The Edge [of all] Journeys

Some days it’s hard to believe we’ve been living so long in our trailer, as the days have passed so quickly. Other days, it seems like we’ve been living in it too long! We’ve been in Colorado since beginning of October and plan to stay through December. This is our longest stop so far. I think I might be getting a bit antsy, like I’m ready to pack up and get moving again. We’ve been having a great time here with family and met many wonderful new friends. We have had new business opportunities and have keeping busy with the work that has been coming in. We also have some good friends who happen to be family, coming to visit over the holidays as well. The kids are very excited about seeing them again. So am I.

We are so thankful at Father’s provision. He continues to give us what we need every day and every moment. And when I want to run away from hardships, His grace abounds and then I have the patience and understanding I need for the day. I hope I am growing while I’m here. I hope living with 2 other families and learning each other’s personalities is building my character. I hope I am being humble and sympathetic to those around me. I hope I am putting others before myself. I want to grow. It’s not easy, but I still want it. This is great training ground.

There are many blessings being here. One of the things I like most about being here is seeing the mountain range to the west. The majestic, snow covered peaks never get old and still take my breath away. I love that we get enough snow in one snow fall to go sledding and almost get snowed in. Then it warms up, the snow melts and we have more warm days and we can look forward to another new snow fall all over again. I am also enjoying the free babysitting and the many helping hands. The new family Shabbat traditions where together we welcome in the sabbath and set it apart is the weekly highlight. Thanksgiving last week was fun. We shared the meal together with many friends and family and are still eating the leftovers!

There are blessings and challenges wherever we roam. I hope I am embracing and being thankful for both.

Boom! Whoosh! Whomp! There are huge clumps of snow and icicles falling off the trailer onto the ground. It’s a bit hazardous coming and going, dodging big clumps of wet snow and icicle drippings. But it’s so warm today and the sun is hot and shining and making the white world sparkling and breathtaking. But today is a different day.

After the snow fall and cold weather all day Wednesday and Thursday, we received about 20 or more inches of snow. We enjoyed the snow but the kids got cold and wet very quickly. However, we soon remedied that with hot cocoa and a fire in the fireplace. That was the fun part. The hard part was bundling up the kids just to go the bathroom in the house. Our trailer is not hooked up to the sewer here. We have a small porta-jon, but it fills up very quickly. The other hard part is living in two places at once. Making lunch for the kids in the trailer while giving my daughter a bath and doing laundry in the house. Now today, while it’s warm, I don’t mind it a bit. Running back and forth, spending more time outside breathing in the fresh air, and getting a bit of exercise. It was the last two days that were very difficult (was it only two days? It seemed like a week). With no sun and it being so cold, it was a lot more character building. Keeping the kiddos occupied in a small space for a longer period of time and making sure they didn’t get too rambunctious in the house and cut short their house play time privilege. There are a lot of us and even when we do behave ourselves, we tend to change the sound and space dynamics of a place pretty obviously. Including us, there are 3 family units living in close proximity who all need their own space to function properly and recharge once and a while. I’m trying to be sensitive to others ‘ needs as well as our own.

That;s hardly an issue when it’s nice out, as they don’t need to spend that much time indoors. Today it was 45º F and getting warmer. After a little home schooling, my sister-in-law and I took our kids for a long walk through the snow to Whole Foods. To give them some exercise and sunshine, and to tucker them out so they would have blessed quite times this afternoon. The walk there was great and we had snacks and water in their cafe and picked up a few groceries for the weekend. The way back was a different story. The sun had melted more of the snow and it was a lot wetter than on the way there. My father-in-law had blessed us by bringing us some sleds that he had drilled holes in and attached ropes so we could use them for our tired kids on the way back. We ended up carrying them for half the way but definitely enjoyed them the rest of the way home. The kids were tired and complained of being wet and cold and having to go pee. On the way home, the sled I was pulling tipped over and Zach and all my groceries tumbled into a huge pool of melted snow. A few minutes later, my sister stepped in a big puddle and lost the whole sole of her shoe! We both burst out laughing. The tired kids, the puddles, and more mishaps along the way home could not discourage us. We were determined to enjoy the walk and knew we would be rewarded by a nice long quiet time when we got back.

And that is what I am enjoying right now. With the sun shining in through the windows and warming up our little home, all is peaceful and I am looking forward to taking the kids out again in about an hour or so. It’s been a beautiful day.

