John and I dream about living in the country. Having acres and acres of land, chickens, cows, no neighbors for miles. We love the quiet, we love the solitude. We especially love the lessons that our children would learn. They would learn what hard work really looks like, where food really comes from, how vast our world is, how amazing God's creations are. For now, however, this is just a dream. We live in a city. We have neighbors on every side of us, we have limited space for animals, just a lazy hounddog. We need to be here for now but I still want my children to learn all of those lessons. We are doing our best. Some of our friends and family think we are crazy, but we have made some choices so that our children can still learn those "country living" lessons.We don't have TV at our house. We have televisions, but we don't have any channels. We have to pull an antena out of storage to watch them. We want our children to find ways to fill their time without television. When we sit down for a family movie night, or a special show we want to watch it is special because we don't watch it everyday.
We grow food. I am not a great gardener, but I am a passionate one. I love getting my kids outside pulling weeds, planting seeds, and carefully nurturing those seeds to maturity. I think there are great lessons in the dirt, lessons of patience, of sweat, of creation. Wonderful things are learned from growing something.
We don't have and will never have cell phones for our children. We grew up without a phone in our pocket and they will too. Learning how to have a conversation, speaking with confidence, writing a letter, connecting to people, have been lost since cell phones came along. I want my children to speak in full sentences, not lol or rotfl.
We get up early. John is awesome at this, I am not. I am learning. He understands the peace and joy that comes from seeing the sun come up. I am waiting for that joy, haven't found it yet. If you were to walk by our house in the early hours you might see my kids running in circles in the front yard. John wakes our children before the sun to read. If they start to sleep he gets them running. He wants them to live with discipline and that means getting out of bed and getting to work. (he gets that from his dad).
We let our children run around and play. We don't sign up for tons of activities, we dont don't have tons of toys or games that require them to play a certain way. They climb the giant apple tree in the backyard, they get sticks and play knights, they build rock towers and racetracks from leaves. We make them go outside, with access to a bike and anything they can find in the yard and they play. They usually come in covered in mud or dirt, with scrapes on the knees and elbows, and pink cheeks from the sun. We have some friends that don't like to play because we are "wild". That's okay, we like wild, we like a little danger, we like adventure.
Yes, we are different, yes we are weird, but, you know, we kind of like it that way.
