This is the first day without fevers, and we’re beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Except for the nursing baby, the whole house has been weeping and wailing and coughing and sneezing. We survived but don’t sneeze sideways within a mile of our house please. The flu made a hard situation harder. Adjusting to a new baby is difficult; I’m not a smiling homeschool magazine mom. I don’t know where other people get their babies, but ours don’t sleep. That’s how we know our babies weren’t switched at the hospital. Plus, they all have reflux. It’s in the genes.

I was inclined to complain (because I am that sort). This was Greg’s vacation and we spent it spooning liquid Tylenol to our kids. If I were still thinking about those mommy wars and trying to live up to artificial impossible standards, I would’ve created an Excel spreadsheet with the doses, times, and amounts of cough syrup and alternating ibuprofen cycles. Too, I would’ve used the Sanitize cycle instead of the Quick Wash. Instead, I just asked, “Is it time for your dose?” and when they moaned, “Nooooooo” I just told them to stop wailing and open up. I’m practical, not perfect.

In other news, we signed a contract for work to begin on our farmhouse. We hope the work will begin in the next month, and we’re told that it’ll take about two months to complete. (So, make that four months, right?) It is a former Amish home, so we are adding electricity, plumbing, heating, bathrooms, a kitchen, and a laundry room. Just a few minor things. We’re also finishing the basement so that I have a place to lock up the children while I watch soaps. (That was a joke. I don’t watch soaps.) Basically, we just have a shell of a house. There are walls up, but we are moving a couple of those too.

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This is what the inside looks like. There is drywall but no finishing work.

The whole “moving to the farm thing” is so close I can almost taste it. Greg and I ordered faucets and light fixtures yesterday, so it seems closer. These are happy days for our family (if you ignore the non-sleeping parts), the culmination of many years of hard work and planning. As lame as it sounds, this is our dream and it’s becoming a reality. I imagine it’ll be somewhat like Christmas afternoon, a little bit disappointing as the hype proves bigger than the dream itself. Overall, though, I like to think that the berries will grow and that the grass will be green. But we know that this world is not our home. We’re not looking for something to make us happy, so in that respect, I think it might be a good thing since our expectations are somewhat realistic.

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Notice how big an Amish closet is.

We’ve been scrimping, saving, investing, and working long hours so that we could change the course our lives are on and it’s almost here. We decided a few years ago that we were tired of the rat race—working 60+ hours a week for some big company, Greg traveling all the time, me on the edge of burnout from juggling babies and toddlers alone everyday. There was an especially tiring year wherein Greg gave all his time to the company, and we hauled our family out to California for seven months to squeeze into an eight hundred square foot apartment with no yard. I sat alone on our anniversary, Valentine’s Day, my birthday, and Mother’s Day while he busted his rear for the big guys. They owned him and we didn’t even get a Christmas card. When tax time came, I took one look at the bottom line and cried. It just wasn’t worth it.

We decided that we’d live simpler lives—no big vacations, a modest house–so that Greg didn’t have to spend all his waking hours at the jobsite. I know some people don’t have the luxury of these decisions, but we did and didn’t want to waste it. When we move to the farm, Greg will say “goodbye” to the big company and do contract work (via telecommuting) for his cousin’s small engineering firm. This job is Providential in so many ways; we thank God for it. But reducing our income so substantially wouldn’t be possible if we hadn’t planned for that day and lived well below our means in order to get there. (We even saved $50 a month back in those $318/week days.) There is no secret inheritance, just old-fashioned saving and frugality.

If I sound overly passionate about these sorts of things, it’s unintentional. If I had the time or inclination, I’d maintain a blog on personal finance or real estate, my two closet passions –after luxurious seed catalog pictures. Cindy didn’t know that I swiped this quote from a blog comment of hers, but I hope she doesn’t mind my sharing it out of context here. It is priceless because of its fluidness and candor. I’m including it here because it is a good reminder to think on those important, eternal things. I am prone to bandwagons and majoring on the minors. I am not always passionate about Jesus as I am about pet issues. I can get lost in the paint colors and forget that we’re really building a home.

Say that you rail and your rail with your children about all kinds of things: drugs and rock music and Christian music and weak Christianity and sugar and white bread and recycling and ‘those’ people and bad literature and mud on their boots and dirty houses and vaccinations and feeding babies and chocolate and vitamins and natural childbirth, how will your children know which of these things is really important? Maybe one day they find out that some Christians eat sugar and they are nice lovely people who truly love the Lord but from hearing you day in and day out he thought that anyone who ate sugar had a free ticket to hell. Now every single thing you have tried to teach your child ever has been undermined by your passionate intensity.