Changes

I love waking up and looking out my new bedroom windows. It looks like I've slept in the middle of a beautiful park. The tree branches wave in the wind and birds break into song all around me. It creates within me the most deeply peaceful feeling. I'm really enjoying many parts of our new life.

I love watching my chickens scratch for food under the sprawling oak trees. My kids spent an entire afternoon digging a 100-foot long trench in our pasture. They were so excited to show me their project. They could never play like that in a suburban backyard. They play hard every day and come inside covered in dirt. I think it's a sign of a good day when they get to explore and be creative in the outdoors.

Yesterday Nathan and the boys built a new ladder for the treehouse. The boys would run inside on errands to fetch measuring tape, nails, a protractor, etc. They'd overflow with enthusiasism as they gave me periodic updates on their progress. My heart is happy- this is such better family time than watching TV.

Did I mention earlier that we have no TV or even a DVD player? There's no internet access at our new house- it's not available yet in our neck of the woods. It has been an interesting change in our lives. We've played board games together as a family multiple times each day. There's more music being made in our home. We work on projects together. Everyone reads more books and uses imagination to create grand schemes.

Our quality of life has drastically improved, even though I was already very sparing in the past with screen-time. It's interesting to see what we do with our time without any access to any computers or TV. Overall I really love this change- although sometimes I do wish I could let them play an educational computer game while I take a nap. We haven't hooked up any computers yet. I go to the library to do any computer-related work now.