5 more days. The many weeks we’ve been here now seem a blur but every moment spent with family and friends have been so precious and meaningful. Wonderful, wonderful adventures and conversations and moments where time just stops and you step out of the picture and look upon it as an everlasting gift.

One of those moments happened today as I stood on a cobblestone walkway beside the Assiniboine river and waved to  Andrew, Bennah, Reayah, Zach, Jaiden and Grandpa as they slowly paddled down to meet me. I had left them about 2 hours before, where the river ran through Assiniboine park by the zoo and had done some grocery shopping with Joyzers before meeting up with them again at the Forks. Someone had to meet them downstream so they didn’t have to paddle all the way back again against the current. 🙂

The kids were quiet and content and a little sun burnt. They locked up the canoe, then we had a quick picnic lunch under some shade and watched a guy parkour-ing or free running. Andrew still wanted to get some work done, so we left soon after. We dropped off Grandpa back at the zoo where his truck was, then he drove back to the Forks to pick up the canoe and we went home.

It’s the perfect picture. Out our dinette window I can see the most precious thing ever. Andrew is teaching the kids how to fish. They are knee deep in mud, Joy is on Andrew’s back and everyone is enjoying the weather and the mud and hoping to catch a few bass that were washed up to the shallow water and now stuck there when the river went up considerably a couple of days ago. I am supposed to be working but wish I was out there having fun in the mud too. It’s my turn to work and his turn to play with the kids.

This morning, while Andrew got some work done at the coffee shop, I took the kids down to the river bank to play in the sand. We had finished scripture study and had a really great time of discussion. The kids were so interested and eager to learn. While we were outside immediately after, they still had that eagerness so decided to take advantage. “Okay, everyone! Time for math! Everyone grab ten stones and line them up!” I spent time with each child individually, using the rocks to do some math problems, while the others were content playing the sand. I used the Ray’s arithmetic with Reayah, using the rocks to practice addition, subtraction and the beginning understandings of multiplication and division. Bennah is a visual person and using rocks to represent groups, he was able to practice his multiplication very easily. He has learned to count by 2s,3s,4, and 5s and is now learning to count by 6s and 7s. Zach and Jaiden did simple counting and threw the rocks into the river when they were done. As I taught them, I was rejoicing at how easy this was, and prayed that I would have many more days like these :).

After lunch, the kids had some play time and then came in to do journal writing. The kids had been making up their own worship song and so I asked them to write it down as a poem. Reayah loves to write and had no trouble concentrating and filling up 3 pages in half an hour. Bennah on the hand struggles when there are many distractions around him. While we started to write, a short thunder storm started so we were all in the trailer! Including a baby who wanted attention, a tired toddler and a provocative 4 year old, who drove his truck over Bennah’s journal.  So, Bennah had a rough time and after some frustration on both our parts, he completed his assignment. I want to accommodate him so he can concentrate and do school joyously, without frustration, but I also need him to practice concentrating with distractions. He won’t always be do his work alone, away from everything. I think it’s a good skill to learn. I do want him to see that I am supportive of his struggle though, and encourage him to overcome. Writing is the hardest subject for Bennah. Not because he’s not good at it, but because it requires a different form of concentration. And sitting still!

It was a good day. We did school, we did our chores and got the trailer clean and prepared for Shabbat (Sabbath). We love Shabbat. The one day we Andrew and I can sleep in while the kids fend for themselves and run amuck!

Ahhhhh….. It feels good to be clean. Nothing like a nice hot shower in your own home. Even if it is small, the trailer is starting to feel a lot more like home. Every time we arrive somewhere we have this little family joke: “We’re home!” no matter where we are when we stop. I’m thankful for the things we sometimes take for granted: hot water, electricity, heat (especially on days like today). I enjoyed my tromps to the laundry room and back in the cold, and the family walk / run – the exercise and cold air felt so good. And so did coming back to a nice warm cozy trailer!

I am really enjoying having Andrew around every day. There have been sacrifices that we’ve had to make, and challenges adjusting to this new way of life, but it’s worth it to start and share every day together with him. I like brewing a pot of coffee for two rather than just myself. I think I could even live in a tent and eat rice and beans every day as long as we were together as a family. Of course, I say that now, not knowing how hard it would really be. Andrew gave up a really successful position at a comfortable job with an income that spoiled us a little, but the kids and I missed him.

