What would it be like....?

We have all heard of visualizing what we want to make it become real. They always say to make it as clear, as focused, and as detailed as possible. I have a couple of questions for y'all:

What would it be like to live in the daily life of your dreams?

What would it be like to live without your current limitations?

It's hard for people who are trying to get there to see what exactly they are aiming for. I'm hoping that people who are living their dream life will tell us what day to day life looks and feels like for them, and people who are dreaming to tell us what daily life looks and feels like in their dreams. The more we can share, the more people who are trying to focus their dreams might get good ideas about what where they are going would look and feel like so they can visualize it clearly.

I made a printable copy of these questions, no copyright on them, made to cut into two parts so you can put them up and think on them. (Click the picture for full size to download or print.)  (PM me if you really wish they were in a different color, or a bit different words, I can do more versions easily.)

Hoping in this thread to stick to what it would be like when you are THERE, not getting into where you currently ARE with all of your limitations, we have lots of threads on that, lets pass on our clear, concrete visuals of where we want to be.

:D

This is perfect timing for me, Pearl!  I was just on a trip and traveling let me feel what I'd been losing touch with a bit.  

I want to be feeling the presences of the nature intelligences and forms around me, the feeling of trees as alive beings, balance, ease, health, clarity, energized feeling in my body, desire to move, desire to do, connectedness with all of life.  I'm feeling able to read the communications from nature all the time, and feel unhurried, abundant in energy to get everything done and abundant in patience to do things without hurry.  I'm safe, sure of my place and direction.  I'm sure I'm not making a negative impact on others in the world through my daily or monthly choices, nor dependent on any larger systems that my gut tells me aren't dependable.  I'm in good communication and relationship with my landscape. I'm handling the practical stuff easily and pouring my passion into community, art making, innovation, hearing from higher spiritual realms.  I have brilliant and happy and ethical people all around me.

The daily life of my dreams would be...
Get up eat breakfast and then feed my animals. Then I would go and do as I pleased. I wouldn’t halve to go to work. Wouldn’t half to make money. Instead I could weed my garden and chop fire wood so as not to be hungry or cold. I guess my limitations ate the rat race and lack of self sustainability.

I am pretty much living my dream. Of course, we don't dream the same dream each night.  Then  again, an occasional nightmare can creep in. This morning I woke without an alarm .....wait...my alarm cat woke me. I know the implied threat well.  First, it is the soft purring and cheek rubs.  If I do not obey then comes the nose nips and ear lobe bites. I am well trained. I got up and fed the cats. I grabbed a cup of coffee and took care of the livestock.  I made my round of the property.   I normally pick up wayward trash at this time.  There was little of that, so I pulled some weeds.  I went back inside, grabbed more coffee and some toast. Then  I went on this site.

Afterward, I went after weeds in the garden both with the brush cutter and by hand.  That will continue to be my workday.  I will, most likely fix supper while my wife bakes bread.  Afterward, we will run a couple of loads through the canner. Sometime this eve I will assist my wife in trimming the goat hooves.

A piece of one of my not yet happening dreams...
Lots of us want to sell our produce. I want to escalate that.

Come to my market stand, and I have produce for sale, and cuts so that you can taste the odd stuff I grow, and something cooked from it, and the recipe I used, as well as a few more to try. And a write up about how to save the seeds from it, and how to grow them. And if you are willing to save the seeds, but won't be growing them, bring them back to me, and I'll make sure they get planted somewhere good like a school or nursing home, or given away, or planted for someone who can't do it themselves. Not just selling food, but spreading food security everywhere I can.


:D

Pearl, I feel you and I have very different dreams.

I don't dream about things I want because I basically don't want anything.

At our other place, I had dreams about two things. I continually dreamed about people leaving the door and windows unlocked and I was continually checking them and relocking them.

The other dream was about losing my purse or setting it down and walking off without it.

I still have the purse dream.

I have always wondered what those dreams mean.

Otherwise, I just dream about silly things with people from my past. And mostly when I wake up they are gone from my memory. They are happy dreams.

