New Directions

At some point in everyone's life (many points for most people), one feels their whole life taking on a different direction. Here in the Dharma Family, we feel the change coming. We've made many changes and hope to make many more in 2008.

Let us tell you about some of the things we've changed and some of what's coming...

• We mentioned back in November that we now speak to Sam's oldest son fairly regularly. We were on an every other month pattern last year, but we started out this year well by speaking to him both in December and January.
• We have, as a family, decided to wholeheartedly embrace unschooling. We've done a lot of research and realized that so long as each of us has a deep internal desire for personal betterment, this will be successful. We've also realized that if we don't have that deep internal desire, that no amount of school or workbooks at home will change that.
• We still want to open up our own store. We've had to put the idea on the backburner with the housing slump because lenders all over are more hesitant to give out their money. This leads us to:
• We've created a budget. We bought this great book called America's Cheapest Family and we've actually created a workable budget. We've already begun applying some of their money saving principles and plan to start our budget in February. Already though, we've found more money in our pockets just by applying some of their money saving principles.
• We're also changing the children's allowance system to a work and get paid system that is a modified version of the one found in America's Cheapest Family. We are all excited about it.
• We plan to move this year, because we're not happy with where we live now. We're still very unsure about where we're moving to, we'll update you when the time comes.
• Since embracing unschooling, even Sam and Andrea have rekindled their individual desires to learn and so learning is constanly happening around here.
• We're embracing our sister-in-law's desire to unclutter her house. We plan to spend 2008 decluttering our living space.
• Andrea is finally taking charge of her health and saw a doctor today to discuss her lack of weight loss and constant fatigue, among other things. She goes in for lab tests tomorrow.

Well, that's about all of the changes. The last thing that we'll be changing is that we're going to make more of an effort to keep our online followers updated. We belong to an unschooling listserv where everyone has been posting their days and we plan to do something similar here.

That's all for now folks!

Lots of love,

The Dharma Family