V&K's 2014 in Review

Jan: Set New Year Resolutions.... Evidently I didn't work hard enough on them- cuz they didn't work out. They were good ones too. Maybe I'll try again for this year:
1) Act in 1 Community Play
2) Plan my weekends further in advance- I'm starting to do this again
3) Volunteer at least once a month.

Feb: The Florida/Montana Sanders come to visit!  We had a blast hosting our family members from the corners of the U.S.A.

Families are like fudge — mostly sweet with a few nuts.~Author Unknown (I found this quote particularly apropos since we all like fudge and we're all a little nutty)

(Yes, he's named after Harry Potter. Yes we acknowledge that we are BIG FAT dorks)

March: We celebrated Texas Independence Day by adopting the best little doggie in the world: Dobbie Perseus Rogers. 

Also, Kyle turns the BIG 30! He's officially old. Not me though. I will perpetually be 29.

We're pretty in love with this little guy

April: Kyle decides he wants to be a welder. We look at local schools, but ultimately decide the top welding school in the world would be worth the effort.OHIO it is....

Last Event at Free Trade Alliance

May: Spurs rock the NBA once again. Love my Spurs!

June: Kyle and Vanessa furiously pack; furiously in both senses- angrily because we hate it, but also at the pace of speedy Gonzalez.

Our lovely friends at our going away party

July: After taking a deep breath, we take the plunge and move to Ohio. Our Roadtrip there is a LOT of fun.

August: Disney Reunion! Eleven years ago, Kyle and I took another leap of faith and moved to Florida to do a "college internship" at Disney. 11 years later, these ladies are family to me. So happy that we get to live near'er' to them. Seven hours sure beats 20 hours driving. 

September: We've moved to Troy, Ohio, a small town of 25,000, live in a house from 1908, a block away from one of the most trafficked train tracks... 38 trains daily. The train itself isn't too loud, just conductors liberal use of the horn...

We're a "lightening strike"

October: Halloween happens

November: First Thanksgiving by ourselves. Its lonely, but we're blessed that we have each other.

Ohio is cold- even Dobby agrees

December: We celebrate 14 years of togetherness.... wow... We're OLD!

Oh yea, and Kyle grew a beard!

Merry Christmas from our Family to Yours!

And you know what else...

Nerves.... the ones that dance through your bloodstream causing havoc, and general symptoms resembling heroine withdrawals, they are also a culprit.  They initiate writing blockages the size of Mt. Helen. They stop the words from coming anywhere near this blog. A 15-paragraph pile-up of thoughts, feelings, unspoken fears have caused a traffic jam of epic proportions measuring back miles and miles.  It may take weeks for the appropriate authorities to clear the wreckage and alleviate the stoppage. Its those nerves that cause my heart to race once I allow myself to find the recesses of my mind that cause the twitching, asylum-like blank stares.  Those heart-racing anxiety permeated nerves, they suffocate my creative voice until its nothing but a squeak. Sometimes I don't write because I'm afraid my fearful thoughts will bubble out of me, and make loved ones concerned of my well-being. If I let all of those truths, rational or absolutely ridiculous splatter the pages of this journal. And when I say truths, I don't mean that my fears are truths, but the true thoughts, anxieties, and angst coursing throughout this body are real no matter how absurd.  I wont lie, this is a bit of a stressful time, and sometimes the unknown scares me so much I feel the need to clutch my heart and manually pump it, but I also have faith. I have faith that we are competent, talented and wont die in a gutter. I am confident in our ability to make this move work, and for us to find our own version of happiness and success. But it may take a while for the blogging to catch up as my fingers want to fidget more than they want to be a conduit of my thoughts.


P.s. Kyle says this post makes me sound depressed. Don't worry, I'm not. How can anyone be depressed with so many festivals. Seriously, Ohio has a festival for everything. I am just a worry-wort, I needed to express it. I think I come by that naturally.

Can you find the Dobbers?

Dobby, the cutest dog in the world, second only to Princess Aurora, may she rest in peace, felt uneasy about all of the packing we were doing. 10 points to who ever can find our puppy in Kyle's disasterous closet- and no, this closet does not look like a tornado went through it because we were packing, it always looks like this.

The picture of Dobby reminded me of Aurora as we were packing for Chile, South America. She also didn't like our packing and made sure to climb into the laundry basket of clean clothes to let us know. 

And here are some obligatory pictures of adorable Aurora, and Dobbydoos.

Road trip to OHIO!

Day 1: (3.5 hour drive) Brownwood: An adorable little town with a pretty spectacular new family, the Nesses, some of our favorite people in the world!   We made a stop in Brownwood to visit with friends and explore their amazing new house.

Kyle and Dobby taking a nap on the couch after unpacking

We drove through Dublin, the home of the first Dr. Pepper bottling company.

 Day 2: (4 hour drive) Dallas: We don't have photographic evidence of visiting with Kyle's parents, but we always love visiting with the rents. 

Dobby is an excellent backseat driver

Day 3: (6 hour drive) Searcy, AK: We had a lovely time visiting Shara and Mike, long time close friends who have housed on us on past cross-country road-trips as well.

Movie time!

Introducing Princess Kyle: Dress up time with Shara's daughter Addison was fun for everyone!

Day 4: (11 hour drive) Dayton, Ohio.  Home...our new home, at last.

