betsy and nat

It’s not even that we don’t have anything to say — we just haven’t had much for internet connectivity lately.  I figured it was about time for an update, though.  Nat and I have been shmoozing around the Mesa – Gilbert area of Arizona lately, staying with Nat’s Grandma, Wanda.  She lives in a 55+ community where you can walk to get to just about anything,

and where they haul away your garbage with a golf cart.

Nat working on a door at Grandma's house

on a walk along the power lines in Mesa

While here, we went hiking in Lost Dutchman State Park, which was lovely.

we had a nice balance of sun and shadows

and some sort of green lichen grew all over the rocks

Nat even got to do a little climbing...

And went Geo-Caching for our first time.

Our first find was a fake!

Jannika and Cheryl with a largish find...

some were quite tiny...

Now we are hooked and keep coming up with great ways to hide our own geo caches… which makes us excited to get home so we can go to ax-man.  Today we went to the Hobby Lobby to see if we could find some good stuff for hiding them, but even though their store is approximately the size of Rhode Island, all we really found were a bazillion picture frames and knick-knacks.

I think we both feel a little mixed-up about coming home.  We both miss our families (Olive just had her third birthday party) and miss having things like privacy and a convenient kitchen, but then we start to wonder what we will do when we get there.  I am still looking at farms in the Minnesota-Wisconsin-Iowa area and have been thinking about how it might be fun to work in a bakery and Nat has some thoughts on jobs and volunteer work he wants to do, but nothing is really solid.

I guess that is the way our lives are right now — the way we chose for them to be.  Maybe it is a little bit like getting out of prison… like for years someone has regimented your life for you — your meals, your work, your outside time — and suddenly you have to choose all of that for yourself again.  But maybe you have sort of forgotten how.  And the trick is to just figure it out and not worry about it too much… which is not really my strong suit.  So another challenge begins.

The best part about this whole thing is that it has taught us that we can choose to change our lives at any time.  There will always be hurdles.  We were lucky this time because all of ours were small, but how are you ever going to get over big hurdles like selling a house or moving your children if you don’t learn to jump the small hurdles (like quitting jobs) first?

Getting outside of your day-to-day existence can give you a whole different view of the path you had been heading down and the other paths available to you.  When you are not worried about how irritating the next day at work will be, you can get a slightly clearer view of the things that will make your life truly happy and balanced.  Our next goal is to work toward adding some jobs into the equation.  No life is truly balanced without work, which is probably why so many lottery-winners become miserable.  Wish us luck!  We will probably be home soon!