It Takes A Village...

We have all heard the expression "it takes a village to raise a child." Seeing as how I live at least two hours away from family I have learned how to do it without the village. And I often wonder what my kids are missing out on. Other kids have grandparents they are close with. They have cousins they play with regularly. Other kids do not have to drive for four hours just to attend a birthday party for an aunt. Other parents can go to a movie every once in awhile or go to dinner or whatever. We do not do any of those things.


This weekend, like any time that we have events or holidays to go to, we trecked the four hours down state. We stayed with theGrandparents, we went to Hubby's grandmother's house for a visit, we attended the event in question (a surprise birthday party for my aunt), and then got up in the morning, spent a little more time letting the kids play with theGrandparents before we left and then we headed off for another four hour drive home.

And, as always, Hubby and I come home wondering if we should live closer. This time is even worse than others. We learned just this morning that a family member is sick. And now we are left wishing that we could be a part of that village. We want to be there to support this family member and all the others that are dealing with the bad news. We feel bad that all we can do is call.

Living this far from our family is not hard all of the time. Usually we go through life not really minding the distance. I mean yeah the fact that we cannot just get together for dinner is always there but we have a very full, very busy life. And, more importantly, we have the life we want to have. If we were to move down there we would have to give up a lot of things. As far as we can tell there would be no way that we could afford for me to stay home, which is the number one thing that keeps us from doing it. We both feel that having a parent at home is VERY important and neither of us want to give that up.

Other things pop up too. We have a pretty big back yard and a relatively large house. These things would be nowhere near affordable down there. TheGrandparents are trying to sell their house so they can move into an area where there is an active retirement community. They were offered over three times what our house is worth and their house is much smaller with very little backyard AND it was not enough money for them. Then there is the traffic - it took us 2 hours to drive 38 miles on Saturday. That would make me crazy on an everyday basis. Vacations would be harder to swing. Especially the flying down to visit my family in Florida (this is another biggie).

So, all in all we will not move. Because staying home with my kids is important to both Hubby and me. The other reasons would probably be complaints about our new home if we could move and I could still stay home. But none the less every time or every other time we come home from there we discuss it on the way home. And today was no different. We discussed it and once again we are not moving. My guess is that we will discuss it quite a few more times in our lives as well. But I am also positive that we will always make the choice that allows me to stay home. And not just until they go to school - I feel that being home when they get home from school is just as important - possibly even more so as you move into the teen years. But that is a post for another day.