What am I dreaming about?

Most of my dreams are pretty tame (again self-protection). I dream about things like going home to Amanda's pot roast that I smelled at lunch, someday going back on lala, watching my kids grow up, not disappointing my family, having a job that I like to go to every morning. Sometimes though, often on my way to or from work, my mind wanders to an unsafe place: a place of BIG dreams.

Yesterday I was home sick. In the morning Amanda took Matthew for a walk and I played Legos with the boys. We had lunch together. During nap time, Benjamin and I went to the hardware store and to Toys R Us to get sand for the sand box. It was a great day. It was hard too. I lost my temper a few times, but I felt very present with my family. Amanda and I have often talked about what it would take for me to have more days like this-for me to be home with the family more. This is what my dream would be.

• Move to the country. We love being outside. Our souls are more comfortable when we are out in the sun or the cold. I feel more myself when I am doing work outside-gardening, shoveling, mowing, building. We feel like it would be a good thing for the boys to have some room to grow and run and learn outside.
• Find some means of support. I'm not thinking of sending out letters to you to ask for money. Don't worry. I would like to find a job where I could work four 10 hour days or work part-time or something like that. This would allow us to have a huge garden, cut our own wood for heat, maybe even have some animals (chickens, maybe a goat.) We wouldn't need to make much money. Amanda figures if we had a house that was paid for (that's the clincher) we would need to make about $10,000-20,000 a year.

We have gone so far as to checking books out of the library upon such subjects as self-sustainability, homesteading, and gardening. The thing that I love about this dream is that it would be one of the hardest things that I would have ever done. For it to be a good and realistic dream, it must take a lot of work. This one fits the bill. My friend Jared Friesen, who lives in a shack in Belize, has challenged us to follow this dream. I love him and his wife and their willingness to follow a dream.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for allowing me to share my dreams. I'll keep writing about them. I'd love to read any comments that you might have.