I had a dream the other night, in the early hours of the morning...I was in Wisconsin, east of my parents' place about 10 miles, in what I thought was Baldwin. I was striding home along the highways that I know well, running and bounding with the grace of a gazelle (very differently than how I run in reality) and I took a turn down a road that I thought I knew would take me straight home. I stumbled onto someone's farm and looked around confused. There were people there harvesting something I didn't recognize, and when I looked closer I realized the whole landscape was something I didn't recognize. I asked them directions to get home and they said, "Oh, you're not in Wisconsin! This is Kauai!" They told me I was way around on the other side of the island, and I realized just how far I had to go to get "home". Shortly after that, one of the girls woke me up.
So, I'm sure that was just a random dream and has no real meaning or anything, right?? Please if you have thoughts, do share.
We've had a rough couple months, dealing with our own demons and foiled expectations. After almost throwing in the towel, things are starting to slowly unfold here. Lots has shifted this last week. I finally emailed home to some friends with an SOS and was reminded how much I love the people in my life. I must remember to reach out sooner when life grips me by the throat. Anyways, in addition to receiving some amazing moral and physical support, we also received news from our friend Ted that they will no longer be buying our house due to a job offer on the west coast and an opportunity not to be missed. The news had a funny effect on me. It actually brightened my world again, because I think I had let myself feel trapped here when things weren't working out and we had nothing to go back to. Suddenly, moving back to our house was an actual possibility again and I was given the gift of choosing to be here. Jonathan and I sat down for a good talk and we realized how far we had drifted from our original intention to be here, and how circumstances had really sucked the life out of our inspiration. We recreated why the hell we wanted to do this in the first place...because we are here on this planet to be connected to the world around us, and to provide that space for our children. We also want to provide that opportunity for everyone, to connect everyone to their own source and inspiration.
We can do that anywhere on the planet. And we choose to be here for now.
So, our house is on the market again, in case anyone you know is interested. And Jonathan had a meeting with Matt Kirk of Kauai Nature School and Kauai Wild (a hiking tour guide business) and they are both very excited to be working together as partners now. It's such a relief for me to see Jonathan lit up again.
His wife, Kimberly, and I have become friends and are going to a class together down at the Community College called the Sustainable Farm and Garden Training Course. I'm hoping to be a sponge for everything I can learn about growing in this climate. So far the class is a lot af what I've already learned in other courses or just from my own experience, but I'm really enjoying meeting all the folks that are up to some amazing things here and getting to work on their projects.
I've also been making some clothes for the girls recently, which has been a longtime dream of mine, to have the time for that. Here's a few examples:
It wraps around and snaps in the front. Super easy to make.
I don't have a good picture of the whole outfit, a twirly skirt and matching reversible shirt.
Maya and Maggie's outfits are made out of the fabric from the dolls I made for them a couple years ago. Scarlet's purple shirt ties in the back and is reversible, made out of some beautiful batik fabric that Julie let me have from her stash. The green linen shirt Scarlet is wearing I made from fabric I dyed in a frenzy one of my last nights in Minneapolis and brought here with me.
I told my friend Kimberly that I've been dreaming of having a stand at the farmer's market to sell all sorts of things, like the kids' clothing, jewelry, Calderesque mobiles made of coral and wire, and fairy houses made by Jonathan. She said she's always wanted to do the same with her artwork (amazing, by the way) but she never wanted to do it alone. We decided to do it together and have a goal to be ready for it in 3 weeks. I've got some sewing to do!
Anyways...in other news, we've also been meeting with a couple who just bought some beautiful land near us and is turning it into a venue for learning. Not necessarily a school, but more a collection of freelance teachers who use the space for whatever they are passionate about. They are very excited for Jonathan to bring the nature awareness curriculum. And they very much would like to have gardening and agricultural opportunities for the kids and are excited to hear that I would love to help with that. Mmm...it's good to be dreaming and creating again.
It's late here and I better head to bed before the children start waking up. There's always more to share, but it'll have to wait for another night. Please leave a comment and let me know how you are doing. We miss you all! I'll leave you with a few more pictures from the last few weeks.
Love,
Heidi
The field, finally planted. It's already grown so much since this picture.
Jonathan fixing the wagon. Notice the haircut.
My mother's day present was these earrings Jonathan bought from a lady at the end of our road.
Giggling in the swing, pushes from the big sisters.
Our staple, veggie soup. We blend it up after an hour or so, yum yum!
