Promises of Freedom

Having not been around my wife and children much because of work being so busy, I made some hefty promises. Promises I was not going to break under ANY circumstance.

Promise #1: Turn my phone off for the entire weekend I was off. I am never truly off, but I had determined my sanity and my family's attention was more important.

Promise #2: Attend my son's football game and give him a monetary prize for each tackle. I guess this was my way of paying him back for all the days that had passed and I had not seen him. My son being the savvy six year old business man he is, counter-offered my promise. On top of the money, he wanted to spend some time out on the land shooting his bb gun. I countered his counter-offer by promising him to take the real guns if he got five tackles. The promise was written in stone.

Promise #3: Build a ladder going up to the hayloft to make it more accessible for everyone.

I was able to hold to every promise and it felt great! Turning off my phone for the first time in ten years was the absolute most liberating thing I have done in a long while. Paying my son for achieving each and every tackle he so diligently worked for was worth every penny. Building the ladder to make my son and daughters' dream clubhouse more accessible and to hear their minds think and creative ideas flow was the absolute icing on the cake, well, almost. The capability to be able to go out and practice our second amendment right on OUR own soil was the cherry on top. I now know what true freedom feels like. I now know what living the dream feels like. Am I in Heaven? I don't think so. It is just the reward of hard work, dedication, and an undying need of fulfillment. Alas, I have found it.

By now you have figured out that my son got his five tackles. The fifth actually happened on the very last play of the game. What he didn't know was no matter if he had gotten them or not, we were going to take the guns out to shoot them. He had tried too hard to get them to be let down, and I needed to relieve some stress. There is no better stress reliever than wasting some lead, at least to me there isn't.

Promises were fulfilled. Exercises of freedom were fulfilled. Living the dream I have for me and my family is still ongoing, and I couldn't be any happier.

Unwanted Motivation

Eighty plus hours a week at a job (going into the busy time of the year), kids in sports, social activities, a few minor kinks here and there, have put the farm on the back burner. Not by choice, we have wanted to be there, but being physically and mentally exhausted, it has kept us from getting any closer to the dream.

Que the unwanted part: A home burglary while at work. A wife and children coming home to a back door that had been kicked in, has added a new sense of urgency in our plans. Luckily the thugs didn't make off with much; although, we all feel severely violated and uneasy.

Que the motivation: A day cleaning out the nasty barn. Physical and mental exhaustion had found a second wind. On a day I am absolutely positive that I would uncover many snakes, I was thankfully let down. A trip to the dump with a ton of trash, well 2,560 lbs to be exact, left the barn in a much better state than we found it. My son also discovered an idea for his dream on the land. He would try to convince me that he NEEDED the hay loft to become his club house. It didn't take that much convincing. One trip climbing up to clean out the hay loft was all I needed to discover storing hay somewhere near ground level is much less work. This has been an overall good decision, because the children have finally gotten excited about something on the land. Yay!

I promise to find myself more time to blog and more time to work on the land, all thanks to an unwanted A-hole who set up temporary residence in our home and took things that didn't belong to him.