Dreams are the plans you make for the future.

This is my rock, my neighborhood, my sand dune, my paradise.
I breathe this in and rejoice.
I pinch myself everyday and declare: Life is Good!
How did we end up here?

We took few vacations all our working years. We were busy most weekends with children's activities, sports, art, music, dancing, plays, 4H, girl and boy scouts. We shopped for necessities; we cleaned and prepared for the following week. Any leisure time we had  was spent shuffling our children to their activities, or spent volunteering, as coaches, referees, supervisors, fund-raisers, feeders, drivers and all around cheer-leaders.

Most summers I  went to school to get another degree, or taught, attended or organized workshops, planned and prepared materials for my classes. As an administrator, I worked twelve months with a few weeks of vacation when both Hubby and the children were available.  We squeezed in reunion visits to family in Montana, Washington State, Italy.

Our most memorable times? The times we spent in a forest, by a creek, camping,in a cottage by the sea.

Our vacations drove us to cooler places, like Northern California, or Oregon.
Oregon was where Hubby spent his childhood, and had many wonderful memories of vacations on the beaches, camping, rock hunting.

When we planned to retire, we knew we wanted to leave Los Angeles and live in a small cottage with an ocean breeze. We began looking just north of San Francisco, and kept looking until we found a place we could afford.
I tell this story often.
I can't believe we are here already, I add.

Yes, we had dreamed about this place. We had also kept that dream alive for decades, constantly alive, like an all night fire, watched and fed, taking turns when things were dark and scary, when possibilities were scarce for advancement and savings, when earthquakes, fires and emergencies seemed to be forever in our present.

We kept watch. We kept feeding those possibilities.