Well it's been FOREVER since I actually sat down and wrote a good post about what is going on in our lives and there has been much going on! I feel like I blinked and 4 months went by! We have had a lot of changes occur in our lives over the past few months. For starters we are no longer in Listowel. We are currently in Regina for the summer and are heading to Calgary this fall, but let's talk briefly about how we came to be where we are now.
Since the start of 2015 Dan and I have been doing a whole lot of soul searching. The move to Ontario really put us out of our comfort zone and forced us to look at our life from an all new perspective. To say we we were unhappy in Ontario wouldn't exactly be accurate. There were definitely trials but there were also a lot of positive things about being in Ontario for the 8 months we spent there. For starters I had a great job doing something I LOVE and I was very happy with the school I was working at, the people I was working with and the kids I was teaching. My job also came to me at a time in my life when I really needed it. I had been struggling with motherhood and all of its demands and it was at a very critical point that I was able to go back to work to do something I really missed and has a lot of meaning to me. It was just what I needed when I needed it.
Another important benefit of being back in Ontario was nearness to family. For the first time in 6 year we were living within and hour of most of Dan's family- this enabled us to spend quite a lot of quality time with his parents, attend big family gatherings and also spend time with his siblings and their families (meeting our sweet little nieces.) We were able to connect with some of my family that I hadn't seen in a long time and see some family members who had never even met Dan or my kids. We were even able to visit with my Grandpa right before his passing and then attend his funeral- which I will always be so grateful for.
Being relatively isolated also helped Dan and I to restrengthen our relationship in a way that I didn't realize we had lost. Because we didn't have any close friends near by or really anyone to hang out with we spent a LOT of time together as a couple and also as a family. We gained a unity that I know I will appreciate as we continue to spend our lives together.
Of course it was also nice to connect with a few friends back in Ontario, visit a few fun places and have some fun adventures that brought back lots of memories, especially for me. All in all Ontario was a fun adventure and I am GLAD we moved there and do not regret it in any way.
So why didn't we stay?
As time went on and we lived the day to day we began to realize that we did not want to stay in Ontario permanently. There were many things that were suddenly absent from our lives that we truly appreciated and missed about being in the west. Probably the most significant absentee was the strength of our church, Our religion is so important to us and really is so much more than attending church on Sundays.
We found ourselves living in a small town where we were the only, "Mormons," and likely in a place where most people there had never even heard of a Mormon (other than the less than accurate media descriptions.) The branch (church unit) we attended was 45 minutes from our home and had about 40 active members including our family of 5. This left us feeling very spiritually isolated and somewhat concerned about what the future might be like for our children. Now I don't mean to sound like we were whiny about being in a small church unit because we weren't, in fact I felt badly about leaving it behind because it is so small there and I know they loved having us there. But we came to understand how much we wanted our church to be a bigger part of our life and it simply couldn't be because the strength of the church wasn't where we were. Now of course we could have lived in a bigger city in Ontario where the church would have been stronger and thus giving us more opportunity to socialize with others who shared our religion, but the fact of the matter is that we came to see that we wanted to be where the church was strong. We wanted to live where there were many members. We wanted to be where we could be friends with those who shared our faith. We wanted to be close to a temple. We wanted to have strength and support from other young families going through similar experiences to what we were going through.
Another aspect of the west which we missed oh so much are those majestic mountains. It's funny because when we lived in Calgary I think that overtime we began to take them for granted, but suddenly in their absence we felt them calling.
There is also something to be said for the quality of life out west that is just so different from that of the East. I don't know if I can explain it exactly but if you have lived in both places you may understand what I am talking about. Life is different on the west side of Canada and that different is something that we liked. I can't deny that I feel there is greater opportunity in the west. It seems so much more forward moving and progressive than the East where some things feel as if they have become stuck in the past.
So, we determined that we would be Westward bound again one day. However we still planned to be in Ontario for 2 years to fulfill an agreement I had. Then a series of strange events occurred that put into motion our move much sooner than we anticipated. Dan was having difficulty finding work (not for lack of trying,) we were quickly approaching the summer months when I would be out of work, and suddenly our landlord informed us he was losing the house we rented from him. In a strange whirlwind we found ourselves with an opportunity for Dan to work in Regina and with no other prospects for the summer and no real reason to say no we took the opportunity.
Sadly for me this meant leaving the studio a month before year end, which was probably the most heart breaking thing about this whole affair. I won't go on about it except to say that you love the kids you teach and I loved my students and felt simply awful about leaving them high and dry right before recital. But the fact was that my own children needed me more and I feel justified in making a choice to be with them so that Dan could start a new job. In the end I'm sure my dance students were just fine without me but I don't think my own own kids would have been. Life is full of sacrifices.
And that brings me to where we currently are. Regina.
Jordan
(Part 2 to follow)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Drop me a line!