Finally...the weather matches my mood. It's a chilly and blustery stormy day. I feel like hunkering down by a fire under a blanket with a bowl of soup. Not many days like that here. Maybe that's why I've been feeling so out of place lately. It's so beautiful here, it just seems ridiculous to have a rough day. But that's what we've been having. I've been wanting to update you all, but waiting until things start falling into place to post about it. Well, I'm just going to have to go ahead without the convenience of life looking good.
So...I knew that marrying Jonathan meant grabbing his hand and jumping off the cliff into the enormous ocean of adventure that life is. I spent the first 5 years of our marriage resisting the jump, (you know how when you stand there long enough looking down you can totally psych yourself out), but moving here was finally really trusting him to stay with me when the waves got rough. And that has proven true. We are with each other more than ever in this challenge to create a family life here.
Our Plan A dissolved, and we've been so busy just getting by that we didn't realize how discouraged we were. We've finally started to let go of the ideas we had about how life would look here, and only then will that create some space for Plan B, C, D, or Zed to emerge.
Our small nest egg from the estate sale is long gone. We've stopped "needing" things so we can hang onto our last $40. We have just a bit of cash flow now with harvesting the bananas and selling them to the local fruit stand. About $100 a week. The nature school Jonathan was hoping to work with is on hold indefinitely in the wake of the death of Matt and Kimberly's baby. We have been talking with several other folks who are starting something similar, and perhaps that will prove to be the next curve on our path.
It baffles me how we earned and spent several thousand dollars a month back in Minneapolis, and now we are living on a fraction of that and making it work. Well, sort of making it work. We are quite stressed, really, about the cash flow thing. We've got a lot of possibility for investments for the future, but not much immediate return. We have starts in the greenhouse finally, and some plants in the field. We have rough plans for having a couple dozen chickens here for eggs, but still need to build the infrastructure. We are busy all the time, and rarely get a break.
We miss you all, and I miss our old house and our old garden. I think it's just the feeling of familiarity that I miss. The comfort. The theme song from Cheers keeps playing in my head..."Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name...and they're always glad you came..."
Anyways, enough about the challenges. On the flip side, the girls are doing well. We spend 90% of our day outside. We've been slowly settling in, and we're using our resources here for some fun projects, like making coconut milk. There are hundreds of coconuts around here, just waiting for us to do something with them. Look forward to some photos soon. We've also been spending a lot of time in the kitchen with Julie, making sauerkraut, water kefir, gingered carrots, homemade yogurt and yogurt cheese. The girls especially liked the pink sauerkraut, made with green and purple cabbages. We eat out on the lanai (porch) for every meal, unless we decide to throw down a blanket under the ice cream bean tree for a picnic. I will do a little video tour soon, so you can get a sense of what our life looks like now.
Jonathan is currently on a little solo camping trip, back down on the beach where he was living when I met him. He's also taken a camping trip with Maya for some special daddy-daughter time. Here's a photo from their beach adventure, hiking three beaches over for drinking water.
Maggie got to sleep out in the tent the other night with him, back in the "secret spot" that he discovered, behind the naupaka. He's a hot commodity these days, everybody wants special time, including me. Here's a picture of him up in the monkey pod tree getting a better view of the sunset.
And here's a few other shots from the past month...
Windblown at the beach
The Easter Bunny came a day late this year because we forgot to dye the eggs til Sunday morning. This is the table on the lanai where we all eat, and the view from where we sit.
Frozen pea snack
Hollerin'
A tea party under the ice cream bean tree, with a new friend, Meila.
That's all for now. I'll post more photos soon of our place and some of the projects we've got going on. I hope you all are well. Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there! Goodnight!
Love,
Heidi
In honor of Maya's 5th birthday today, she wanted me to take her to go see the Godspell show down in town, so after a full day we headed out this evening in a rush. Half way there, I realized she didn't have any shoes with her. After a moment of panic, Julie reminded me that it was completely no problem. We even stopped at the grocery store for a little treat, and she waltzed right in barefoot. No problem. And in the theatre...no problem. I remembered the other day noticing at the post office in Kilauea that more than half the people in line in front of me had no shoes on. One fellow had no shirt. I never ever need to worry about being under dressed here.
Anyways, I digress.
I wanted to just acknowledge a small rite of passage surviving the first five years of motherhood. Everyone says it flies by, but I gotta say that so far it feels like an eternity since I first stepped across this threshold. I vaguely remember life without children, but only as a distant memory, like a smell I can't quite recall. These girls have challenged me in every I can possibly think of, and this is just the beginning. Oh, and I wouldn't trade any of it.
