Frazzled Reflections

It's been a long three years. When we put our Indy house on the market and found our current Fort Wayne house we didn't know the series of unfortunate events that would fall. Some we might have been able to prevent if we had made different decisions. Some were the result of life just happening. But the end result was the same. For the past three years we've been unable to sell one house and dependent on rental income to pay that mortgage, we've mostly just made necessary repairs (some really expensive) to the house we live in and put off the major  renovations that we desperately want to start, and we've been crushed under the debt that just never seems to go away. But we had to wait. Who knew that purposely missing two payments on a house you aren't living in could put you behind in other goals you want to achieve? Oh wait. We knew. But at the time we didn't have much of a choice. We needed to focus on moving on and paying for the house our family is livi

My mom was a SAH mom, and for that I'm grateful. You hear that Mom? I'm grateful. As I watched my mom bake, cook, clean, take us to the doctor, take us grocery shopping (in an age where people didn't call CPS every time we were left in the car so my mom could get a quick item), play games with us (a personal favorite being "Stone School"), work as room mother, etc., I became convinced that this was my future. I would go to college, meet my dream husband, teach for a couple years, and stay at home to raise our four to five children. During those years I often heard my mom discuss the virtue of staying at home with us. I also heard her recount her days working at a daycare (before I was born) and her disappointment (to put it lightly) that there were mothers who would bring their kids to daycare even on days that they didn't work. It appeared inconceivable that a woman would bring her kids in to daycare on days that she could instead be at home with her kids.