It’s going to be nice staying put for a while so that we can relax a wee bit, visit family and friends, and have a little time to enjoy our home sweet home before we take it with us to our next adventure.

You may think this title a little ironic – aren’t we supposed to be on a Family Life adventure or something? Why need a Family Day? Well, yesterday… actually it built up to yesterday, but we’ve seen cracks forming in our children’s behavior pretty much since we got here. It just took one good, epic Walmart session to shake the cracks into chasms and inspire a good bit of frustration in all of us. By the way, I hate shopping at Walmart. I’m not sure what it is, but I almost always come out of there worked up. Maybe it’s all the people, maybe its the fact that Walmart is a pretty good poster child for the materialism that I’d just as soon escape completely, maybe it’s something else. But4 hours is more than I can take, and I can understand how it would demand more than the best behaved child’s capacity. But we had a LOT of decisions to make as we continue the Revolution of Organization in our tiny home, and that takes time.

Putting them to bed, reflecting on some of the disobedience that surfaced (and our own shortcomings as parents who are still learning patience and all that good stuff) we concluded that we needed a Family Day:

1. YHWH first – give Him the day
2. Each other second – Love > Respect > Serve each other ALL day
3. Whatever else happened to work out.

It was a great, full day. I let Renee sleep in because she almost always lets me sleep in (hey – she’s the morning person in the couple), I whipped up some semblance (impostor) version of the homemade granola she spoils us with, we had Scripture Study and prayer, then we hit the chores: Zach did dishes, Reayah cleaned everything off the floor so Bennah could vacuum, I mounted a baby bouncing seat thing in the trailer so that Renee could free her arms up a little more often (this project took a bit of improvisation since RVs typically don’t have the kind of door frames those are designed to take advantage of), Renee got the kids bunk room in order with all the Walmart supplies, then she made Fruit Salad for lunch, then I went rollerblading with Bennah (he was riding Zach’s scooter) down “the lane,” then back in the creek with everyone, then we borrowed a sprinkler for the kids to run around in and invited the friends over…

Speaking of friends… I have a theory about one thing that contributed to the meltdowns (aside from, of course, the normal difficulty of adjusting to such a big life change, which we expected and knew it would throw things off balance for a period of time). We also realized that the kids have spent a LOT of time with their friends here – which has been great. But it isn’t “normal,” and despite the fact that we are now redefining “normal” for us as a family on a daily basis, it is at the very least not good if we aren’t balancing quality family time with quality friend time. We’ve been so busy getting settled and trying to stay on top of all the things that seem like they have to get done that perhaps we were just kicking back to be a family and have fun together as deeply as we should. Perhaps up until today (and I already had a tendency to do this anyway) we were subconsciously treating family time as just one more thing that had to get done during the day so that we could get onto the next chore.

Anyway, the whole point we’re doing this is to learn how to take our own personal expression of Family to a deeper level so that YHWH’s purposes in love for others can pour out of that. Today was certainly a neat milestone on that journey. There were still issues, but we were in a new place of strength to deal with them.

…so after all that (around 4pm) when the older friends got home from school and since it was so hot – all the sprinkler running and creek wading quickly deteriorated into massive water gun battles, pond throwing, and that sort of thing. We collected our children from the fun-tangle for dinner together as a family – one thing that we DO want to guard as “normal” – and feasted outside under the awning on grilled salmon (cooked over a new grill we are trying out that is a gift if we decide we can take it with us) and grilled asparagus (from our family friend here – she cut it from their garden today). After that: family movie time and popcorn in our cool A/C’ed mini-home and then bed time. Overall, a marvelous day together.

And we really needed it too – we are basically down to ONE week before we plan to pull up anchor and get underway again. Hopefully, this has recharged us a bit, as there’s lots to get done yet. I have to finish the desk project that I’ve been working on (wait till you see this thing!), we still have to get our overall weight down (we’re going to jettison the bedroom doors at least – replace them with curtains, ditch the blinds in the kids room – they just kick them all night in their sleep anyway, and anything else we can eliminate), replace the fresh water pump with a quieter model and keep the current one as a backup, make our reservations at campgrounds in Winnipeg and Oregon for the next few months, etc. etc. I could go on and on.

But I actually have to go take care of all that kind of stuff now… Some REALLY cool show-and-tell posts in the pipeline though… just taking longer to finish the projects that will inspire the posts. Renee and I are also trying to get $$$ work done somewhere in this all. This is really a lot of challenging fun!