The Beginning of Our Nomadic Life

I received a call from my brother today.  I always love getting to talk to my brother, as we seem to think the same, and have a lot in common, even though it took us a long time to get there. His reason for calling made me laugh, even though I knew I had been slacking.  He said, "How do I word this so that you really get the message" ..... (Oh crap, what'd I do?!?)  ..... "I cannot live vicariously through you, unless you spill your guts."   Ok, I know I know, I haven't written a blog post since we've been out of our house.  I actually tried once a couple weeks ago, but I felt it was too wordy and never finished and published it.  The more it's been rolling around in my head that I really need to get something out there, the more I made my peace with the fact that I'm a wordy girl.  And if it is requested that I spill my guts, well then, it's just gonna have to be wordy.  So if I bore you, overwhelm you, overshare, etc. I apologize in advance. ;)  Well folks, we are now officially nomads.  :)  Today marks day 30 of our adventure.  Though we haven't actually left our regional area since we left our house, we do feel like we are so far removed from our previous life. We stayed the month at Lake Paradise, outside of Lone Jack, Mo. while I finished up some photography gigs.  Though this park has it's quirks, I've been most pleased with the people we've been getting to know.  We've spent time with other full-timers, weekenders, and even my parents stopped by for a night.  It's really cool to me how many different personalities we've gotten to know already, in just one campground in the middle of nowhere, Missouri.  We've found ourselves getting quite comfy with our surroundings out here.  We'll miss this place, but after a month, we're also ready to move on. (The kids enjoying the last days of summer at the pool with new full-timing friends)

(One day while on a walk with some other full-time friends, I ran into the campground laundry room to make sure our stuff wasn't in the way of another camper.  When I came back outside, I wasn't sure where the kids had run off too.  We figured it out by spotting the sticks and logs the kids set ever so neatly on the ground in front of the game room door.)

The kids are in HEAVEN.  I asked The Boy the other day what he thought about living in the camper full time.  His eyes got real big as he said, "I LOOOOOVE IT!"  They are surprisingly making a lot of friends, and have actually had more face to face time with other kids in the time we've been here than they did all summer in our house.   They are also adjusting well to homeschooling!  I don't know how many people who are reading this have known us for awhile, but this is not our first attempt at homeschooling.  I tried to home school The Boy his pre-k year, and needless to say, it did not go well.  At all.   This year however, he is now in first grade and The Girl is in pre-k.  The Boy has a year of public school under his belt, which he half-enjoyed.  I mean... I think he did enjoy it, but about halfway through the year he started asking to home school.  I do believe it is to my advantage that my more difficult child has some perspective, because I get much less resistance about doing school.  I would also like to believe that I'm quite a bit more "zen" than I was the first time around.  All in all, we are transitioning into our school life quite nicely.  I'm impressed daily on how quickly we get through our work, even if there is some whining involved some days.  The Boy is actually doing his phonics, spelling, and math at double speed.  The Girl is picking up on things pretty fast considering I was concerned with her letter and number recognition over the summer. (Just a little homeschooling outside!)

(Part of our homeschooling hours go toward LifeStyle Skills... I am LOVING that they are able to help us maintain our home now!!)

Our biggest hurdle so far has been getting strong internet up and running.  Not only is our section of the campground in some weird dead zone, but the wifi here is pretty touch and go as well.  It took about two weeks to get our internet situation solid.  (Isn't it interesting that internet is our biggest hurdle and not getting rid of so much and living in such tight quarters?) There are a couple things that take some getting used to.  Scratch that, there are a lot of things that are different than living in a sticks and bricks house, but there are only two things that have been a little more difficult for me to get used to.   1: Having to climb over Aaron to get to my clothes.  Look at this picture.  This is where Aaron works. We don't have a desk in our small space, so he works in our room.  It works great for him because he can close the door if he has a call that he has to talk on, and he's out of the way for our homeschooling at the kitchen table.  But.... see those cabinets behind him?  That's where the majority of my clothes are.  I have to literally climb over him to get my clothes for the day.  You'd think he wouldn't mind that too much (ahem), but it makes it a little difficult when he's trying to type.  It makes it really difficult for me to have to climb over things just to get dressed for the day.  

