One of the main things I blog about is my lifestyle in the little country town we now live in. And when I say little, I mean little. We have a general store, a post office open 3 hours a day, a pub, a primary school and a mobile library that comes to town for an hour on Thursday mornings [tsk, I've not even been there yet!]. In comparison to other small towns nearby, we're doing really well - most of the general stores struggle to stay open, or just close down, and same for the post offices. The pubs usually survive.Life is pretty quiet out here. I spend my days studying my course, working in our garden, getting some rides on my bike. Lately there has been a decent snooze most days as well, although I'm grateful to be in a position to have those midday sleeps - if I was working full time, I wouldn't be able to. I also have time to spend making meals from scratch in the kitchen, all the time. Since a round trip for takeaway is over an hour [don't get me wrong, there is still the odd day when Noodle Bar wins], you have to want it pretty bad.We live this lifestyle because we choose to. I have time and space to do my Naturopathy course. We are paying off our house. We are building a pretty awesome garden [I may be biased], and will be eating pretty well off our vegie garden. We have fresh country air to breathe, and hills to ride our bikes in where nobody else goes. So we're doing ok. And we've got a baby on the way.But as in everything, there is a trade off. We don't have cafe's to just pop into, we have very few nice [read: fresh, healthy, organic, gluten free] options for eating out, I don't have a pilates class to go to, I have to travel for over an hour each way to catch up with friends, and our hills don't have sweet singletracks to ride. We don't really have any 'friends' here. We know people, and we were most certainly welcomed into this town with open arms. But we don't have anyone close by we can really connect with. People our age. People with our outlook. I guess we feel a bit, different.We don't have the greatest medical facilities out here. I would love more than anything to be able to have a natural, home birth for our baby. It is unrealistic, as we are so far from medical help, and belief in alternative methods hasn't reached this part of the world yet. Our closest town with medical services doesn't currently deliver babies, and our next closest does, at the hospital. And then there's the question of how long will I stay not working, so I can be home with bub. We're hoping my wonderful man can also drop back his hours of work when baby comes along too, as we both want to be around for our child. To us, that is so very, very important.We have lately been weighing up the pros and cons. Stay or go? Would we rather be somewhere where we have closer access to services, more people to meet, social activities to join in on? A better option for having a baby? But if we moved somewhere else, life would become significantly more expensive, so our lifestyle would change. I would need to be working again, not studying. My wonderful man would need to be working full time, not part time. That would mean both of us being around less for our child, which neither of us want.I'm not really going anywhere with this post. All I'm saying is, life's all about choices. There is a trade off for everything, and like everyone else, we're just trying to do the best we can, while living a lifestyle that is true to ourselves. In any case, we're running out of time to be moving anywhere before baby arrives. Plus I do [mostly] love our little patch of land, what we're able to do here, how we're able to live. I guess the question remains to be answered, or is answered by the fact that we're still here. I'm not sure which it is.Source: Uploaded by user via Jacqui on Pinterest