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The Big Plan

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For years Zeus and I have prayed and dreamed about taking our family to live in Switzerland for awhile, for our children to know their other culture and language, and to live near his family and be involved in their lives. After all, when we moved back to the Northwest it wasn’t necessarily for keeps. We’d lived in Europe since soon after we were married, but in 1997 we were at a crossroads, with one baby girl, an homesick mama and an uncertain career path. We investigated the possibilities of living back in the States, but when God moved us back here there were things about that move that made us absolutely certain that He was doing the leading. This is where we’ve been supposed to be, and we’ve seen how much we’ve grown in Him in the intervening years. But slowly a desire has grown in us to go back, at least for awhile.

So the Big Plan is this: at the end of June, we’ll pack up our essentials in our suitcases, store some stuff and sell the rest, rent out the house, find loving homes for the chickens, teach Bella the Wonder Dog to come, sit, and stay in French (viens! asseyes-toi! restes-la!) and leave on a jet plane for foreign parts.

Crazy, isn’t it? It seems like life as homeschoolers has just finally started settling into a nice routine. We are finding ways to connect and serve in our church. We have wonderful friends with whom we know we can live life with for the long haul. It is hard to think of leaving and disrupting that, even if just for a year. But we can’t escape the sense that Yes, this is what God is leading us to do. And we know that He will put the brakes on if this is not the right way to go.

Of course there are tons of questions – lots that we ask ourselves. Where will we live? Rent a house somewhere in the region Zeus’ family lives, hopefully with lots of room for friends to visit. Do you have jobs lined up? No, not yet, this is a big faith thing. In the meantime we’re tucking away funds to tide us over for a little while. Will we homeschool over there? No, the kids will attend the local schools in order to immerse them in French language. Are they freaked out about that? No, not quite. They are mostly excited with a little freaking out around the edges. How much chocolate will you eat? Way too much, I can say with almost no doubt. Everything that is said about Swiss chocolate is TRUE!

There are more questions that we’re finding out as we go along, and I’m sure that this will be a place to answer some of them. Whatever happens, even if we come back home after a month, it will be a Grand Adventure, in both a physical and a spiritual sense, one we are excited to share with each other, with our children and with you.

I am keeping my daughter home from school today

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Just over a year ago, this poem was published in the Nov/Dec 2009 issue of Mothering magazine. The copyright has now reverted back to me so I can share it here. It captures some of the reasons that led us to to bring our kids home to homeschool.

I am keeping my daughter home from school todayI am keeping my daughter home from school today.
She has fallen behind in some subjects
and they need special attention,
like birdwatching
and blowing on the dust bunnies
’til they scamper across the floor
and deciding once and for all whether
the crack on the ceiling is a sleeping dragon
or a boat to sail away in.

Later on
with furrowed brows
we will conference over cups of hot chocolate
our fingers curled
around the smooth ceramic surface,
both seeking and protecting its warmth.
Earnestly we will say to each other
that it is all very well
to excel in math and spelling,
but if you cannot tell the difference
between a sparrow and a chickadee
then you’re headed for some trouble in life.

Tomorrow
I think she can go back
when she is caught up,
when I am sure that she knows
how to catch the icy points
of the year’s first snowflake
on her tongue.

You Are Here

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Here is where you are, and if you’ve made it here, then Happy New Year 2010 to you! New Year’s Day seems a fitting time to begin a new venture and this new blog. It will however, be in many ways a continuation of our current blog of family doings, but it will be easier to spell. Ecole Vieux Pin was just too tricky for many folks to type. But in addition we plan to chronicle preparations for The Big Plan and subsequent daily life in Switzerland, as well as my thoughts on life in general, and boy, do I have plenty of those!

Another New Venture: The Small

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Actually this venture has been going on for a little while; we just thought we should finally tell our friends about it, and Mina helped her Mama get with the times and make an Etsy Mini-Shop here on the blog. In reality, it’s kind of a Mini-Mall, because each of the ladies of our household has her own shop. It’s what Auntie Janet used to call the shopping mall in Moscow, Idaho, where you could walk the length of the whole thing in seven minutes and where half of the storefronts were empty anyway. It was dubbed “the Small.” Our Small is ever so much nicer! And our products are locally grown and handcrafted and repurposed and everything!

So you see, once you browse, you will wonder how you ever did get along without them until now. They are right over there on the sidebar. 46 shopping days until Christmas.