My dream is to provide myself what I need and thus free myself from anxiety and dependence on the consumerist complex. To be fair, I love the consumerist complex.  I love movies and junk food and restaurants and Amazon Prime.   But I know that none of that is sustainable.  Also to be fair I know I'm trading one anxiety (will the supply chain collapse and leave me screwed?) for another (are vine borers going to decimate my squash crop?)  What I envision is making meals from stuff I've grown or raised. Always having a fun project in the wings.  Nesting in a home I built from the dirt at my feet and making it fit me and my needs.  Having a few extra detached rooms for air bnb guests as extra income and a chance to meet people.  Having woods to walk. A nice aquaponics setup and raised garden beds, blackberry bushes, chickens, trout, etc.

I know I can't do all that alone so I hope to have a loose-knit circle of aquaintances that maybe get together for a council fire or music jam or shared meal nights, and trade what they have for what they want.

The main limitation I have is code.  Without code I would have already built my earthbag home with compost toilets, greywater processing, rainwater cachement, solar/hydro power, earthen floors, quirky windows, etc.  None of this stuff is that hard.  I have no qualms about building an earthbag dome complex.  I just can't.  

I'd settle for being able to do chores without pain. If I knew ahead of time that I would have one day where I could work without limitations, I would try to get things lined up so I could start work on my house first thing in the morning, and just keep building until the day ran out.

On a perfect day I wake up early with the sun just peeking over the mountains across the valley from us.
I let in the dog, greet him with a face massage (his favorite), sip my erva maté and check my email and do some early admin tasks. With the urgent things out of the way, I go feed the animals and lay eyes on everything outside (15 min max). Ideally, I remember to be thankful for what I have, pet the rabbits, smell the flowers, see the bees working. Then I make my own breakfast and go to work in my home office.
I take a few breaks during the morning, maybe to throw in a load of laundry or talk to friends or family (or Permies folks here). By the time I'm hungry for lunch I've gotten the bulk of the day's paid work done and I have something good to eat waiting for me from the night before. I eat my lunch in the sun on the porch overlooking my garden.
On the perfect day I get to spend the afternoon in the garden, since the sun is less intense back there. I may go run errands or go visit a friend. I may take the dog to the park or exercise. I may even work more, if I'm involved in a particularly interesting project.
By the time it starts to get dark I start thinking about making something nice for dinner, and my husband comes home. We take the dog out on his walk and talk through our respective days and burn out our stress. We eat dinner and I get to finish my evening with a cup of tea and a book.

(For the most part this is my reality. I long for more land and a bigger space to farm, but I'm not sure how realistic that dream is. The reality is that I can't do it all, and right now my paid work is what sustains us. For me retirement might be more farming and less paid work, but I also really enjoy my work, and most likely would just do what I'm already doing without getting paid were I to retire. So before I get to that stage I do really need to think about what form "retirement" might take and how my partner would be integrated into that dream.)

I am living my dream life so much so that how do I explain this.  Visualizing what we want to make it become real. Mine is real. Watching wildlife out my front door! This is really my dream life.

I saw a commercial last night and remembered, there are some things that I dream that I want.  You know the actual things I want, not in a dream, that visualizing will make it become real.

I know you all are going to think these are silly and don't belong here so I will give a little explanation.

I live 30 miles from the nearest gas station so my life dreams are mostly unattainable, even with visualizing it most likely will never become real.

One of my dreams is to have chicken fried steak from Cracker Barrel, the kind with a thick crunchy crust with mash potatoes and cream gravy.

Another one of my dreams is to have a burger from Whataburger. If you have not had one you are missing the best burger in the whole wide world, in my opinion.

Now I can easily fix taco salad at home though my favorite is a chicken taco salad from Taco Bueno, it is much better than any that I fix. Is that restaurant even still in existence?

I would love those personal pan pizza that I used to get from Pizza Hut or Pizza Inn, I can't remember which one!  Are those still on the menu?

Now some of you may have thought that my dreams that I mentioned earlier had nothing to do with this thread.  I disagree if you thought that.

Dreaming that all the doors in the house had been left open really upset me and very much impacted my life. So much so that I was afraid that visualizing what I had dreamed might make it become real.

About the purse dream, I even had two incidents where I was told: "You can leave your purse here as it will be okay." I told one of the nurses who told me it would be okay about my dream and we had a good laugh.

To me, these dreams were very real and continue to impact my life.  I don't understand why I keep having them over and over. I keep thinking that they are going to come true and I don't know when.

good luck Rob!  With the power of inspiration things can change.  Laws are made by people, new laws can be made by new people.  

