The Plan

Wow...
First Blog...

LOTS of Pressure...

There suuureeee is a lot of white space to fill... Hmmm, where to begin?

Alan says to start by telling everyone how this crazy plan began.

Hmmm...

So, we can't quite remember how or when the plan took root but we do remember it didn't take long to fully get on board. The responses when we tell people range between the eye roll with the implied, "what a flake"to an ear splitting screech followed by "I wish WE could do that!"
Early conversations centered around why it was so appealing, why wouldn't we wait for retirement, and, most importantly, if all four of us left in an RV together for a year, how many of us would come back? When we got down to it, it really felt like now or never. The boys will be in Kindergarten and third grade, no active social lives to pull them away from. They will still (hopefully) be eager to learn and try new things on the road. They will be easy for me to teach, (you know I can't do anything mathematical if it involves concepts past the fifth grade).
The logistics of how to pull it off were the first topics of daydreams. What's the point of falling in love with the idea if it could never happen? So we started to draft out ideas, look at the possibilities, weigh the pros and cons. Low and behold, a plan started to pull itself together, almost as if the RV God's were looking down and smiling at us, or, maybe it's that they are laughing at us, I guess we'll see. When the idea first starting coming up it was shortly after we had moved out of our home and into a rental. We had just lost our home and declared bankruptcy. It was a terrible time. We were devestated. It was our first home, the one we brought Aiden home from the hospital to. The place we had gotten our dogs. Each spare moment was streaked with our sweat as we worked seemingly non-stop to change it from a house to our home. It was ours, we loved it. When we had to give it up, we were crushed. We were leaving our neighbors too, who had become like family to us. We felt as though we were loosing everything all at once. We had sold a good deal of our things, we packed up our home and we moved to a home that a friend was renting.
A few months went by and we began to see what a blessing loosing the house had become. We were no longer working three jobs a piece, never seeing one another, always worried about how we would feed the kids. Now that we were once again renters, the stress had virtually disappeared and we were so much lighter for it. We sat back and started to process what had brought us to our current place. What had gone wrong, what had gone right and where we were at emotionally. It was about that time that things really started to fall into place for me. I was struck by the realization I had lived my life in fear for the vast majority of the last 30 years. I didn't want that for the boys. I didn't want their lives to be consumed by the idea that "stuff" is security, or that a house was home. I had such grief each time we moved, even from apt to apt. I wanted the boys to be stronger than that, and more flexible, less afraid. I had to begin living the ideas that I wanted them to embrace. And so the seed was planted... Maybe a crazy seed but a seed none-the-less!

It's a totally insane idea only in that it seems to go against everything we are, know and have been taught.
I mean, hey, if I dig deep and get back to my Checkloslavakian gypsy roots I am sure this will seem like second nature right?
Now, where did I put that babushka?