Our Journey to Our Dream

Where it all started…(Bare with me this is long, but I think it’s important to explain how we got on this journey).

My husband and I both grew up in what I call a suburb. I used to think it was “out in the country”. But it really wasn’t. Houses and subdivisions were popping up everywhere. Anyway, we slowly realized that we did not want to live in an area where there were houses and people and traffic everywhere.

Our dream was to have a house with land so we could have things like a garden, chickens and ducks and eventually larger farm animals, four wheelers for us and the kids, bonfires etc. Our dream was to have our kids grow up in nature, playing outdoors as much as possible and learning how to hunt and how to “live off the land”.

We lived on a tiny lot in the middle of town so our dream wasn’t very possible at the time. We had to figure out where to start to make this dream a reality. We worked on fixing up our first home, to get it ready to sell. We started looking for houses with at least 5 acres and they were well out of our price range in the southern part of the state where we lived. Then we came up with, (what we thought was a crazy & unrealistic) idea at the time: “Maybe we should move up north?”

We pondered that idea for at least a year and went back and forth about pros and cons of picking up our little family and moving to a part of the state where we barely know anyone. And my husband would have to start a new job and I was in the middle of Nursing school and raising two kids, etc. It sounded insane, but oddly also still felt like someone was telling us to just go for it.

So, we ended up deciding if a job opened up for my husband up there in that area we were considering to move, then he should apply for it. Then December 2017 came around, and a job had randomly opened up so he applied! January 2018 was decision making time. Should we or should we not go? So we decided to take a blind leap of faith and just give it a shot!

By February 2018, he was quitting his job that he had known so well and been at for years and years to try a whole new career. And by March 2018, he was moving North and I was staying down state to finish Nursing school and deal with showing and selling the house until we could all be up north together in May. May 14th rolls around and it was surreal, we were all packed up, moving van ready, saying goodbye to our first home, our family and our friends and moving North. Literally, driving up into the unknown.

I am not going to lie, that was scary…and I am going to be truly honest, there were many times I had panicked and felt like we made a HUGE mistake. And it was definitely a rough summer (heck it was a rough fall and winter too). It was hard on our marriage, somewhat hard on our children, (they went from sleeping very well in their own rooms, to sharing a room and now they do not go to bed well). It was hard not having any friends to hang out with and trying to make new friends as an adult has been difficult. And in the midst of all of the changes, I started to realize that I wanted to become a SAHM instead of grow my career as a nurse. So, I ended up putting Nursing school to get my RN aside, and just stick with my LPN. All of these changes created instability and fear.

But, in the midst of the fear and anxiety, and all of the unknown, I now realized God was working a miracle. I learned that sometimes taking chances, is the best way to grow as a person in the greatest ways. Taking that blind leap of faith, opened up so much room for new growth in our lives separately but also as a family. Of the many things my husband learned, he learned that he was not stuck in one career, that he could change careers and be successful at something new, and that anything is possible if you believe it and just take a chance. I learned that I can be so much more independent than I thought and that I could really step out of my comfort zone and live away from everything I had known.

So here we are, a year later (living a whole different lifestyle) and we have managed to grow so much of our dream already. We are blessed to have a wonderful home on 20 acres. Our children have so much room to play and explore the outdoors. We now have our own small business started, our Family Farm, where we have raised our own ducks and have been selling duck eggs and ducklings we hatched in an incubator. (Which, I will blog more about our Farm another day 🙂 This summer we are adding chickens to our Homestead! We’ll have 18 baby chicks coming in July. And best of all we are completing our family with baby number three coming in October!

Life is still crazy and some bits of unknown. But we are finally settling in and enjoying life up here, working on our Homestead. And moral of the story, nothing is impossible and sometimes you just need to take a blind leap of faith to grow and figure out where you need to be. Life can bring you so much more opportunities when you take chances, step out of your comfort zone, and have some Faith.

Proof, because it brought us here, to Our Dream.