Daring to Dream

If the adventures of COVID-19 in 2020 have taught us anything, it's that amazing things can happen when you slow down and really examine your life.  I think that's how we ended up deciding that if we were going to move before Leah goes into high school, and if we are going to make memories with all of our kids in the house that we want to live in for a long, long time, and if we are going to dare to dream of a life that feels a little more like an adventure and a little less like the end of an adventure, and if we are going to stop talking and start doing... now is the time to do it.  

And that is how we ended up here. 

This house and this move started out as a conversation... in 2019.  Maybe actually in 2013.  When we moved to Iowa and built our house we said we would be here for 5 to 7 years.  This is our first house and we have never once called it our forever home.  We've treated it with all the love and care homeowners possibly could, but always with the idea that we would not live here forever.  

It's just that 5 to 7 years zipped right by and we suddenly found ourselves nowhere at all where we thought we would be- instead of headed back to Indy for work, we realized we have somewhat surprisingly but fairly confidently become Iowans for life (for the foreseeable future, I should say).  Jason's company merged and is now headquartered here in Iowa, he is only in year 2 of his 7-9 year commitment as stake president, and we've decided we kind of like living this far west- it would be hard to move any further away from our families than we already are.

And while our current house fits us beautifully now, there is the undeniable fact that our kids are going to keep growing up and this house will be a bit snug for us in just a few years.  Four kids in one bathroom is already an exercise in patience every night!

So last year we started really looking around the Des Moines area- there are a lot of beautiful wooded land and rolling hills in Iowa (that didn't used to be cornfields, like our current neighborhood), and we started dreaming about living in the woods and the hills just a little bit. We took drives and had conversations and sent the kids into a panic and discovered the most beautiful little pocket of land just south of Des Moines called Cumming (population 407) but nothing really came of it.  I didn't feel up to the monumental task of building again or and didn't want the kids attend small town schools, Jason didn't want to increase his commute to work and neither of us are willing to move out of the stake boundaries.  That gave us a fairly narrow window of geography to work with, and if it hadn't been for the absolute stand-still of life that coronavirus thrust upon us in March, we probably never would have had the time, energy, or hope to dream of a different life. 

But now, here we are.  When in Iowa, do as the Iowans do and get yourself some land!

Every time we have visited the house we've found two things- four leaf clovers and ticks.  

One for good luck and one to keep us on our toes, and thus we have affectionately nicknamed (and need to rename) our new home The Tick House.

 It sits on a four acre lot and our nearest neighbor is a silo.  There is a pond on the other side of the road I took this picture from 

and there is a reservoir that we have to cross over to get into town that always looks like a postcard.

The kids will go to school in West Des Moines- a city that is just about the same size as Ankeny- Jason will be 6 minutes closer to work and 15 minutes closer to the stake center, and we are now 15 minutes closer to the temple in Omaha and to our families!  We will have trees!  And a creek!  And deer!  And no neighbors to speak of, although the house is in a very nice neighborhood that is kept so by an HOA. 

We are scheduled to close on the house, as well as on our current house, on July 10th.  The days are creeping by which is probably a good thing because there is still so much to do.  

We are pretty darn excited, and pretty darn terrified of the whole adventure.  But there are two thoughts that keep coming back to me as we move forward with this new adventure- 

God expects you to have enough faith and determination and enough trust in Him to keep moving, keep living, keep rejoicing.  In fact, He expects you not simply to face the future (that sounds pretty grim and stoic); He expects you to embrace and shape the future- to love it and rejoice init and delight in your opportunities.  God is anxiously waiting for the chance to answer your prayers and fulfill your dreams, just as He always has.  But He can't if you don't pray, and He can't if you don't dream. In short, He can't if you don't believe.  

-Jeffrey R. Holland

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

-Mary Oliver

So we keep moving forward, keep praying, and keep trying.  Here's to new adventures!