Rob Lineberger wrote:My dream is to provide myself what I need and thus free myself from anxiety and dependence on the consumerist complex. To be fair, I love the consumerist complex.  I love movies and junk food and restaurants and Amazon Prime.   But I know that none of that is sustainable.  Also to be fair I know I'm trading one anxiety (will the supply chain collapse and leave me screwed?) for another (are vine borers going to decimate my squash crop?)  What I envision is making meals from stuff I've grown or raised. Always having a fun project in the wings.  Nesting in a home I built from the dirt at my feet and making it fit me and my needs.  Having a few extra detached rooms for air bnb guests as extra income and a chance to meet people.  Having woods to walk. A nice aquaponics setup and raised garden beds, blackberry bushes, chickens, trout, etc.

I know I can't do all that alone so I hope to have a loose-knit circle of aquaintances that maybe get together for a council fire or music jam or shared meal nights, and trade what they have for what they want.

The main limitation I have is code.  Without code I would have already built my earthbag home with compost toilets, greywater processing, rainwater cachement, solar/hydro power, earthen floors, quirky windows, etc.  None of this stuff is that hard.  I have no qualms about building an earthbag dome complex.  I just can't.  

If I understand your question correctly, you would like to know what our dreams are and what inhibits them or are obstacles to them. I like this; getting it down in digital ink helps me visualize what my goals are.

What would it be like to live in the daily life of your dreams?

Awaken every morning fairly early, like 7AMish or even earlier and do my morning prayers and meditations, and finish with breakfast. Then, if the weather is nice from Spring through Autumn, do whatever needs to be done in the gardens and yard. I do not do very well in heat and humidity, so with diligence, discipline and perseverance I hope to be able to ‘get out there’ and do all this before the heat and humidity become unbearable for me; this might mean spacing out the work throughout the week. Hopefully, my garden (soon to be expanded upon from its current size) will offer a diversity of herbs and vegetables and rooted things; not enough to completely support me and alleviate the need for light shopping, but enough to make a substantial dent in my dependence on external sources of food. I won’t give up on farmer’s markets (which I am only beginning to explore, I am embarrassed to admit) and other local shopping. So, essentially a nice balance between what I buy from local sources and what I can supplement by my own efforts.

On more intemperate days (rainy, or during the Winter) spend these mornings reading or watching DVDs or streaming TV. I'm open to some other hobbies....

After lunch, spend the next several hours, perhaps until early evening: writing, blogging and other work-at-home jobs and gigs to earn just sufficient income for our needs..

Evenings, quietly reading or other entertainment.

What would it be like to live without your current limitations?

Much of the same as the above, but perhaps the more physical activities I would build upon. I have arthritis and bursitis. Many days it is painful to move around. Getting up is a hassle. I also have respiratory issues and all these contribute to fatigue (although my primary care physician is starting to address this. I may have [url] https://permies.com/t/122891/Diet-sleep-aids-insomnia#984274 /url] sleep apnea, this may contribute to fatigue. I 'desaturate' from the amount of O2 I'm supposed to get.)

Some limitations are financial; transportation is an issue sometimes (semi-reliable vehicle). The idea of taking a more active role in 'upcycling' and related concepts (driving about and seeing what goodies others consider 'junk'. Of course, the downside of this is gas expenditure...)

Spend less time on divisive and histrionic parts of social media; use social media to be more sociable, not anti-sociable.

I hope this is a fairly acceptable reply to your topic.

Parts of my day that feel like dreams come true:

I wake up when I wake up and get there when I get there. Most of my life now is at my pace. 

Wake up, roll out of the futon onto the tatami, turn off the window fan and peek outside. My windows slide open sideways as does the screen so there is no barrier between inside and outside. Smile at the green that we have created and the life we have invited to the space. 

Coffee, med that works, comfortable clothes, coffee, Permies - recents. 

Daughter wakes up when she wakes up and we get her to school when we get her to school, and sometimes not if she's not feeling it. Almost every morning is relaxed without worry of deadlines or lateness. 

My daughter is more independent and can communicate her needs. She needs less of my time and less of my energy. This seemed like an impossible dream just a year ago.
 
Daughter goes to school and I have seven glorious hours to do anything or nothing. Being able to commit a few hours to a task, to know I can complete it without interruption, was just a dream a few months ago. There are less have-to's and more want-to's, and a lot of the time they overlap. Common to-do's are plant seeds, save seeds, laundry, plant out the plants left in pots, feed the goldfish, select which weeds to leave and which to pull, tear stuff down, build stuff up, research and design stuff, harvest. 

