About Us

Hi.  I’m Kim, and my husband is Tom.  I’m not new to blogging, but starting this particular blog to chronicle our steps towards making our “dream life” happen.  We are non-traditional people, who have been trying (unsuccessfully) to fit in a traditional world.  After years of discussions, and a ton of research, last year (2009), we made the determination to do what is best for our family, and that is to be ourselves, and make our dream life happen.

We have several family members that we’ve lost over the last year, and several who have (or have had) health issues.  This made us very conscious of the fact that life happens.  We have always planned that once our children are grown, we would do some traveling.  But the more we’ve discussed it this last year, the more we realize that we need to enjoy the time we are here, NOW.  Not wait for some future date, but live our lives to the fullest now.

My husband and I have been together for over 10 years now, and will celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary.  Between us, we have 7 children, one girl (the oldest), and 6 boys.  Their ages as of today are 18, 18, 13, 12, 11, and twin 5-year-olds.   Just for clarification purposes, the oldest 18 and the 12 year old are “mine” from a previous marriage.  The 18 year old lives with us, but is planning to move in with her boyfriend.  The 12 year old lived with us until last year, when he went to live with his Dad.  “His” 18, 13, and 11 year olds are from previous relationships.  The 18 year old lives with his grandparents in FL, the 13 year old lives with his mother in TX (lived with us for a month last year, then went home to mom’s, now wants to come back to live with us), and 12 year old lives with his mom in FL (he wants to move in with us, and we are talking to his mom about that possibility).  The twins are “ours”, and have always lived with us.  😀

Our plan is complicated by needing to make several life choices.  I have been a homeschool/unschool/natural learning advocate for several years now.  But my husband has always believed the school system works.  So my first step was to educate and inform him of, in MY OPINION, the way our public school system fails our children.  Not due to teachers, but simply due to the fact that each child learns differently, has different strengths and weaknesses.  In my first post, I’ll go into details of the children’s different issues in the school system, but suffice it to say, my husband has finally broken free of the mold.  Although we aren’t yet homeschooling, we are in talks with the 13 year old’s mom to allow him to come back to live with us and homeschool/unschool him.

Our lives took a turn when the economy tanked, as hubby is in construction, and I got let go from my job as well.  So our plans are taking longer to come together than we’d hoped.  We figure it will take us 5-7 years of scrimping, saving, and paying off some bills (and some of the child support ending) until we’ll be in a position to live the life of our dreams.  Of course, we never know what hand life will deal us, so I’m starting the blog now, and we’ll see where it takes us.

One category on the blog will be education.  These are our unschooling/homeschooling adventures, which, if all goes as planned, will be starting sometime within the next few months.  The rest may be all over the place for a while, until life settles down a bit.  So bare with us, and see what adventure pops up next.  😀