Our New Adventure: The Beginning

It’s about time I get around to writing a blog post about this new adventure!! I’ve had quite a few people ask me how this all started, so I thought I’d start there.

Back in December 2015 James came across a blog about a family that traveled full-time.  They had 2 boys that they “road-schooled” and the husband did the same type of work James does.  He brought it up to me with excitement and said we should do that some day. We’ve always enjoyed traveling and have had a desire to see more places!  I thought it sounded pretty awesome, but at the time James worked at Gamestop HQ in Grapevine.  So I told him that we could really consider it when he had/if he got a remote job.  Fast forward 4 months later, he left Gamestop for a remote position with 352, Inc.  We then paid off our school loan debt in May (2016), which had been a goal for us since we got married.  After that happened we felt our options really opened up.  Besides the idea of traveling, we had also been discussing (for some time) that we’d love to live on some land for the boys to grow up on…we’d love the space, a garden, and some animals.  We began looking into both options, but really leaned towards wanting to travel for at least a year before we settled down on some land.

In June, James got approval from his work for us to travel, so we began to brainstorm how we wanted to go about everything.  We came up with many different plans through out the summer, but finally settled on steps to take instead of a specific timeline. Our steps were to sell James’ truck, buy an RV, buy a truck to tow our RV, go on a trip or two, sell the house, and travel while we looked for land or a house on land. However, in the second week of August our steps kind of got flipped around!

One night I was looking on Zillow and found some beautiful land in the location we wanted and quite a bit under our budget.  We went to look at it a day later on Saturday and loved it.  We were told that it already had several offers on it and that we had until Monday at 3pm to get our offer in.  We gave our best offer at Monday noon and at 6pm that day our realtor called saying our offer was accepted out of EIGHTEEN offers!!! We were in complete shock and excitement.  This land was just what we were looking for; it has trees, a hill with a beautiful view, and just enough land to have all we want (2.6 acres), but not too much to take care of.

So now, not only were our plans going backwards, but they also sped up.  About 2 weeks after we were under contract for the land, we put our house on the market.  Three days after our house was on the market, we had 3 offers at or above asking price.  We accepted an offer on our home and were then under contract.  All of this going on, while we were going out of town for various things 3 weekends in a row!  A couple weeks later (September 16th), we closed on the land.  Then on Saturday, September 24th, we bought a truck and on Wednesday, September 28th we bought  our new home-on-wheels! A whirlwind!!

The following week me, my mom, and the boys went to Iowa, while James went to his Dad’s to work on making a bunk bed in the Airstream. We both made it home a day before we closed on our house.  On October 7th, we closed on our home!  We are doing a leaseback until November 13th.  So we have until then to start & finish some Airstream renovations, sell quite a bit of our things, move a few of our things to storage, and move into the Airstream!  I will do another post on our Airstream renovations, what our plans are once we’re in the Airstream full-time and what we’ll be doing with our land.

While this is a really exciting adventure, one that we will NEVER forget, it has been quite stressful and really emotional at times.  We have and are making a lot of huge changes in a very short period of time and it is some times very hard to process.  We are personally growing as we part with so many material things.  Parting with our home has been the hardest, and we haven’t even officially left it yet!  Knowing in about 5 weeks we will walk away from this house is extremely hard.  I tear up almost every time I think about it.  This home has held so many amazing and life-changing moments for us.  We brought 2 of our 3 boys into the world literally in this house.  All 3 of our boys have taken their first steps here, celebrated so many birthdays, had tons of play dates, etc. etc. But I have to remind myself that it’s the people and the moments that I hold dear, not the actual house.  And moving on from this house, we will continue to make wonderful memories in SO many different places!

We are so incredibly thankful that we even have the opportunity to do something like this!  And we are thankful to have the support and excitement of our family and friends!!  I truly hope and plan to keep this blog updated with posts on our Airstream renovation, the big move, all of the places we go, and eventually the building of our home! Thanks for following along!!

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