Departure Day?? Not Exactly…
Today was supposed to be the departure day for our amazing two-year trip. Well, 2020 happened and we have had a run of questionable luck. We are truly sorry that we haven’t updated in so long. I made a few quick updates on Twitter and did my best to answer as many messages as possible. A lot has happened but a lot has been moving forward too. I wanted to take a moment to update everyone about our plans. We are still planning to take this crazy trip!! I know that people were concerned that we gave up but we didn’t. We’re just a little behind schedule.
We are trying to finish some remodeling/repairs on our house and get it on the market by the end of the month. If everything goes as planned, we will likely be homeless by the end of October. We know what we are looking for in a camper now. The plan is to begin our search for the perfect camper once the house is on the market. We have a departure window currently from October 26th to November 9th. We plan to be back home for Christmas and head west at the beginning of January.
Currently, we are majorly downsizing our belongings and getting our house ready to go on the market. We have donated around 3,000 items so far this month and we’re not close to being done. We are intentionally keeping items to stage the house that we will get rid of later. The concept of going from a 4-bedroom, 2.5 bathroom home in the suburbs to a travel trailer under 35 feet is still unreal.
We’ve been hard at work (or had helpers hard at work) repainting the entire house, replacing all the flooring (Michael is currently laying the kitchen floors.), taking down the old fence, decluttering, and cleaning everything. We plan to pressure wash the house and do some flowerbed clean-up this week too. It’s been busy, busy, busy with all hands on deck, even the little ones!
We decided to start back to a homeschool schedule at the normal time to give our family somewhat of a sense of normalcy during all this crazy. You would think that adding more to our daily schedule would make things here even more hectic but it actually helped. The kids have more of a regular schedule and it keeps them busy while we work on things. We do a mix of an online program, workbooks, reading, games, educational programs, and hands-on projects. Right now they are doing lots of practical learning while working on the house as well. Isabella (10) has been a huge help during this process. She has helped with sorting items, dropping off donations, selling items, practical math (how much flooring or paint we need), cleaning things, reading to her little sister, walking the dog, and a million other little things.
We normally include a lot of travel into their studies too but we’re spending all our time getting the house ready at the moment. Our girls are very excited about this trip. They have all given us ideas of places that they want to visit from Disneyland to the beach to the library where Dewey the cat lived. We can’t wait to be back to spending more time together. We are together all of the time right now but we are so busy that we don’t feel like we have time to enjoy each other. We are really looking forward to having time to just be. Not doing anything, not working on anything, just a moment to relax, and to watch our girls play.
I will do my best to post updates about our ongoing progress until we leave. I know that once we’re on the road, we will get back to posting regularly. I apologize for our absence. This stage has been very trying. We second guess ourselves almost daily at this point simply because of the amount of work involved. We know that it will all be worth it in the end. It’s been an uphill battle but we’re almost to the summit! We know how incredibly lucky we are to be in this position. We will continue to work hard until this crazy dream becomes a reality. It’s hard to believe that after years of work and planning, it’s almost time!
Days to go: 41 to 55