Jason and I unloaded the car and sat down on the little couch in our cabin at Lost River State Park. "When did we last do this?" I asked. I was trying to recount the last time the two of us had gone away by ourselves just to be together alone (not a training or a conference or staying at home while our kids went away). We had to think for awhile, but together we recalled going away around our 15 year anniversary when we were discerning about expanding our family by one more child or not (so glad for the conclusion of that discernment time!). And we went away around our 10 year anniversary and were at that time also discerning having another child after Nora's death (so glad for that decision too!). Jason also decided to grow his hair out at that particular getaway. So, you see, these every 5 year getaways are fairly monumental occasions and seem to lead to some big and wonderful decisions! AND something we could like to move from every 5 years to yearly!! AND, in case there is any doubt, we were NOT trying to decide whether to expand our family by the addition of another human this go round!
2019 has been a tough one in a number of realms. And I have not been operating as my best self for some time. Both Jason and I were so very eager for some time dedicated to connecting, uninterrupted conversations and hopefully some fun together too. It was all that and so much more. Thanks to my parents who cared for our girls and animals, we departed on Monday afternoon for Lost River and didn't need to be back to Tangly Woods until Wednesday afternoon - a glorious 48 hours to ourselves. It wasn't too long after our arrival that we broke out Upwords. I did not get a chance over our time away to test if I'm becoming a better sport because I managed to come out victorious all 3 times that we played it. I did have to check in with Jason after the last round to be 100% sure he was not letting me win. The only thing worse than him beating me would be knowing that he let me win on purpose to keep me from being grouchy!
The first day was cold and rainy/snowy, so we hunkered down in our little cabin. We made good progress reading Farming While Black, drank lots of decaf coffee, play Boggle in addition to Upwords, had intentional journaling and sharing times, read and took a nap, and snuggled up by the fireplace! I had been feeling some anxiety about how fast this time was going to go and how many hopes we had for the time. But amazingly the time felt expansive and exceeded my expectations. We started our first reflection time both jotting down all the conversations we'd like to/need to have. The lists were long with some but not that much overlap. That could have been overwhelming, but somehow it felt good to just name the things we hope to connect about and a number of them happened naturally during our time. We then reflected on the various aspects of our lives, again naming them separately and sharing our lists. We had many rambling conversations that sometimes we needed to take a break from when one of us started getting too full or antsy. The nice thing about having more time is that we could do just that - take a break and come back to it after some time. In our last time, we wrote down commitments we wanted to make leaving our time together.
We had to check out by about 10 a.m. Wednesday, which left us with 4-5 hours to go for a hike. The sun was shining (though the temp was not to top 30 and it was windy). We ended up going on a 7-9 or so mile hike and it felt so good. We walked in silence, talked some, enjoyed the woods and the lookouts. It was a good transitional activity for coming home. We made some more decisions and commitments on our hike that we wrote down on our drive home. The list is long and we spent some time that evening after being reunited with the girls to share some of them.
Here are a few highlights - things that I am ready to put in writing to build in a bit of accountability! There's so much I could say about each of these items and I'm happy to share more with anyone interested - as talking about them will likely keep them at the forefront of our minds, which will be a good thing until they become more integrated into our lives!
- We are going to try to consistently co-plan our days together (including the girls whenever possible) - that means making both Jason's to do list AND mine together.
- Starting in 2020, I'm going to make another attempt at separating my work and personal email. When we shared this with the girls, Alida piped up, "That's going to be hard." She's right. My work email was my first email address ever when I was still in college. So I've had it for over 23 years! This will hopefully enable me to work a bit more at home/work balance - including 1 minimum and hopefully 2 no email days each week!
- We are going to try making Sundays a day for family time/connection with each other and nature and NOT a day for productivity on the farm/homestead. We hope to incorporate more music, hiking, time in the woods, naps, reading, writing, art, etc... in those days. This is the one that will stretch us but also hopefully help work at more sustained and consistent rejuvenation.
- We are going to work at changing the narrative around what we are/are not doing. Rather than talking negatively - highlighting all the things we wish we could be doing but can't because of various limitations, we want to get better at framing positively what we are choosing to focus our energies on.
We also made some very concrete decisions about things we will do AND will not do in the coming year. We went through the 50+ varieties of seeds we are actively saving seed from currently. We brainstormed some ways to simplify things in 2020. Stay tuned! We also decided to not move forward with the subterranean greenhouse project this winter. Instead we decided that rather than creating something new to maintain, learn to use, etc... we wanted to do some things that create more space and flow in our normal routines. That feels like what we most need right now. And we didn't waste any time starting on that goal. See below! I will just end my reflections on our time away by saying how special it was to rediscover how very much we love being together! I knew it, but it was fun and wonderful to experience it again!!
So we got home and were sharing some of our commitments and decisions with the kids and my parents over dinner, and you could see the spark in my mom's eye when we talked about doing phase 2 of the deep clean process where we hoped to tackle our attic, the laundry room, garage, shop shed, junk pile, and garden shed. It wasn't long before we had our calendars out to block out times for doing the ones for our shared/common spaces that Mom and Dad will want to be around for. We decided to ease into it by doing the smallest and easiest one first - the laundry room. That happened today!
I will be the first to give credit where credit is due. In the morning while Jason did chores and chopped leaves for our humanure compost for the coming year and I cleaned up from having friends over the night before, did some CJP office work, made cheese/butter and fed kiddos, my mom and dad cleared out the whole room and dove into the cleaning process. Granted the room really doesn't fit more than 2 people, but it's obvious that without their doing the cleaning part, we never would have accomplished getting the room done today. We then worked together on making decision about what stays and what goes. It was fun to do this shared space because there were multiple things that none of us knew where they came from and were happy to part with - thinking for years that it was probably something the other family used/wanted. Once again the deep clean process amazes me - we ended up getting rid of a lot of stuff and the room feels more spacious and things feel like they make more sense. And the girls were super willing to go through their things AND part with stuff! Already eager for the next one!! 
But we'll have to space the deep cleans out. There are lots of other things to fill our days with too. But one thing is DONE for 2020 as of today - we have raked and hauled all the leaves we plan to get for the coming year. Today Jason finished chopping up leaves and then we brought the last load to the cooking tomato beds, composting chicken coop and the acorn laden load to the red pig. Ah, a task completed. It felt really good! The process of doing the leaves the last two days was not entirely fun in that we have colds going through our home and our younger two girls are grouchier than normal and not playing together as peacefully as they often do. So, yesterday, when Kali tried to help us rake, one of us was having to play referee on their trampoline jumping over at our neighbors. So today we suggested they all just play together on the trampoline while Jason and I finished up and that worked MUCH better. Kali is such a helpful presence. And she also got some really fun photos of their jumping session!
And now time for bed for this crew! I'm typing with shrieks of laughter in the background as story reading moved to huggy-lovey time which has moved to doing flops on our bed. Yes, that is going in the wrong direction in terms of settling down for sleep. But the sounds are happy so I won't complain! I'm hoping for good nights of sleep all around since tomorrow is our annual winter solstice gathering and biochar burn!
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