Antsy

It's Sunday. We've worked the past couple days at outdoor festivals, so maybe it's the heat talking, but...we are SO done here! Our apartment is so small. So small that there's not enough room to change our minds. But seriously, folks, we've outgrown the space, and the neighborhood (of this sixteen unit building) is going downhill. Beer is a staple and it's an expectation to smell weed if you take a walk outside at night...sometimes during the day. I'm not against hanging out with a few friends, or partying, even. It just shouldn't be your everyday goal in life. And these people are not college kids - they're semi-employed adults with kids. Some days I pick up the trash on the grounds because I want the place where we live to look nice, at least. Some days I pass by and refuse to pick up the trash that these people so disrespectfully leave in the yard (and are teaching their kids, by the way, that this is ok). A lot of them hang out together, so they feed each others habits and validate their lifestyles together. Time to move on. The BIG question is: Where???

I am now a graduate and ready to work. Shelby has an awesome (let me repeat: AWESOME!) job that has great benefits while she saves the planet. There's chance of relocation and, even if she doesn't move to a different territory/position, her territory is big enough for us to move around in. We want a farm. A yard. Chickens. A BIG garden. Space. Goats. Land. We want to be able to drink coffee on the porch in the morning and have drinks on the deck, with friends, by a fire at night. We want to live in a barn and have room to run around...inside. So ready. SO ready! We feel it - we've had this feeling before. We're on the brink of something big. We're starting to pack because, no matter what, we're moving somewhere. But it's more than that. We feel we're being prepped for the next big stage in our lives.We're in motion, we're getting ready, and we're antsy. It's frustrating to not know where we're going, but we know that we're going somewhere, and we trust the winds of destiny. I feel better writing about it. I'll feel better once we clear some stuff out to storage and have a little more room to move, which seems a little overwhelming at the moment.

We're going to visit Chittenango, NY next week. It will be the first time in several years that we've been to Shelby's hometown, and we're all very excited about it. Upstate New York is beautiful, especially at this time of the year, and we'll also be visiting friends and family that we haven't seen for awhile. We'll definitely stop by Eddie's Restaurant and Chittenango Falls, and probably Turning Stone Casino (right, Shelby?). It will be a fun vacation and a nice distraction from our here life for a moment. I doubt I'll be writing before then unless there's breaking news, so I will update this blog after our NY vaca :)

Back to the apartment...

This is the first morning since before Memorial Day that we've woken up at the apartment. It's amazing how much stuff we accumulated at the in-laws house since we began our stay there! So, over Monday and Tuesday (yesterday), we brought back our stuff and de-Roberts their house :) Two busy days of packing, cleaning, and moving. It was an awesome stay, and made us realize how much we really, really want our own home...more specifically, our mini-farm barn home. The apartment is a harder place for us to be now, as more people move in - the type of people who want to party and leave the remains of their party in the front yard. The type of people who seem to have low expectations of themselves and their lives. Our apartment is even more temporary now, and we are more anxious to move on now than ever before. Destiny is pushing us into the ready position, against a door that has yet to be opened, making us claustrophobic and restless. We are hoping for an upgrade in Shelby's job that will promote her or put us in a more thriving area, and give us the "go" to settle into our new home and my new job. We talk about it, we dream about it, and we even prepare for it. We have several potted berries: raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries. We also have our potted trees: apple, pear, and even nectarine. We are ready. SO ready! In the meantime, we will stay busy with summer, I will continue to work on my job search, and we will pack what we can to prepare for a move because, no matter what, we will not be staying here for much longer. Many thanks to Mimi and Papa for loaning us their haven and letting us live the life that we're shooting for, at least for a little bit!

Summer Stay-cation

Busy, busy, busy! Well, a relaxed kind of busy - no alarm clock and the days have lost their names, but not their purpose. We are on holiday at Shelby's parents' house, which is a wonderful break from not-so-homey apartment. We love drinking our coffee on the patio in the mornings, grilling out in the evenings, and not having to deal with the drama of our neighbors...for the time being. I am in the middle of getting my motorcycle on the road again, finally. I renewed my insurance and tags after letting them lapse over the winter (my bad), and my battery is getting tested and charged as I speak :)We're getting ready for my graduation on Saturday (Hoot!), and the picnic celebration on Sunday, which will both be awesome events marking this transition in our family's life! This is as much of a celebration for my family, the support and sacrifices that they have made, as it is about my accomplishments in obtaining my degree. Next week will be my first week teaching a camp program at Aullwood - kinda nervous, but excited to be in a smaller classroom teaching about nature stuff! I need to get my regular job search rolling faster - I updated my Teacher to Teacher website, but need to beef it, and the consortium, applications up a bit. We're hoping the near future brings relocates us to a new place, so it's hard to be sure where to dedicate the search. It's an exciting transition, but we're not very patient about the whole thing :P Things we've done since school ended a week ago: motorcycle, Kait's scooter, store visits with Shelby which included a visit to one of our favorite eating places: The Spot!, stopped by to clean our apartment )along with dropping off and picking up "stuff"), and spent a good part of yesterday cleaning up the apartment complex yard and lobbies. Like I said, so far it has been a relaxingly busy week!

The Beginning

I've always wanted to try the blog thing, so I guess now is as good of a time as any...
Today is my last day of student teaching in my third-grade classroom. I am very excited - the excitement has been building over these last few weeks - but I am also a little sad. I've spent the entire school year with this class, learning more about teaching and more about kids than I ever could have in a college classroom. It has been an awesome experience, both professionally and personally, and now I feel that I'm really ready to try it on my own. I've made friends that I hope will be around after today, and I've built relationships with so many kids who will be moving on - hopefully smarter and more prepared for the lives ahead of them. I will miss them all. I graduate from Wright State in ten days - wow! ten days - after six years of my mid-life college experience. I am forty-six years and old earning my bachelors degree in Early Childhood Education, Summa Cum Laude, thanks to the support and sacrifice of my family. SO excited! This is a new beginning for us, a new dawn on our life together after so much preparation to get to where we are now. So, as destiny sits in our doorway, I start this blog. I and we feel that our future is big, and I hope that I can look back on these thoughts in a year with satisfaction from that new place, and smile about this new beginning!