2:  It hasn't been a HUGE issue yet, but getting used to our small fridge and freezer has also been interesting.  We've been having to buy less, more often, and I often find myself playing a bit of Tetris in the fridge.  

(We may or may not need to defrost our fridge already)

It's interesting how this has changed our outlook on our family. There are things I am noticing about my children that I never had time to notice before.  There are added moments of tenderness that I just never had time for before.  In our house, there was always something to clean, something I needed to get done.... just something... always.  I know that I am wired that way.  To always be busy doing something, but I am working on sitting back and enjoying more.  For instance, a quiet whisper from The Girl the other night.  The two of us were off on our own fishing.  She turned around and looked up at me with her doe-eyes, and whispered, "I love you.  I love you so much.  And I'm never going to un-love you because you are the best Mom ever".  Melt my freaking heart!!  I'm so happy I'm now able to cherish these moments; while my kids still think I'm perfect, and truly appreciate our time together.

Right now, as I sit outside, enjoying the beautiful day, watching my kids throw rocks in the lake as the dogs and the huz watch, I'm so incredibly thankful that we have started this journey.  The kids still have their battles that siblings have, but as a whole, there is a lot more family togetherness.  Life is slower.  More peaceful.  And a million times more enjoyable.  

(The Boy has become the star fisherman.  He has caught more fish than all of us!  He just doesn't want to hold them, lol)

We'll be leaving for St. Louis this weekend.  Though we've been there a couple times before, we're excited to go back and spend a week exploring some more and visiting some sites we know and love.  From there we will start making our way south for the winter! Much Love!  

Prepping, Planning, and a Long Overdue Update

Sometimes in life, it's funny how things happen exactly how you expect, and other times it can catch you so off guard that it makes your heart either swell or crumble. When we told our family about our new adventure, there were mixed reactions.  I actually had already written a blog post about this that detailed it all, but then decided it was better to get it off my chest, but not really publish it.  So instead, I'll share this... Some members of our family proved yet again why I love them so.  They weren't necessarily happy about our decision, but they were respectful, understanding, and were able to look at the situation from our viewpoint and really get where we were coming from.  They have been very supportive, and I couldn't express well enough how much we appreciate that. There were others in our family, who couldn't see outside of their small bubble of ordinary to understand anything about this adventure and instead chose to judge and have snarky attitude. And there were others, who I expected would react this way, and were NOT happy.  I almost felt attacked when trying to explain the situation, but knew there wasn't going to be any getting through to them, because there rarely ever is.  It's a sad situation to me, but it seems that's the way its been for awhile now, so I do my best to make my peace with it and move on. That actually leads me to my next thought.  Last night, Aaron was expressing to me how he's been thinking about how he's really happy with where we are at in our lives.  He's happy with the changes we're making, he's happy with the positive outlook in our lives, and that we've managed to get away from most negative influences.  I can't tell you how much my heart sang when I heard him say that.  We both try to brush off the negative and focus on the positive, and its wonderful to me that he is reflecting and seeing the difference that it is making in our lives.  Ohhhhh how I love that man. Once we got through telling the family, we spent a weekend in Des Moines for an RV show. We saw so many campers that they all starting running together in my mind.  We did walk away knowing pretty much what we wanted though, so it was a success!  We have it narrowed down to a few models.  The other debate we have is buying new or used.  If we buy new, we can get exactly what we want.  If we buy used, it'll be harder to find the exact features we want and might have to settle for something else based on what's available.  So basically, we know pretty much what we want, but we'll see what actually happens when it comes time to buy. The next step was getting our house ready to sell.  Surprisingly, we got it ready pretty quick.  We tiled a couple bathrooms, painted a lot of trim, painted the master bath, and did a ton of touch up painting.  I'm sure there's other things we did in there too, but at some point the mind becomes jumbled and you forget.  The house has now been on the market for about a week.  We've had three showings so far and two more scheduled in the next few days.  I'm hopeful from all the activity that it'll go pretty quick and hopefully somewhat easy.

Aaron is working on purchasing a bigger truck this weekend to be able to haul our new home.  We were hoping we could use his current truck, but it wouldn't have been able to hold up with the weight of hauling the fifth wheels we've been looking at. Well that's all of the update for now.  I'll try hard to keep updating as things progress!