My environment is suited to me, mostly. In a typical day I will hear more sounds that I like than those I don't like. These days I hear the cicadas' "weh weh weh waaaaaaah", bees a buzzing, river a rushin, thunder a grumblin, wind a rustlin, pitter patter of the rain, a chorus of birds and insects I don't know the names of yet. And of course music and no close neighbors to worry about disturbing. There is nobody around and no one bothers me.

Same for smells, more good than bad. The neighbor's rice getting ripe, freshwater and algae, the lavender I planted, the camphor tree at school when I drop my daughter off, soil, manure, old stuff and old books, the mint or thyme or celery or sage I stepped on, far away neighbors burning rice straw. 

Same for sights. Trees swaying in the wind, the river rushing and swirling and sparkling, a fire, the change from years old plastic mulch to green and flowers buzzing with life. I see everyday the positive impact I am having on my surroundings. And I see so much potential for more change. And I'm confident we can do it. My garden promises novelty each day, a new bug, a new sprout, something I haven't seen before. 

When I'm hot, I can turn on the AC or dip in the river. When I'm cold I can turn on the heater or start a fire. I have time to enjoy the feeling of the wind or the rain, the particularly soft leaf, the smooth beach rock, my sleepy daughter on my back, fish nibbling my feet in the river. 

The more I live life, the more important these smaller parts of the day seem to become. They all add up to influence my mood. So these environmental factors were very important in the decision to live where we are living now. 

My husband is truly my life partner. We compliment each other well. The stuff I think is hard, he doesn't mind. And the stuff I think is easy, he has a hard time with. I don't have to stress about making a phone call, that's an Akira job. He doesn't have to worry about becoming fluent enough to comprehend cutting edge agroforestry research, I can translate. In general, I'm the thinker, he's the doer. 

Pick up daughter from school, have a snack, and we all go to the river for a swim. If it's not a good river day, we can go play at our future house which is across the street from our current rental. That house is ours and the land is ours. Our daughter is free to write on the walls, break stuff, drown plants with the stream-fed hose, and run around inside the fence. Don't have to worry about her running into the road. My husband and I are free to improve the house and land and are motivated to do so as it will be ours for as long as we live. 

Dinner, sometimes we want the same thing and take turns cooking. Sometimes we want different things and each make our own. The culturally important foods to me have become more available here, so I can have a grilled cheese and he can have noodles. And our daughter can enjoy both. 

Play, watch tv, read books, bath if they want (that's an Akira job). We get to bed when we get to bed and fall asleep when we fall asleep. The window fan is plenty cool at night and provides the white noise for a good night's sleep.


Dreams we are still working on:

My husband is still having to work. The next big dream to work on is how to make the money we need ourselves. So a completely self determined schedule, self employed, doing many small things that add up to a little more than cost of living. I want to contribute to the money pool in a way that's not stressful. A likely candidate business would be translation.

Animals added to the family! A dream day would include waking up with at least one dog and at least one cat in the bed. Give them a few pats before letting the dogs out to pee. Breakfast for everyone and a morning walk/patrol of the grounds. My dream dog would like to swim. I've not yet managed to pick out a dog that liked water. Make or refurbish some forest trails and let the dogs run. They are satisfied and laying down for the rest of the day. Maybe an evening brush while the family watches a movie on our American-sized couch. 

And chickens! are actually coming in a few weeks. A dream is to watch the chickens pick off all the bugs that are bothering our plants. Also being able to keep eggs out of the fridge. The chickens are happy to see us, they follow us and come when called. They are endlessly entertaining. 

The biggest limitation I have been feeling lately is intolerance to heat. A dream would be to not be bothered at all by 100 degree weather with baking sun. A more realistic dream would be that the neighborhood is shaded by trees and terraced vines that we've planted, and there are meandering streams here and there offering cool water for your feet. 

The sun comes streaming in through the french doors. I open the doors into a deck overlooking the Double Nickel valley. This is our valley.  

Winter has begun to relinquish it's hold.  The soil is starting to thaw. I smell the soil. Deep, wet and rich.

I smell coffee. The DH has been busy.

Sitting at the kitchen table, I open my planner. This holds my designs and dreams for The Garden. The Garden is this year's adventure. What new structures will be added? What old attempts will be swept away? The planner holds the memories of glorious successes, epic failures and all that happened in between. The planner holds the map for this year's Garden.

