He Said/She Said Edition: Simplifying Life

She said:

Settling back into life in the states has been anything but settling. Our hearts had changed. Thank goodness. Our priorities had changed. (We hoped they would!) And gosh darn it- I lived for seven months out of a suitcase. How could I not be a changed woman? We just thought we would move back in to our old house, slip back into a corporate job, keep on homeschooling. Done and done. Easy and easy. That is what the kids expected, that is what we were gonna do.

Then we didn’t.

The real estate market in Colorado had gone a bit crazy. We crunched numbers, we dreamed “What if’s.”

“What if you didn’t go back to traveling for your job again?”

“ What if we didn’t stay in the house?”

“ Where would we go? What would we do?”

The kids and their friends. We had already been gone a while. Wasn’t everyone ready to be settled again? That is what we thought. What we expected of ourselves. But was it what we wanted? Remember all those years we worked to get that! Our dreams. Right there in front of us. Why wouldn’t we want that? And the thing was…. we did. But, we wanted other things too.

One of our most favorite things while traveling was being together in close knit quarters, living with just what we had in our suitcase. It was so freeing. No cleaning days, no decisions about what to wear from our walk in closet and then not being able to find anything.

Simple. We liked it.

So........we sold our house and all of our stuff in it.

Growing While Downsizing…….Simplify Life.

xoxo- Jess

He said:

Living in Ken Caryl Valley, Colorado was a lot like living in the Garden of Eden. Beautiful red rock outcroppings at every turn, deer and elk right outside your living room window munching on your bushes and flowers year round.  It felt like a fairytale. The place is only a few miles from the famed Red Rocks Amphitheatre and is every bit as stunning. A place that any sane person would never want to leave, right?  

Yes. I commented many times to friends and family that we were never “leaving” this beautiful garden. That we were so “lucky” to have settled there. True. But after coming back to America after living in small, one and two bedroom spots across the world, our mindset was different. We felt we had to do something about it.

The day came when our house was bought. I was trying to think of all the great things this chapter would bring, but I still couldn't help thinking I was insane for leaving The Garden.  Everyone else was content around me! Neighbors, friends, and visitors all wanted to know why we were leaving? We just knew it was time. We knew that living in other places with smaller, more simple accommodations, at a slower pace had connected us. We didn't want to give that back.

I've recently been studying the Spanish Inquisition during homeschool with the boys and one story stuck me. When Cortes invaded modern day Mexico and met Montezuma, he ordered his Spanish comrades to “burn the boats”.  No choice but to make it work. No looking back. No fallback plan B. Similarly, it was not possible to live the same way we had before. We felt different. We didn't want to slip back into our same patterns. Old habits. We liked new surroundings. Loved the discovery of new things.

We “burned the boats” and moved to the mountains full-time. However, in the short run, boats weren't the only thing being burned. Our reserve cash pile also felt like it was on fire, too.  It would have to be.  Against all my corporate financial training and personal fears about being an “accumulator”,  we left The Garden and departed for a simpler life at 10,000 feet above sea level in the Rocky Mountains.

Cheers to dreaming- Matt