Well, who would have thunk it! The Sloderbeck family and the Janes family are moving in together for good!
Over the last several weeks, our two families have been reflecting upon how much we enjoyed living together back in the summer of 2007. This was back when both our families decided to put our homes on the market. You see, Jim was asked to work on our church’s staff as the full time Executive Minister in 2006 so he left full time emergency medicine. Living 30 minutes away from church caused all of us to want to live closer to church so Jim didn’t have such a long commute as the guy “second in command.”
While Faith’s home sold in just over a year, we had no idea that our home would still be on the market 4 years later! Over these 4 years we have wondered why God kept closing the door concerning the sale of our log home. It has been a long, tiring, and discouraging journey at times. And over the course of these years, we put many of our possessions in storage because we thought we were actually moving two different times since last fall. It has not been fun!
Now with only 4 days left on our contract and the need to live close to church being gone, we have decided to take our house off the market and to live together as a multigenerational family. Faith loves to research things on the Internet and discovered that 40% of families in America are living together in ways such as we have decided to do. There are many different combinations like children newly married living with one set of parents, children out of college staying with their parents while they get on their feet, and aging parents living with grown children. While I’m not sure of the statistics concerning our situation, we will have 4 generations living under one roof!
And while we are quoting statistics, try this one: With 11 people living together under one roof, that means there are 55 different personality combinations to deal with every day. As I see it, this should give Faith and me plenty of new material to work with for writing articles in the future.
We have plans to hire an architect to help us with some plans to make family spaces for Faith and her family, as well as common spaces for us to share. We are all excited about the possibilities and the fun we will have dreaming about the future.
So Connor Janes, your 8th birthday wish has come true. You finally going to get to live with all your family in the same house. Happy Birthday, handsome! ……….and many more 
So, I’m moving back home to live with my parents…On Purpose! Kind of crazy, right? Not really. I’m totally blessed to have a family where we all mesh so well. Notice I didn’t say “perfectly.” Living with that many personalities under one roof will take some getting used to. But in the end, family is the single most important thing to us and it’s worth it. I’m also crazy lucky that my husband loves my parents as much as I do. Our kids are thrilled to have so much of their family around every day.
Life is about to get a whole lot more interesting. Laundry never ends, but there’s always someone around to enjoy a cup of coffee with. Grocery trips for a household of 11 is definitely a new challenge. It’s funny to watch people’s faces when you tell them that we all live together. Most folks definitely think we’re nuts or that it’s all about money. It’s simply a matter of making a choice of priorities for us.
What Shawn and I went through in dealing with our hurts at church led us to reevaluate many things. We decided we didn’t have a reason to be half an hour away from family near a church that we no longer belong to. There are lots of new goals we have within our little family and this new move is the first step in reaching them.
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YAY!!!!!!! This is thrilling. How exciting.
Faith, you are SO blessed that Shawn really does love your parents as if they are his own! Vickie, you and Jim are pretty blessed too – course you already knew that!
Happy days!
Wow! It’s pretty rare to see another family living multi-generation by choice. We have a three-generation family of seven under one roof, and although we don’t plan to live this way forever, it’s working for us right now. I love having my parents here in the house for the kids, and my kids really love it, too. I can truly relate to the laundry comment. There are days I feel like all I get done, chorewise, is essentially hitting the reset button. I’ll be checking back on you guys- you seem like a fun family!
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