Fitting the pieces together

I'm kinda sick this weekend. I say kinda because as long as I'm not moving, I feel fine. Its only when I move from off the bed that I feel ill. I hope that it passes quickly, because its annoying being sick. Being sick cramps my style yo!  But as I was in the process of getting sick I realized that sometimes reading my body requires a lot of trial and error.  For example, yesterday, we went to the National Museum of the United States AirForce.  The museum is free to the public and is fascinating.  As we were walking around, a pain started in my stomach.
1st diagnosis: Thirst. "I'm really thirsty. I'm going to go find some water." I say to Kyle. The water fountain wasn't far, and after gulping half a liter of water, my stomach isn't quelled. 
Conclusion: Stomachache. Yep, it wasn't thirst, my stomach was aching.

My understanding husband took me home early without finishing the exhibit. The museum is free so we can visit anytime, and preferably on a day when I am not coming down with something. On our drive home, I felt as if my energy has been kidnapped. My body refuses to hold itself up. Once home, I flop onto our bed, and lay where I have fallen like a discarded rag doll.
1st diagnosis: I'm exhausted and need a nap, even though I have only been awake a few hours. 
Final Conclusion: I actually have a headache which is accentuated by movement.

Yesterday is not my only example of this diagnosing trial and error. At Free Trade Alliance, on Monday mornings, I often got this sensation of restlessness. I would have a hard time concentrating at work, and staying on task. Sometimes it would take me all day to diagnose these sensations. Eventually what I decided that the restlessness had a source; sadness. It wasn't just sadness though, it was grief, and loss as well. I was sad because we were saying goodbye to the future I built up in my mind. Starting a business isn't easy, and requires a lot of energy, time, money and positive thoughts. After Kyle decided not to re-open WARSIM (after the debacle with the tax-man) my emotions flatlined. They remained in a state of shock for a time, or so I thought.

To be honest,  it took me a while to not only realize that I was sad, and then longer to figure out the source of my sadness. I didn't think I would be affected by the closure as much as I was.  WARSIM was Kyle's baby, not mine, but his business was the start of our dream, of starting our own business, and taking control of our lives. It may not have been the ideal, but it was a stepping stone in the right direction.

When we shut the door to that future, I mourned its death, and the loss of that possibility. I mourned the loss of that stepping stone, and path that we were on.

My experiences are not always clear. It took me a long time to realize that I was in mourning, and that I was sad.  But Kyle and I, if nothing else are always in motion. We do not stay stagnate long, and are always need to be working towards a larger, grander goal.  Thats not to say that we will continue to move constantly from country to country or state to state, but that we believe in having a dream and working towards that dream.

Am I the only one who experiences enigmatic sensations and has to fit together pieces of the puzzle in order to understand myself? Or does this happen to you too?

Yep! We're in Dayton... Ohio

You heard right, the great world travelers are on a new adventure... Ohio. It may not be as exciting as hiking Machu Pichu in Peru or the rock climbing on the beaches of Thailand, but we have both been pleasantly surprised. Ohio is GREEN! As in the color not the movement. There are trees everywhere, big, old gorgeous trees, and grass; green grass! I know... crazy right?  Who knew grass was supposed to be a color other than brown?

Dayton first impressions:

Disjointed! If you're a Texan maybe you could compare it to Dallas. Dallas in itself is much smaller than its metro-area encompasses and is comprised of townships. Dayton is very similar to this. When we were researching I found some pretty large discrepancies when it came to population numbers. One website gave me a number a little larger than 100,000, while yet a different website gave a number over 1 million. What? Which is it? One of these numbers is missing a zero, right?

Nope! Dayton itself is small, but the metro-area is large with at least 20 towns. I know this because I looked up the Chambers of Commerce, and there are 25; that's a LOT.  San Antonio has something like 12 or 13, but for a different reason- we're crazy, no but really. San Antonio's Chambers of Commerce are divided by characteristics like, "Women's Chamber" or "Hispanic Chamber" or even "North Chamber." Dayton has so many chambers because each of its little towns has its own chamber.  And counties. There are sooo many counties.

I don't really like driving around the city. Things that look close, are often really far. I just don't understand it. Within a 24 hour period we drove 120 miles. Granted, we are actively exploring the city, and its townships, but seriously.... thats too much driving!  Gas is killing us as its at $3.75 here.

Another positive is that its been storming a lot, and Kyle and I love a good storm. And one evening in particular, we were blown away as the lightening ripped through the clouds in violent shards of white electricity, its tendrils enveloping the ominous clouds like a fish net being thrown across the sky.  I had been intending to go for a run. Our windows are North-facing and showed none of the onyx-color of the South or the light show spectacle occurring. We attempted to capture it on tape, but of course, our iphones failed to capture the true awesomeness of the event.

Blog Paralysis

I've determined what has kept me away. Kept me away from something that I love. Its fear. Well its a whole host of things including grad school, exhaustion, noise, new job, but mostly I blame fear. More and more, in the day and age of the internet, and smart phones, and connection with the interspaces 100% of the time, no one is anonymous. Health insurance companies deny coverage because of posts on facebook, or job applicants are thrown in the trash because of questionable pictures found lurking on the internets. We are on display all the time, and whether we like it or not our guts hanging out can have serious consequences. When I was in S. Korea, I felt I had a sense of anonymity. Blogging isn't really as much of a thing there (at least as far as I know), and I didn't suspect my bosses would be interested even if they stumbled across my blog (not the least of which because of their inability to translate my verbiage without significant effort).  But in the U.S., it is common practice to do a google search of job applicants, and because of this, I have been paralyzed. What if they found my blog? What would they think of me?  I'm here, I mean, my raw honest self is out on display for the world to see, for judgement, and criticism, but more importantly, rejection. I like me, and I hope that most of my friends and family like me too, but maybe my directness can rub people the wrong way. I am determined to get back to blogging, and I hope that I can find the courage to be honest in a way that isn't too self-incriminating. For now, I have to find the balance between being safe and being real. Thanks for listening friends.