And for fun, a little vintage video of Maya's very first giggles, oh so long ago...
Hello Everyone!
Whew! What a whirlwind few months! We are finally catching our breath and I will do my best to fill you in on all of our adventures here so far...
With the help of our dear friends and family, we made a final push just over a month ago and miraculously made it onto the airplane, all five of us. We had a sobering last day in Minneapolis. That morning, we woke up to an email from our new friends here on Kauai, letting us know that their second child, their unborn baby boy had died suddenly while Kimberly was in labor. These are friends that we hadn't met yet, but had developed a strong pen pal email friendship, with growing excitement for us all to work together and play together. Jonathan and Matt had been brainstorming ways to work together and develop the Nature Mentoring project, and Kimberly and I made plans to hang out at the beach with all the kiddos. It was tragic news to hear of the passing of their son, Finnley Bear, and we spent that final day with heavy hearts doing our best to pack up and clean out the last of our belongings from our house on 45th Street. Thankfully, we had many friends helping us and we somehow were able to say goodbye to our friends and family and our beloved little house. We brought the girls back that evening for one last walk through in the empty house, and they went from room to room blessing the space and thanking it for taking such good care of us. All three of our girls were born in that house, and we sure do miss it.
After a long LONG day on airplanes and in airports...
First time up in the clouds for the girls.
A heaven sent vacant corner in the LA airport.
We were able to spread out and stretch for our layover. Yahoo!
Bustin' out the stickers. Thank you, Rachel, for the ziploc of doodads!
The little lady awaiting her baggage.
...we landed safe and sound into the very soft nest that our friends, Steve and Julie, prepared for us here. Julie had spend at least a month here clearing space for us in the "barn" and setting up a wonderful new home for us. She met us at the airport with a wonderful hug and beautiful leis for us all. Here's Scarlet sporting mine.
Dang, she's cute!
Anyways, Steve and Julie told us we should plan on taking the first two weeks as a vacation, to just decompress, and we were definitely ready for that. The trouble is, we weren't really used to sitting still any more, and we had so much to sort out with our new life here, so we spent much of that time searching for groceries, and finding a used minivan, and all the other logistics of moving to a completely new place. We did fit in a few beach days though, with Maya and Maggie getting their first taste of the ocean. Here's a few photos from that day.
Sporting their new "zucchini's", as Maya has renamed her bikini.
First dip in gentle Anini Beach.
The view from our adopted favorite family spot.
And like true Minnesotans in February, we got fried to a crisp that day. We were all having so much fun, we did not realize how much sun we were getting. So the next few days we spent applying copious amounts of aloe vera gel on each other. Here's a little video of Jonathan mowing the lawn that next day. I call it, "Mary Poppins has a UV Umbrella".
We also were reminded that, yes, there are mosquitos in paradise. The girls ran out with Jonathan one of the first evenings into the bananas to help him harvest, and came out screaming with welts all over. It had been awhile for each of them to deal with the fun sensation of bug bites, and Maggie is still covered with a connect the dot pattern of scabs. Mostly, we have learned to stay out of certain areas unless there's a breeze.
A few blurry photos of the harvest and the welts.
Yum!! Apple bananas, so sweet!
So, with a chunk of the money we made at our estate sale, we were able to find a used minivan for a great price. Here's the girls waiting oh so patiently at the Kilauea Bakery while Jonathan took it for a test drive, and the results of their patience...a 2002 Nissan Quest.
The fellow that we bought it from was playing music at the Bakery with a girl named Natalie, and Jonathan of course mentioned that he plays bass guitar. They were excited to hear that and hooked up for a few rehearsals when they suddenly had a gig. Natalie is friends with Bethany Hamilton, who some of you may remember is the girl from Kauai who had her arm bitten off by a shark while she was surfing. There is a new movie coming out about her story, called Soul Surfer, and Jonathan and the other two were asked to play for the VIP opening of the movie. Pretty cool, he got to sit near all the stunt doubles, and meet the mayor, and Bethany herself. The movie is amazing, if you have a chance to see it...
http://www.soulsurferthemovie.com/
The other fun project we were filling our days with is helping Steve with his Children's Theatre production of Godspell. Jonathan did some set building, making the back of two pick up trucks for the band to be playing in on the side of the stage, and I did all the costumes. It's a modern day beach version of the story, and I was blown away by how talented these kids are. Steve has been VERY busy pulling it all together and this is the second weekend it's showing. It was a bit funny to come all this way, and then find myself at the mall again doing wardrobing. Here's an early shot of the trucks, before they were painted and detailed with Ford and Chevy decals...
