where dreams and responsibility collide

No, I have not fallen off the face of the earth. But I was in Las Vegas for a professional meeting, which is pretty much the same thing! Las Vegas is another world IMHO. It was good to get away for a while but even better to come home! I have avoided total burnout -for the time being anyway.
My 10 year old daughter is signing up for her middle school classes. She has opted to take all EDGE classes, which are accelerated classes. She is also getting excited about Forensics and Band class. DH and I are finding it very hard to take the chicks out of this school district. We have been listing the pros and cons of each location in our minds. We have decided stay where we are. We have about 3/4 of an acre in a quiet neighborhood, a fantastic (but big) school district, we are both within 3 miles of our work, and my Mom lives 5 blocks from us. We are going to focus on the urban homestead but still have our camper on Dad's 40 to play and cut wood on.
I am more than a little sad about this, but also excited about the potential to turn our lot into a model for what can be done 'where you are'. The drama queen in me still wants to turn my back on my normal and socially acceptable life, but the parent and responsible adult knows this will be a good thing. I will still cut way back on hours in May once we have more help at work. There is no buyer for my portion of the business in the near future so retreating just is not realistic. Ugh! This responsible crap is not any fun. I will put away 'escape to the country' for now and concentrate on energy conservation, creating vegetable gardens, fruit trees, and time with my girls.

Patience

We have been searching for land to build our new life. It has been an eye-opening process. We started by looking at homes/farms with acreage, but realized that these homes really were no different from our older ranch home in town- if the power went out for more than a day we would be really screwed! Non-reliance on fossil fuels and the power grid is important to us...so we will need to build our own!

So now we are looking at just land, but where? We have drawn a mental circle around our current jobs; approx 30 minutes commute. Which school district? The girls are both in a really great elementary school program and I would love for them to stay. However, land within the district is becoming very expensive and it is really not a farm community. I feel like we would not have enough mental distance from our current lives. It just feels too close. I am also not crazy about the large number of kids in this school. The graduating class will be close to 500 kids. So now we are looking at more outlying areas. I have compared school graduation rates, ACT scores, etc and visited the school in the area we like. Again it just felt right.

We have found a piece of property which fits our needs and wants and is affordable. Wow. Now is the hard part, waiting. There are some right of way issues and we need some co-operation from a neighboring landowner before we can put in an offer. So now it is out of my hands. I have to wait for the town board. Winter is closing in around us and I really need to have something tangible to feed my homesteading dreams. I will have faith and know that it is beyond my control (and develop a back-up plan!). K