Getting ready for a visit with the cousins at the beach!

We're waiting for Cindi and Chelo and the boys to arrive this weekend. Our folks have gotten a beach cottage on base next week, so Steve and I are rearranging work schedules to take some time off. It will be great fun to be all together!

I'm going to be driving back to Colorado with Cindi and the boys when they leave, to spend a couple of days checking out the community in Fort Collins. I've been wanting to move to Colorado for several years now, and last summer, both Steve and I were quite taken by the downtown and art scene of Loveland, which is just to the south of Fort Collins. We came back from that trip full of energy to get our house on the market and move, but as the fall progressed and we got involved in starting up our new UU church here, the momentum ebbed.

I keep telling myself that I should be happy wherever I am and find my contentment internally, but I just can't shake this urge to live somewhere that isn't so thoroughly conservative, religiously and politically. (One of the things that struck me about Loveland is that a few people had liberal political yard signs in their yards. That does not happen here. I get so excited when I see a liberal bumper sticker on the freeway here -- once every few months -- that I'm compelled to wave and give a thumbs up to the usually bemused driver.)

I can make up all sorts of good reasons why we should move -- we can buy something small outright and work less, being top of the list -- but in truth, I just want to move. I want to experience seasons again. I want to have chickens and a bit more land. I want to be involved in a vibrant "out" liberal community (the Fort Collins UU Church has over 500 members!) I'd like to be closer to my sister and her family. (And I want my parents to move out there too!)

California, or my corner of it at least, is crowded, its culture revolves around buying stuff and we seem to be so busy earning money that we don't have time for each other. It may be that the rest of the country is like that now, and I'm imagining points east as they were 30 years ago. Hence, the scouting expedition. And we'll go again with the whole family, so that the kids can get a feel for where we're talking about moving.

When we returned from Colorado last fall on fire with plans to move, we were astonished to hear that our wonderful neighbors down the street, Don and Brenda Gray, had just decided to move back to Oregon. We were struck by the synchronicity of our decisions and I was further convinced our exploration of community here was playing out.

Steve, for his part, would probably never move from here. He's mindful of the huge effort and disruption involved in moving, and he finds contentment where he is much better than I do. When I point out, however, that we cannot sustain our current lifestyle here without earning more than we have of late, he says, "Let's get the house on the market then."

He's been putting in many hours in the studio lately, exploring, more intensely than I've ever known him to go, his fine art. He says it has not only improved his craft dramatically as an artist, but his newspaper illustrations and his children's work has benefited as well. I'd hate for him to have to put that back on the shelf to focus on more "profitable" pursuits, and I feel like I'm in danger of burning out on massage if I try to keep up my pace of the last year. I like how much time we've been able to spend at home with the kids -- these childhood years are starting to fly by, especially once I started to work again. All this seems a strong argument for downsizing right now, and that isn't going to happen in California. (Well, we could move to Yucca Valley on a little bit of land, but we're talking Mojave Desert. I suppose I could adjust to that...)

I'm not sure I can generate enough sustained enthusiasm and momentum to get the four of us moving, I'm not sure we can really find something suitable for us in our price range, and I can't guarantee that I'll be happy forever in Colorado (I think Steve would like this assurance), but I do know we'd fill our lives with fresh energy and new experiences and I'm trying to keep myself convinced that that is worth the effort!