2015-The Year of Learning New Things

Through my years of homeschooling my three children, I wanted to instill in them a love of learning-an excitement for discovery, a life time love of knowledge. When people would ask me about our homeschooling, I would tell them that life itself is our curriculum. Learning became a way of life, everything we did revolved around gaining new insights, skills, and appreciation for the world we lived in. So it is no wonder, that as I sit and contemplate what I would like to do in 2015, that I find myself with a list of things I want to learn.

1. Make my first trip overseas to visit my daughter, Emily, who attends graduate school in Germany and keeps a travel blog.
 I will learn about new cultures, visit historical sites I have only seen in books, and learn to speak (hopefully) enough German to greet my daughter’s host family.

2. While overseas, visit Gotland Island, Sweden.
I hope to visit sheep farms to learn more about the Gotland breed of sheep, which I have just           purchased and to get my hands on a 100% Swedish Gotland sheep!

Cairie, My  93.75% Gotland Ewe-One of my FIRST photos with my spiffy camera!

3. Improve my photography skills.
My daughter, Anna, gifted me her “old” camera with a spiffy new lens on it. After a couple photo         sessions, I can see that my learning curve will be steep! Looks like a photography course may be       headed my way.

My first photography lesson with Anna. (Photo by Anna Goodling)

4. Spend more time in my studio.
Through the years, I have taught many fiber art classes and watched others blossom as fiber artists. This year, I want to explore more with color and felting. I have a dream of taking fiber classes from some amazing fiber artists (Nicola Brown Terriea Kwong, and Jenny Hill, who took her first felting class HERE on my farm), and today, I found an online class in color theory that I want to take. 

5. Attend the Vermont Grazing and Livestock Conference.
Here I will learn more about silvopasturing and how to better manage our livestock and pasture.

6. Begin sheep herding training with my border collie, Kai.
Actually, it will be more like training ME to become a border collie handler. 🙂 Oh wouldn’t it be awesome to take a class from Vergil Holland in KY and then I could go visit Equinox Farm, home to one of my favorite bloggers at Punkin’s Patch!

7.  Focus more on my spiritual growth, looking more closely at the larger picture and my “calling” in life, setting aside a designated time in each day for reading, reflection, and prayer.
Entering into a new phase of life, after being a “stay-at-home,” “homeschooling mom,” for the past 23 years, I am feeling a bit of an identity crisis. It is time to focus on life without children at home and what that looks like for me, as well as focus on rejuvenating my soul, body, and mind.

My biggest challenge will be carving time out of my already busy life for each of these!! My second challenge will be fitting all this into my budget!! You can hold me accountable, feel free to ask me in the comment section how I am doing on each of these! I promise to share with you all that I learn.

So-what do you want to learn in 2015??

Read about what others hope to accomplish in 2015 on Weekly Wishes.