The Quest for the Simple LIfe

If everything goes according to plan (please, please let everything go according to plan), one week from now, we will be signing papers in a lawyer's office, handing over checks made out for enormous amounts of money (I can't really allow myself to think of it as real money), and receiving, in exchange, the keys to our very own house. We're still not exactly sure about how this all came to be, but I will try to recap as best I can.

1998: Lena and I meet.
1999: We fall in love.
2000: We get our first official apartment together (yes, we had already been living together practically since the day we met). The sole requirements were that it allow dogs and have wood floors.
2001: We move into our second apartment, our first without housemates. Pet Friendly and closer to town.
2002: We move into our third rental, this time a whole house! We needed something dog and kid-friendly (many of the rentals where we live have lead issues and landlords are very hesitant to rent to families with young children) since we're planning on having a baby. We are, in fact, pregnant with two babies a month after we move in. The house meets our needs but does not get a drop of sun during the winter months since it's at the base of a mountain. Oh, and the interstate highway is all of 20 feet from the front door. We are haunted by the sounds of rush hour traffic.
2004: We move into a new apartment, this time on the fourth floor of an old factory building, in the middle of winter. It is so sunny. The ceilings are 21 feet high. We don't have any yard at all. We enjoy living in the community of the building but can't deal with the cement-world outside the building's entrance.
2005: We move again, this time to a rental house 30 minutes away from town, in the woods. The house is luxurious (rent money goes so much further the further we get from town). We have a stream in our yard. And a jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom (yes, we have a master bathroom!). The price of gas doubles, and we realize that we are spending way too much time in the car, driving to and from town.
2006: Zeben is born and we decide that we can't keep living this car-dependent life. I spend months looking for a place we could live in town.
2007: We move into a house right in downtown. We've never lived so close to town before. The house is huge and beautiful. We love the neighborhood. But then we realize that we can't really afford to heat such a big house, and we start to feel like we are living in excess. We don't need nearly so much space. We start riding our bikes a lot, stop driving the car, and yet feel like the size of our house is holding us back from living "greenly."
2008: We move into our current home, less than half the size of the house we'd been living in. It's not as close to town, but still in relatively easy biking distance. The house has little yard, but is directly nextdoor to my mom's HUGE yard. Plus, it's zoned agricultural so we can get goats!
2009: We get two goats, and Leo is born. Life is full. Life is so full that it's overflowing. My mom decides to sell her house, and we realize that we have to move in order to keep the goats and have any sort of a yard.

Fast forward to the present. Once again, we found ourselves looking for a new place to live. We just couldn't muster the energy or enthusiasm to rent yet another home. So we started thinking about buying a house. We hadn't thought that we were in a place, financially speaking, to be able to do this yet, but we looked into it and found out that maybe we actually could. We've always had this dream of buying a small farm, for years we've told people that when we do buy our own place, it would be in a rural spot, with at least 10 acres. Our goal has always been to Live Simply. To Simply Live, to enjoy the land, to feel self-sufficient, for our children to be a part of something bigger than themselves: caring for animals, growing their own food, having daily responsibilities that would contribute to our survival. And there are many parts of that life that still appeal to us, and that we hope will become our reality. But, a farming life--while calming, and wholesome and natural in many ways (there's nothing like waking up each day to a goat's udder in your still half-asleep hands)--is not necessarily a simple life. We found that getting the goats hugely increased our dependence on our car. Bi-weekly trips to the farm supply store--the best one is 20 miles away--and the time that it took to care for/milk the goats (and sanitize the milking equipment) meant that more and more often, we were driving to places in biking distance because we "didn't have time to bike." Every day felt like a rush. Less time to bike. Less time to blog. Less time to reflect on anything. Not especially simple.

When we realized that we'd have to choose between living a car-light or car-free existence and having a farm--that we could not actually do both--we ultimately decided that we'd rather not have a farm. It seems the simplest most self-sufficient life we can dream up is one that allows us to really live IN our community. To walk and bike everywhere, to avoid the chaos of traffic and car maintenance and buckling a million car seats 6 times a day. So we did something we never thought we'd do, and started looking at houses right in downtown. And before long, we found the cutest, most perfect house ever--a 100-year-old, 1200 square foot farmhouse, with a palindrome for a street number (I love palindromes)--it felt like home the moment we stepped inside. Actually, truthfully, it felt like home before we even stepped inside, while we were still waiting for the listing agent to arrive and let us in. We knew we wanted to buy the house just as soon as we walked into the backyard. It was like in the movie--Jerry McGuire?--where the secretary says, "you had me at 'hello.'" This house had us at the yard. A yard is not easy to come by in a downtown location, and this one--while not huge (it's .22 acres)--feels truly magical, with climbing trees and space for some chickens and a big garden, not to mention room for the kids to really run.

the backyard

Yesterday three of the goats (Petah, Wolf and Spot) left us--in the back of my mom's car--for their new home. They're going to live with some wonderful, old family friends of ours who live in a neighboring state. Luke and Jaz were very sad to say good-bye. They have, understandably, been resistant to this whole moving plan. They are living in a kind of kid paradise at the moment, and of course they can't comprehend why we can't go on living as we have been indefinitely. But the truth is that their interest in the goats and our small farm in general has been on a steady decline for the past couple of months. As was perhaps predictible, my once-eager helpers eventually abandoned me to do all of the barn chores all by my lonesome, rejecting my suggestions that they train the baby goats to walk on leashes, or bring them special snacks. So, as awful as it always is to see my kids upset (especially when I know that it's kind of my fault), I really felt no guilt about selling the goats. Just a couple hours later, I heard Lukas saying to Araela, "I was really sad when the goats left, but I'm feeling totally fine now!"

in the car, saying goodbye

And so our quest for the simple life continues. I am so excited to commit to biking and walking most everywhere we need to go; pretty much everything we need will be within 1 mile from our house. We are finally going to become a one-car family, keeping the minivan solely for emergencies and visiting with relatives, and--most significantly--I am just bursting at the thought of having a permanent residence. Of ending this crazy moving game. Of putting down roots, planting some raspberry bushes, and making our very own house our home.