Being Green

Part of my goal since moving to Nebraska has been to increase what we do as a family to live "green". On average, Nebraska is ages behind Vermont in "green living"-when I told our painters we were looking for a "green and environmentally friendly" paint for our home this spring I was told that Home Depot has tons of shades to choose from...... but there are tons of residents who really go above and beyond the "green" lifestyle. While I am not brave enough to venture into the world of cloth diapering like our friend is, we are doing our part to reduce what we can. Here's a few things we do....

• Paint with only "green" paint
• Recycle
• Buy local produce, meats, etc... as much as possible
• Eat seasonally
• Limit our light usage to only when we are in the room
• Take shorter showers than ever before (this is a challenge for S)
• Limit our consumption of "goods"-be it food, clothing, material goods, etc... (I'm attempting a new blog on this, hoping to get it up and running by September!)
• And, finally, my favorite, we line dry as much clothing as we can....

Note the fabulous baby gowns...

All in all, we are doing our best to reduce our carbon footprint, and we will cotinue to try more in expanding our efforts. Do I think we will get an award from Al Gore??? Not really...but I do hope that our efforts are doing a little something. Plus, the smell of line dried laundry just makes me happy.

Reality

Here's the reality of living in Nebraska with a newborn and our closest family 1500 miles away...it's hard. Not just hard, it's painful.

When we first start planning to have a child we were both working wonderful, flexible jobs in Vermont and lived so close to family that we could easily have babysitters at the drop of a hat. We owned a home that was our prefect house for the next five years, we knew our town, we were comfortable every day. Now, we have no family, a house that we like but are not in love with and plan on selling in about 2 years, we still have to use our GPS to get around to anywhere outside of our area and we are bone achingly lonely.

The reality is, no matter how many friends you have, no one can replace your family, and we live in a city where everyone has at least one side of their family within driving distance. I'm not sure if we had moved to more of a "transplant" city, where it was common for couples to live far away from their family, if it would be easier, but I do know that living here is hard. Everyone we know gets to spend great family time, and give their parents "face time" with their new little ones, and we can't do the same.

S and I know that our choice to move out here was just that, our choice. We moved so S could finish a major certification in his engineering field that he was not able to finish in Vermont, and we know it will provide for a much more fruitful future for us. And it was hard to be 20+ weeks pregnant and say "goodbye" to our family, our house, and all things comfortable. And it was hard to move into a house when it was -20 out, and you're an exhausted pregnant woman who has been sleeping on the floor for 3 days. But nothing was as hard as saying goodbye to our families in June and knowing we were on our own, and that we wouldn't be seeing them again until August or September, and they would miss their grandson's first smiles, giggles, and our strugges would be ours alone.

And I know it will get better, but this first year is the hardest. Every event is the first time without family, in a new city, and it feels "wrong". We will be spending Thanksgiving just the three of us, and Christmas will only be with one set of parents. We hope that in the coming years, as S finishes his certification, we can make a decision that will not only be the best for us financially, but also emotionally.

But right now, it just hurts.

Nebraska vs Vermont

Lately I have been yearning to move back "home" to Vermont 24/7. So I figured I would blog about what I miss, and what I enjoy in Nebraska right now.

Vermont Misses:
-Being close to family (we went from living 3 houses away from S's family and 45 minutes from mine, to living 1500 miles away from anyone we are genetically attached to)
-Our big wooden porch (now we have a cement slab, boo)
-Privacy at our home
-Gorgeous Vermont Summers

Nebraska likes:
-Being 10 minutes from Target
-Classic brick tudors in our neighborhood
-Being 15 minutes from downtown and the airport
-Our fireplace-it's stinking cute!

Who knows where we will be in 3 years... we know we will need to have purchased a bigger home in NE than we have now, so we may have an bigger NE home or we may move elsewhere.....only time will tell!

The past year...

In a desperate attempt to keep up with all that has happened since last July we have decided to start a blog. Yes, M&S are entering into the modern world, finally! I'm going to say it all began with getting an IPod Touch and a Flip camera for Christmas. We were suddenly thrust into the world of touch screens and itty bitty screens, and now we have continued our exciting technological advancement with "smart" phones. While we may only be as up to date as 2008, we are getting there!

Here's the highlights of the past year:

We got married-07.25.09:

Bogey Joined our Family 08.27.09:

We got pregnant 09.19.09 (picture at 35 weeks):

We moved from Vermont to Nebraska 12.31.09:

Goodbye Vermont...

Hello Nebraska!

We Had a Baby, Anders Daniel L, 06.04.10:
And that's all of our big changes...for this week at least! On our docket for new things to do: some home remodeling (still!), more landscaping projects, and enjoying our son. S would love to get him into hockey skates this fall, but I think we may have to wait until he can stand on his own for that one!