We have also been spending way too much time driving to Lihue for all of the logistical stuff of moving, you know...new drivers licenses, minivan title and registration, paying the $140 ticket for talking on our cell phone while driving (good to know that's a new law here)...anyways, we are getting tired of the 45 minute drive to town, especially with gas prices at $4.25, and really just want to hunker down up here on the north shore. Here's some photos of us hanging out today in the shade of a mango tree outside the government center, waiting for Jonathan to sort out some financial stuff.
We did have an exciting arrival the other day. We woke up to find a fairy house outside the barn, down by the Kukui tree, the same fairy house from our old garden. The fairies left a note for the girls, saying they missed us so much that they flew all the way here to move to the farm too. The girls were so excited and promptly found the fairy dust to sprinkle around so the fairies can find their way in the evening. (Thank you Autumn, for filling the fairy dust bottles before we left!)
The girls have also taken on looking after an avocado tree that we planted the other day. We had a really yummy buttery avo from down the road, and when Jonathan cut it open the seed had already sprouted. We decided that was reason enough to put it in some dirt to see what would happen. The girls helped me plant it and have since been watering it every day and cooing over its freshly sprouted leaves. I mentioned to Maya that plants liked to be talked to, so she rushes outside and with a sing-song voice says, "Good Morning, avocado tree, you look happy today. Should I read you a story?" And she chooses The Very Hungry Caterpillar because it is a book about growing. She sat out there for almost an hour that first day "reading" the books from memory.
So, these are some of the adventures of our first month here, and I'd also like to share how we are doing with it all. It has been a roller coaster in many ways. At our best, we have been overwhelmed with gratitude for being here at all, and for being able to live on Steve and Julie's beautiful farm. At Foodland a few weeks ago, I was checking out behind a tourist couple, and for some reason it dawned on me that I don't have to fly out in a week, I get to stay here, and a wave of relief washed over me. On the drive home I started to see the ocean more clearly, and the mountains. We really are here. It's not just a surreal backdrop. Those first few weeks we were in complete shock. To come from the dead of winter and the energetic hibernation it takes to survive in Minnesota, and land smack dab in eternal summertime was quite jarring. My new friend Kimberly shared a secret with me that all Midwesterners who move here discover. We have this feeling about summertime that we have to make the most of every nice day because it'll be winter again before you know it. And that just isn't true here. Every day is beautiful. Even if it's raining. We are still trying to make life happen at the speed of cityness, and it just doesn't work like that here. Oh, you drove all the way to town to do all your errands, but half the places are closed because of some random Hawaiian holiday, and the grocery store doesn't have any of the things on your list? Oh well. It's all good. Speaking of groceries...the next time you walk into your local co-op or fully stocked produce section of Rainbow, kiss the colorful veggies for me. I went to 4 grocery stores the other day looking for turnips or any other produce I could make into a soup, and I had to come to terms with the fact that they just did not exist on the island that day. You'd think with the amazing climate here for growing things that there would be a full selection of food, but that is so not true. A large majority of the food here is shipped in from the mainland. The only organic meat here are chickens at Costco from Oregon, and beef from California. Oh, how I miss walking into the Seward Co-op and finding everything I want to eat. We have been completely changing our eating habits, partly because we have started the GAPS diet due to some chronic health issues, and mostly because we need to simplify our groceries. Jonathan has plans to go wild pig hunting with some fellows here, and spear fishing as well, so hopefully we will soon have a source of the local protein. We also plan to ramp up the farming here soon, which is after all a major reason we are here. Oh, this is the eve of my 35th birthday and I could go on and on, but really should get to bed. I'll leave you with a few more fun pictures and I'll be in touch again soon. Look forward to a video virtual tour of our place, and more tales of the settling in process. We miss you all!
Love, Heidi and Family
Harvesting the jackfruit, not quite ripe yet.
The view from the highway, near the farm.
Testing out a mountain apple.
She's learned to grab, so we set up a shell and coral collection.
The view from the end of our road, at dawn the day of the tsunami.
Maggie's 3rd birthday party
Jonathan always takes the most becoming shots of me.
