Family

One topic that I will write a lot about here is my family. Yes, my kids, that's a no brainer, that's really what this is all about. But also the rest of my family. My mom and dad, my brother and his wife and sometimes my husband's family. Life has a strange way of evolving and changing and giving me a new, different and better perspective.



For the first time in my life, I feel settled. You'd think that getting married would do that. You'd think that having kids would do that. What did it for me is the opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream, right here. What this means is, I drive down the street saying, 'My kids are going to turn 16 some day and drive down this same road. What will it look like then?" And suddenly I feel, well, settled.



It all started one day this spring when Miles got home from a bike ride and said he had something (a property) he wanted me to see. I didn't jump on it right away. We were expecting our third child and trying to raise twin boys that were almost 2 at the time. Finally I decided it was worth a look and well, I couldn't believe it. All my dreams of living on a horse property with my own horses outside my back door!

There were some challenges with the property. For one, the house was way too small. But, the idea forming in Miles head was that my parents would live in the house on the property and we would build our own house in the back part of the property. It would solve the problem that my retired parents were discussing about long term health care - who would take care of them once they got older and couldn't take care of themselves. It would solve my desire to have a horse property. It would solve Miles' need to live in town close to work. It would also solve his desire to maybe retire early - a built in retirement plan if we sub-divided and sold the rest of the property.

One thing led to another and we ended up closing on the property on June 29, 2007, the day before Amber was born. My parents put their house on the market and sold it at the end of September.

We have a lot of work to do with Larimer County and the City of Fort Collins, but we're hoping to start building our house on the property by spring of 2008. One of the goals of this blog is to talk about living so close to family. The definite pluses of having the kids know their grandparents so well, having a wonderful babysitter close by that adores the kids as much as we do, and a built in family support network. Not many downsides to this arrangement, but we do have to be careful about giving each other space and living our own lives as well.

I'm sure I will have posts in the future that I'll talk about the ups and downs as we build the house and figure our new roles out.

Happy Thanksgiving!