A lifetime of Dreaming, starts here.

While we started this love for sleeping outside over 4 years ago, we sometimes still found comfort in tucking in inside. Once we moved into the home we hope to live in for the rest of our lives, those nights were over.

A little back ground for those of you who have no idea who we are or why any of this matters. I have always loved the idea of sleeping under the stars. Most people, when I tell them my family and I do it every night, they say they love it too. It’s what happens after that which differentiates what we do and what every other person I have shared our sleeping habits with does. We actually do it. The next thing out of people’s mouths is usually “What happens when it rains? What do you do when it’s like, really cold? What if it snows?”

We are currently a family of 4 people and 3 dogs. We live in the mountains just outside of Boulder in Colorado. While our kiddos spend only half of their time with us, any night they are with us is spent the same way in which nights with out them are spent, piling into our beds somewhere between 9 and 10 pm and falling asleep to the music and stories of the wind.

I grew up in New York City in a 2 bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side.
My husband, Erik, grew up in a small town in Iowa.
I slept in a trundle bed, with a peach colored comforter and a Siamese Cat named Squeaky.
Erik slept on his families screened in porch tucked into a North Face sleeping bag he called the Tangerine Dream with his Airedale Heidi.
While I heard the sounds of the base board heaters and drivers rolling over pot holes on Broadway, Erik fell asleep to the sounds of the night and felt the wind on his face.

Once we met and moved into our first house together, I set up a bed on the porch adjacent to our master bedroom. It was high enough off the ground and protected by waist high railings that kept out any wild life visitors. The house was at roughly 7500 elevation; high enough that the usual mosquito or fly were normally avoided. It also sat about 40 feet away from an active fox den. Over the course of the 4 years we lived there we watched a few families of kits get raised. Last year we were lucky enough to wake up one morning to the sounds of 5 brand new kits making their way out of the den with their mom. Over the course of the next few months we watched as they grew and played and went from 5 to 4 to 3 and then none. A couple we know went back to nature, the last 3 we hope moved on to their own dens, to raise their own kits and breath the fresh mountain air we love so much.

At any rate, that was our last house. Since the porch was not covered, there were many nights the bed was covered in snow or too wet from rain to sleep on. But when it wasn’t, we would set up beds for the kids when we had them and make room for the dog beds and all of us would pile onto the porch like a bunch of kittens. We’d tell stories as we fell asleep and try to wake each other up if we saw a shooting star. We got to know the constellations and slept as the stars moved around us. If the kids had school the next day, Erik and I would get up first a little before 6 and pick a song. We’d crank up the volume and open the windows so it could reach the kids ears, then meet up in the hot tub on the deck Erik built. Our deal with each other was that we each had to “put it out there” for the day. Some people pray.... we put it out there. I mean, if you don’t ask, you don’t get after all. It was for sure the best morning ritual of my life, and I can’t wait to make it happen again at our new house, once we get ourselves a hot tub. :)

That was then.

What will follow will bring us into the present.
A new house. New porch. And a brand new bed with a brand new view.
Life is good.
We live it to the fullest, each day, after the best night’s sleep of our lives.

This is us.

Foxy Family Time