About Me

Ahhh, to do the fancy-but-weird third person description of myself, or not? Let’s say, not. Because I often sound pretentious enough in the first person, so let’s avoid all the crazy that would happen if I upped the ante.

I’m married to Tim, and we have three young kids: Eli (’08), Ruth (’11), and Matthew (’13). Don’t let those last two fool you–they are 16 months apart, not two years apart.

Matthew after a snack of markers, me doting on him.

Until recently, we lived in rather-idyllic-definitely-affluent Lake Bluff, IL, a “historic village”, full of very nice people. We bought a fixer-upper from a flipper who couldn’t flip, literally on the wrong side of both tracks: north-south tracks AND east-west tracks. But it gave us a nice place to raise kids and (illegally) raise chickens. However, in August of 2014, my husband was offered an amazing job, in Champaign, IL. Two-and-a-half weeks later, we had moved down here, which sounds crazy, and was in fact, crazy. It seemed like a reasonable way to maximize his income/vacation time when we were making the decision, and having never moved more than 45 minutes between one apartment/home and the next, we had no idea.

Now, we’re back living in the same town we met, 10 minutes from our alma mater, The University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. It’s kind of strange living here as old people with kids when we met while we were still virile and with it, but it is also fortuitous, as I’ve been lucky to still have friends living here, all of whom have softened the transition.

Why a blog? I used to write a rather hilarious blog when I was in college, and it was a fun way for friends to watch our bizarre experiences turned into funny vignettes. Then my now-husband built me a much nicer blog, and I wrote all about my experiences studying abroad in Mexico. Then a relative got mad that I was sharing private information about my ancestors and it took me a few years to get over that, which led to an anonymous blog. Where I could never decide who I was or what I wanted to say, since I wasn’t really myself.

And now? I realize that I’m never going to start journaling. I’m a product of my times, and I love the authentic audience of a blog, the easy insertion of photos and links, the not-handwriting of it. I hate how time slips away and I can no longer look back and see, “Oh, that was much harder/easier than I remembered.” I also hate cluttering up Facebook with 6,000 posts of my kids. Well, I don’t hate it, but I’m betting other people do, since I usually hate it when I find 19.5 pics of so-and-so’s first bite of banana all over my FB wall. It’s even worse when it’s an adult’s first bite of banana and they’re doing the, “Oooh, let’s Instagram this meal!” thing. So, I’ll keep my clutter here and if people don’t like it, they can just not read. I offer 100% refunds for all the money you pay me to entertain you.

This site is so that I can write about the ups and downs of homeschooling my kids, managing our household, running my business from home, and whatever else comes up. It’s also a place where I am going to catalog our progress toward our dream: living on a farm with a bed & breakfast, as well as a farm-to-table restaurant. See “The Dream” page for more details on that!

Thank you for stopping by. Please feel welcome to email me or comment. You can also catch me on Instagram, handle: farmandaway.