year. As you know I have four kids. They are all still alive and well. They currently have four bottle calves they are raising. The hubby and I hope this will teach them a good work ethic, and realization that farm animals needs come before our own comfort. Rain, shine, ice, or snow, they need fed twice a day.
The older two get it. Maggie, number three, who is four, is still learning.
2015 saw us purchase a house. A very expansive, big house, that needs work. It seemed like the perfect opportunity at the time.
Obviously we are impulsive. We have four unplanned offspring.
The house is great, we both love it, despite my almost daily Dave Ramsey lecture I hear in my head. Its hard to reconcile my wish to live debt free, and the reality I married a farmer. For those of you unfamiliar to farming, Lots of $$$$$ owed + high risk = farming. Its a fun paradigm to live out. It teaches you to enjoy today, because tomorrow you could be broke with no house. Exciting times.
I joke about farming, and debt. I deal with jealousy a lot though. When I hear of people being debt free, or having a great stable good paying job, my heart yearns for that. I want that. Why didn't I marry a doctor again?
I have had to learn to let go of the things I don't have and be happy with what I do have. My kids literally get to grow up living a lifestyle less that 1% of the population understands. They get to see new born baby calves, see the crops as they are being planted, grazed and harvested. They get to play on dirt mounds with nothing but sticks for toys. They get to witness the brutality and beauty of nature and the lives of animals. Hopefully this will teach to have tender hearts but not a bleeding heart. It will show them the suffering and beauty that is all tied up together. These will be concrete images to them, not abstract ideas.
They will know hard work, learned not from the long hours they spent at day care as their parents worked, but by the long hors they spent alongside their parents; working, talking, learning.
I guess it is all a tradeoff.
We have also been remodeling rent houses. It is a learning experience. My extensive HGTV and DIY network addiction has come in handy though. The guys were asking me on tips to hang cabinets. I have much more on this experience, but that is another post. Remodeling and house design really highlights the difference in the two sexes.
Well, there has been lots else going on, so I will have to put all that in another post! So stayed tuned. My life is riveting!