The dog and I conduct our morning ritual. Check the barn. Feed the rabbits and goats and chickens. Break ice in the water bowls. Get hay, add straw. Shovel.

Fog is drifting from lingering pockets of snow throughout The Garden.  Soon. The snow will be gone. Soon.

I use my boot to make ruts, creating little fast moving rivers of snow melt. I set a leaf from last autumn's gathering to sail down the make shift river. The dog digs in the leaf pile. A sleepy chipmunk awakes. The chase is on.

I continue the inspection. The soil is almost ready. I check the hot house. The seedlings are almost ready. Wet and cold, I turn back to the house.

Today I will work on my painting. Or maybe the quilt. Then lunch, then dinner, then sleep.

Maybe tomorrow The Garden will be ready. I know I will be.

It sad but my dreams are entirely conventional......
I dream of metric tons of money at my disposal! And dispose I would!
An epic spending spree of such climactic excess that it would make the glitterati blush with shame at their unbecoming modesty!
I would dress my Beloved in enough fur and silk and Italian leather that the proprietors of such necessities, grandchildren could afford a sumptuous education and a lavish lifestyle.
My driveway would be long and bountiful overwhelmed with bouncing children of fat overpaid gardeners, meticulously tending the least detail of everything rare and beautiful
My fields would be so vast armies of caballero's would greet each other with family tidings from distant homes in the frozen wastes of Montana to the smoking slopes of the Sierra's wishing each other well and exchanging breeding stock in pursuit of perfecting a new strain of Pegasi
My chefs would crush mighty oak tables with feasts so sumptuous that superlatives fail and then relax the next day while their compatriots celebrate their excellence with feasting!

But......
While I prepare for that day.......
I'll climb into a state truck and grind my way across the face of Idaho admiring the excellence (or lack thereof) of the craftsmen plying their trade in the Land of the Free.....and that aint so bad in it own right.

In my ideal scenario...

I would wake up in bed next to my much better half, woken by the sun on my face, or maybe the insistent, disgruntled thump of our Flemish giant, wanting food, because the hay we free-feed her is somehow insufficient. We would linger in bed as long as possible. I won't get into details.

I would go to the kitchen and boil water for my spiced oatmeal and bullet coffee, with a necessary pit-stop, and get my much better half some strawberry yogurt with granola.

At some point in this process, we'd be interrupted by a mess of children.

We'd eat breakfast in the early morning sunlight at stools at the breakfast bar of the kitchen island. Oatmeal or yogurt and granola for the kids. No coffee for them.

I would, at some point during all this, have checked my smart farm app, which would have woken me in the night had anything required emergency attention. The self-contained chicken tanks (upgraded semi-automated chicken tractors) would have travelled to a new piece of pasture and deployed, about five to eight days after the ruminants had used it. The barn would have opened, our llama would have led the alpacas and sheep out to the newly-opened fresh paddock adjacent to the one they'd grazed yesterday, and the LGDs would race to run the perimeter before the llama was halfway out.

I would walk through our greenhouse, checking that all the electric pumps are functioning and moving the water in the in-ground ponds under our feet properly, and that temperature, oxygenation, and filtration are being maintained. I would stop briefly by our saline tank, where the baby freshwater shrimp were raised until their freshwater phase, and where our adult salmon were finished. I would decide that salmon sashimi was on the menu that night, and make a mental note to fish one out later.

If they were in season, I would grab a grapefruit off one of our trees, and collect whatever avocados had fallen. I would bring it all back to the kitchen and tell my thoughts to my much better half, who would tell me again that she had no interest in eating salmon, though the kids devour it raw or cooked, nor did she appreciate my jokes about brussel sprouts, which the kids would again just destroy, and I would tell her I wasn't joking, but that I would make candied carrots and caramelised onions as well, and that I wasn't joking. Her bread would just have cooled enough to cut, and I would spread slices with fresh butter from our mini jersey herd.

The spider drone responsible for the milking of our heritage miniature Jersey herd would have finished its task long before the doors opened to let the livestock run and play, and the milk within the swappable abdomen-like collection tank now absent its head, legs, and thorax would already have been transferred to a chilling unit. I would take the first 150 mL of milk reserved from each cow to deliver to the pig slop and feed the porkers before they'd be pastured for the day.

