Encounters with Sustenance: A week in wild, wonderful, West Virginia!

Have two weeks really flown by since we returned from our Thanksgiving travels? I now find myself with Kali, Alida and Terah at the Mountain House, home of my parents. Our time here could only be improved by having Jason here with us! Partway through my maternity leave Jason needed to start working. I quickly realized how much I didn't enjoy him being away from home, and therefore us. So I hatched the idea of spending a week enjoying time with my parents and the girls in WV while Jason got as many hours in working as possible, making it such that he didn't have to work as much when we could all be together at home. I still think it was a great idea and other than the last hour on our way here I'd say that Terah has been quite pleased with the idea too. I had no doubt the older girls would love an extended stay with grandparents and in the mountains. But, my goodness, absence sure is making my heart grow fonder! I am missing Jason quite a lot and I know he is finding the house mighty quiet in our absence, and missing the littlest probably more than the rest of us combined! A week makes a big difference when you are just two months old!

The month of December kind of feels like my last hurrah and I'm trying to soak it up and not let my apprehension about the new year dawning impact too much my enjoyment of this time. This week here and then time at home together with my parents in their quarters over Christmas and finally hosting the Benner Christmas celebration in Keezletown over New Year's weekend are what makes this month special. It also marks my maternity leave winding down. While I've been working hours here and there throughout, I will officially need to be back at my 3/4 time position come mid-January. Since it's been a challenge to carve out those few hours here and there, I'm wondering how getting back to 30 hours/week is going to feel. Obviously it means that Jason will be picking up a lot of Terah-care time (which I know he will be grateful for in some ways) and I will be doing less around the house and he will be doing less of the major projects on our list. I know, as we always do, that we'll find a few groove and establish patterns that work for us. I need to trust that we've done it before and we'll do it again. I probably have said this every other time too, but I'll say it again: "this time just feels a little different."

Anyone who knows us well knows that our long term dream is that we can all be at home together and that what income we need (which we hope keeps lessening) can be generated from our labor and land. We know we are a ways away from bringing that dream to fruition but we have been taking some steps towards it (ok, so mostly Jason has been taking the steps and I've been trying to cheer him on). We've got some applications in to a few seed companies, Jason and Kali attended a 2 day Farm to Table conference recently and made some good connections, Jason has put out two feelers regarding connecting on his various chicken breeding projects (with one very positive exchange on that front already), and we continue to think/dream/plan/design our next major building project, which we hope will be a large screened in pavilion constructed in 2016.

A big part of our conversations in the last week or two has centered around one major question: "what are we not going to do?" I've felt pretty clearly that the math just doesn't add up - we've got a finite number of hours in a day and days in a week. We've been pretty maxed out as it is. It feels like quite a quandary. Jason and I love all the activities that fill our life together. We enjoy working hard. We don't really want to cut anything. But I feel pretty strongly that there is such a thing as "too much of a good thing." I know for myself when life gets so full and the list gets overwhelmingly long, my enjoyment of the things that make up our life wains. I have yet to see where these conversations will lead us. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, I am trying to soak up the time here, where our to do list has been tucked in my planner getting no attention from me. I've taken a nap, read a novel, played a bunch of games, read stories with Alida, gone for walks, played outside, snuggled with Terah, eaten lots of yummy food, and visited with family. I've done very little food preparation and not very many dishes - thanks Mom! Here's a few pictures from our time (this is all I will try to upload from here - we may not have many things on WV, but our internet is faster!):