Introduction

Hello everyone,

I'm Kendra, nice to meet you. Thank you for taking some time to read my blog. I'm new at this so lets just say it will be a learning process. I'm a 30-year old single mom to an amazing 5-year old boy (referred to as C in this blog), and we love being outside, in the spring and fall. We live in Texas currently, it's too hot to go outside in the summer. I hope to share our experience of moving abroad, the ups and downs, and just to inform anyone who may be thinking of moving abroad. Whether a single-parent or not I hope you find our journey entertaining and informative. We have two possible futures at the moment, both of which will get me to my ultimate goal, just one will get me there faster than the other.

Current Life:
I like to plan. I make lists all the time, plan 6 months in advance and it drives me crazy when I don't know what I will be doing or where I will be living in 4 months time. (see possible futures below). Sigh. I just have to deal with it for a few more weeks. Maybe I'll make a list.... ;)

I work full time, and am trying to start my own Etsy business - shameless plug to come later when I have some products! ;) Customizable Birthday party kits and eventually wedding invitations and kits for all of the collateral that goes with it. I am a graphic designer, production artist, art buyer, party planner, DIY'er and I love Industrial Design. Someday I will combine all of them and work for myself full-time!

In our house we love legos and puzzles and we don't watch TV often, except for pizza and movie night, which is a favorite treat in our house. I have recently become very aware of how commercialized and unhealthy our food is, thanks to some great blogs (which I will link to if I can obtain permission) we have completely changed our eating habits. Though I'm not perfect, and am still trying to cut out soda, we have seen drastic improvements in how we feel. We call it Real food - meaning no processed-foods, organic when possible, and making things from scratch when we can't find good alternatives. Surprisingly this has actually saved us a lot of money on our grocery bills and allowed us to spend some quality time together because C likes to help in the kitchen.

Possible Future #1:
I recently interviewed for the 2013 JET program - it's stands for Japan Exchange Teaching Program. Basically it is living  and working in Japan, teaching English to Japanese schoolchildren. I will find out in a few weeks if I got the job or not. I'm very excited for all the possibilities it holds for myself and my son. I should mention that I have lived in Japan before, working for a private English school chain. I take weekly lessons to continue learning Japanese, and in turn speak to my son in Japanese as much as possible. This is the future I hope we will have - it will give us amazing experiences, cultural understanding, a new language, and a broader world view, as well as get us to our ultimate goal in 5 years or less.


Possible Future #2:
Continue current life, try to stay sane through the summer heat, save money and move someplace where you probably can't bake cookies on your car dashboard (not joking!). You've heard of winter depression right? I swear in the sweltering TX summer you can get summer depression. It's never-ending! And before any native Texans get offended, let me just say, Texas is great for some people (i.e. my dad who loves it here)...I'm just not one of them, I can't handle the summers anymore. I'm from MN, I moved to TX when I was ten and if I could afford to move away before now I would have.

The Goal:
The goal is to live a simpler life, be able to work from home, and not have send my son to after school care. He has been in daycare since 6 weeks old...it makes me sad that I missed that time with him and his teachers see him more hours out of the day than I do, but I did what I had to do to make ends meet back then. Now we are in a more stable financial place, and working toward more quality time together. I want to be there to pick him up from school, help him with his homework, and be able to make dinner together while we talk about his day. This has never been so apparent to me as it is right now. I was laid off from my job of 4 years last month and have been home-schooling my son everyday and spending some amazing quality time together. I will fight for that Goal - quality time with my son. Everything I do from this day forward will be spent trying to get to this goal as fast as I can. I start a new job this week, one which I'm very excited about - and it will help me reach my goal, but going back to the 9-5, M-F routine will be hard on both of us after so much unstructured quality time together.

I will also start VLOGing (is that a verb?) on YouTube under the same 'Ready Set Family JET' name if we go  to Japan. There isn't currently a lot of information on single parents living abroad in Japan - I hope to provide some inspiration and reassurance to future JET participants whether they be single parents or not.

Well there is my novel of an introduction. I hope you will find it interesting and check back to see how our future plays out!