Finally changing out of my PJ pants, I'd don my overalls, billowy long-sleeve shirt and giant straw hat, and walk the farm, probably joined by several rugrats. Each kid would have a dog with them.

Tablet in hand, I would make notes on the land map app, noting where more wood chips were needed, and where food hedges needed emergency pruning versus pruning that could wait until the appropriate season. I would walk all the pasture or field crop alleys between my food forest hedges at least once a week by walking a portion each day. I would take my companion LGD, the mother of the males guarding the livestock, with me on my rounds. I would carry with me a large customised cattle prod, designed to be able to dissuade anything I would need to dissuade short of a charging bear, for which I would probably be carrying a firearm suitable for emergency self-defense, like an appropriately loaded shotgun (slugs, I would imagine).

My assisted rewilding of my zones 4-5+ would include wood bison and beaver as keystone species. I would also run a nursery for the new North American Mammophants we'll engineer, winterized pachyderms for packing the snow in the winter and accelerating the nutrient cycle in the temperate months, hardy from warm temperate climates all the way up to the arctic. They would excel in selective logging operations, but especially in the winter, when the ground freezes solid, and would make soil in such volumes, we'd need to get them to graze and browse it just to make sure it occurs in many places, rather than accumulating in one.

I might process a batch of ethanol derived from my fuel grapes, an engineered variety of super-sweet grape with high-test champagne yeast in the skins that not only ferment on the vine and stay there into the winter, but also make one hell of an icewine jack. Just let them freeze, give 'em a squeeze, and it'll run your engine, literally and figuratively.

At lunch, I would grab that salmon and make sashimi for the fish-inclined, which we'd eat with our own soy sauce and wasabi. I would look over the aerial drone footage to determine if anything in the fibre, seed, and fuel crop areas needed attention.

I would harvest what was in season either in the morning before 9, or after 4 in the afternoon, when the sun wouldn't be so scorchy. With a lot of perennials and permanent structures in-place, I would probably build a track-based cart system, probably with electric motors. These would follow me as I made progress harvesting a row.

I would sacrifice all my livestock on-site, and they would live according to the One Bad Day theory, and nothing would be used or consumed without mentally acknowledging its cost in material and mortal terms, be it plant, animal, or fungus.

We would eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, and everything we'd need would either come directly off the land and our systems, or be traded for with neighbours.

And the soil... oh, the soil. I would need to buy the adjacent land just to spread the wealth around. My operation would exist as a model to show to get others to live abundantly while producing soil as a priceless byproduct.

Because our house would be built within a greenhouse, we'd go to sleep with the stars in our eyes each night, except for when we get light shows from lightning or the aurora borealis. And because we always dream, even when living our dreams, I would go to sleep planning the construction of the farm's 1000 tonne cargo capacity heavy-lift airship, which would take us to our boreal/tundra rangeland, to our maritime playground out in Nova Scotia, or to our island getaway in Jamaica.

-CK

I wake up like I usually do, with no alarm and choose to get up instead of fall back asleep (usually) because the day is ready for me!

I open the curtains and see what the sky has in store for the morning. I make my coffee and first breakfast and just slowly enjoy my coffee while watching the birds hunting for their first morning worm or caterpillar from out the kitchen window. I go get dressed and put away my futon. I put together the rest of the family's breakfast (my second breakfast). And eat together when they all wake up.

I go into work at the university and teach a couple periods and have lunch at a cafe with a friend or colleague. Some of my students wave when they see me pass on campus.

I come home in the early afternoon and walk through the garden, finding what's ready to eat and what needs to be planted. I harvest and prepare the garden as needed. Then we cut vegetables for dinner, and maybe get it started cooking. Then my wife and I take an afternoon walk or a nap, or both. By then the kids are probably ready to come home. We have some brief conversation and everyone enjoys some time alone to unwind. After a while it's dinner time. We all share in setting the table and getting everything nice so we can enjoy the experience as if our house was a top tier restaurant. We have some seasonal flowers from the garden displayed at the kitchen table, and at least two of the things in the meal come from our garden. After we clean up the table we either play a board game, a card game, play music, or work on a family project.

While we're winding down for bed we get together one more time around a low table, light a candle and share what we are most grateful for in the day and then we put out the candle go read ourselves to sleep.

On the weekends we go for a bike ride, go swimming, to the beach or the river, go hiking, or go camping, or maybe board games with friends.