Hawaiian Vacation!

About that vacation I mentioned?  Yeah, Hawaii.  To be more specific?  Kauaii!!

To be perfectly honest, I've never been all that interested in a vacation to Hawaii.  First of all, as an east coast resident for most of my life, it was too far away.  I mean, I could get to London easier than I could get to Hawaii.  And I'm not a beach bum...not by a long shot.  So a vacation to 'sit on a beach' didn't appeal to me either.  My husband is the same way so even though we got married in March which is a perfect time of year for tropical vacations, we went to the Canadian Rockies for our honeymoon!

But, with the extended stay dog training on the docket, we were in the market for a trip that would be fairly easy to make on short notice.  Now that we live on the west coast, two locations came up - Hawaii and Cabo.  Both are fairly inexpensive (relatively) to get to from here and both had availability in June.  After some comparison shopping (and stumbling on some photos of Kauai), I decided on Hawaii.

Kauai is gorgeous and looks quite wild.  Think of that scene in Jurassic Park where they are descending in the helicopter near the waterfall - that is in Kauai!!  Once I started to look at activities on all the islands, Kauai quickly rose to the top of my list.  Hiking, kayaking, ziplines, horseback riding.... The terrain is unbelievable and really, the only thing it is missing is hot lava (which I'm not all that concerned with seeing anyway).

We are staying at a hotel in an ocean-view room fairly near the middle of the island so that we can easily get to all areas.  We've reserved a helicopter ride, a sea kayaking trip to the cliffs of Na'Pali, a zipline tour and a luau.  We will also do quite a bit of hiking on our own and perhaps some river kayaking as well.  And I must swim in a waterfall.  I must.

I've also ordered this camera to take with me so that I can take tons of gorgeous photos to share!

Dog Training

OK, so here it is a few weeks later and where are we?  What is happening in our lives?

The sale on the farm home closed right on schedule.  We walked away with just about nothing in terms of cash (the small amount we received after we paid the realtor fees was almost exactly what we owed on the loan for the new roof on that farm house - so we paid it off) but we are 100% free and clear of the home that was financially sucking us dry.

We almost immediately found a new way to suck money out of our account.  Dog training!

Let me explain.  We own three dogs all of whom weigh between 75 lbs and 90 lbs.  We now live in a 1400 sf home with zero yard.  This means that twice a day (minimum) we must walk all three dogs.  Not such a big deal considering that they walk fairly well on a leash and will stand still while we pick up their poo.  Not such a big deal when most of our neighborhood was still under construction and mostly uninhabited.  Unfortunately, as the other homes get finished and people move in, the place is getting busier.  This means there are lots of people about pretty much all the time and many of them have dogs.  Now those same 'walk well on a leash' dogs are not quite so easy to handle when there are people to greet or dogs to run after!  And when three large dogs all decide to head in the same direction, it takes more than either myself or my husband to stop them.  A few weeks ago, I was dragged across the parking lot on my stomach because our dogs had to 'defend' me from the chihuahua who was off-leash and 'attacking' us.

In addition to the walking issue, we have a company issue.  We have friends who are not dog lovers whom we have not invited over in 6 months because we have no way of separating our dogs from them.  We don't like to have any company over (or even get food delivered) because the dogs go ape-shit crazy when someone comes over.  They are nice, friendly dogs...they are just big, hairy, and overwhelming.  It's frankly embarrassing.

When a woman at work was mentioning the training her dogs were going through I perked up my ears.  The place takes the dogs as boarders and they work with them until they recall on command, walk calmly at your side regardless of distractions and will 'down' in the corner of a room filled with other dogs and people.  The answers to our problems!!

It's not a cheap proposition, but in reality, it's not *that* much more expensive than boarding.  So early in June, two of the three dogs will go to training and the third will join them later in the month (she's less of a problem).  When all three are gone, we will be boarding our cat and TAKING A VACATION!!

It'll be our first real vacation together since our honeymoon 10 years ago!!  As much as I"m super excited about that, I'm honestly more thrilled with the idea that we will have well-behaved dogs for once.  When we pick them up, it is a full day of training for us, too.  And it's not a one and done situation either.  We'll have plenty of 'homework' and reinforcement to do once they come home.  Now, if only they could train them to stop shedding.

Wow, I thought dog hair was bad in our last home. That was nothing compared to three of them and a cat in small space!  Thank heaven for our Dyson! ;-)

Closing a door - and finding freedom

Almost 5 years ago, my husband and I made a huge change in our lives.  We were unhappy where we were, so we researched locations we wanted to live and we chose the Portland, Oregon area.  Then we found jobs and relocated here in February of 2008.  We immediately set out to buy a small farm and we taught ourselves (by mostly trial and error and google searches!) how to farm in a sustainable manner.  You can read about our adventures here:

http://simplemetamorphosis.blogspot.com/

About a year and a half ago, we started to question our decision-making paradigm and we spent quite a few months hemming and hawing about our future.  We both loved the farm and wanted to do it full time, but financially, it wasn't a possibility.  After much deliberation, we came to the conclusion that we did want to farm full time, but we also wanted to have full time careers.  To do both, we opted to focus on the career part now, and the farming in the future.  We found a place that is MUCH smaller with zero land (only a small private patio) that is 5 miles from my office and right in the thick of civilization.  It's also holds a significantly smaller mortgage.  We moved into this place in October of 2012 and spent the remainder of the year working on the farmhouse and property, and re-homing the animals in preparation for sale.  This included renovating the bathrooms to take the house form a 3/2 to a 3/3 with a private master suite.  We also replaced all the carpeting and cheap laminate flooring in the main living space with a higher end but durable laminate.  We painted, we de-cluttered and we generally reconditioned the house and listed it in mid-March.  Two weeks later, we accepted an almost full price offer and later this week, we will close on it.

Closing a lovely (but challenging) chapter in our lives.

Now the plan is to move forward with our lives with the intent to farm again when we retire.  The goal is to retire early in about 10 years assuming that we can save/invest enough money to make it financially feasible.  With the smaller mortgage and newer home, we should be able to contribute to that fund in a regular manner.

In the meantime, we will bike more and drive less, we will learn to live in a smaller space, we will both recondition our bodies (we've let all of this get in the way of our fitness levels), we will grow things at our community garden and we will take the opportunity to see much, much more of our gorgeous state, the pacific northwest and the world in general.

Follow along if you are so inclined. :-)