About Us

The ups and downs and screams and thrills, our life is one long, fast and furious, roller coaster.

At first we sat in the cart while it rolled slowly up the hill, "putt", "putt", "putt" as it slowly squeaked up the track. This was our time in Arkansas - where we were  raised, married, and had our three children. Nothing too exciting but we felt safe and secure as we leaned over the edge to see how high we were getting as we "putted" along.

One day we hit a bump when Jason decided to go back to school and for the next four years we barley hung on as our cart rocked back and forth and tried to buck us out. He was leaving the house at 7am for the hour and a half drive to school which he attended until 3pm, then left school straight for work until 10:30, and another hour and a half drive home arriving at midnight to study, catch a few hours of sleep and start it all again in the morning...5 days a week. I was working 16 hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday as a CNA, from 6am until 10pm. He watched the kids on the weekends while I home-schooled them during the week. We never saw each other and we ate a whole lot of beans...but we made it! We reached the top of that hill! He graduated...

...and found out that he had been accepted into grad school in BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND!!! Our roller cart went racing down that hill with us laughing and crying out in terror "Slow this ride down". It was the ride of our life, a wonderful adventure full of more ups and downs. We gave away everything we owned on Freecycle and moved overseas. Our whole year there we spent together 24/7 having amazing discoveries one after another while Jason worked on his master's degree. We fell in love with Belfast and the friends we made there (most of them we found on the Belfast Freecycle!). It's a complicated but endearing city. Having completed his degree he was accepted into the PHD program there and we we excited at the thought of spending 4-5 more years in Belfast but he was unable to secure funding.

Our ride came to a screeching halt as we tried to figure out what to do next, finally we realized that we would have to move to...Minnesota. Oh the horror! All I knew about the place was that it was cold, cold, and more cold. But his parents were there and job options were better. So here we are...he did find a wonderful job as a mental health professional helping troubled children and we did make it through our first winter here but to us it's still just a temporary pit stop. We plan on relocating in about a year or two, to a location more suited to us, there's still a lot more roller coaster riding left in us - soon as we get this cart fixed up again.