Once upon a time I was going to be a journalist/international correspondent to France and spend my time traveling the world parler-ing Français.

Now I spend my days keeping power cords out of a baby’s reach and reminding someone under 3ft tall to keep his feet on the ground, please.

How did I get here?

After growing up near Portland, Oregon and doing my best to avoid being indoctrinated by the left coast, I moved to the Midwest for college only to discover that the hippies had gotten to me after all (thus the Teva sandals and strange fascination with reusable grocery bags).

DanO and I met the first week of our freshman year at Wheaton College outside Chicago (you can read about that here and here) and were hitched by the last week of our junior year (which you can read about here and here) at 20 and 21 years old.

We moved to Minnesota and at 21 and 22, bought a house (which has brought us much entertainment - and by entertainment I mean work). Then, to keep the ball rolling, we went ahead and had our first kid when we were 22 and 23 and our second baby boy at 24 and 25. If you do the math, you will find that I have been pregnant, nursing, or BOTH without a break for well over 3 years.

But boy, are they worth every single day of physical sacrifice.

I work as a full-time mom to our two precious, smiley boys.  I do my best to get down on their level and invest in them with my quality time, just so long as it can be done while holding my coffee cup.

In my… what’s that called again? spare time? Yes, during that, I am usually running, knitting, or blogging.

Also, I somehow got our family involved in a twisted web of cloth diapering, immunization delaying, natural cleaning, breastfeeding advocacy, canning, babywearing, natural childbirth, and generally pretending to be hippies (by, for example, breastfeeding on a washed up log while on vacation at the Oregon coast).

I do not do those things that I listed because a book tells me to, because it fits me nicely into a little box, because everyone else is, or because I think it is the more holy road to take. I do what works. These things work for us.

Mostly, though, family works for us. Crazy traveling, learning, growing, messy, full steam ahead family life – there’s nothing better.