I have always dreamed of spending more time camping. Jeff has always travelled for a living and, since we have homeschooled for over ten years, I thought it would be an easy thing to do. We have owned a decent sized camper for several years and even took a month-long trip in 2016. We stayed in North GA at several different state parks and loved almost every minute of it. Jeff worked and made sales calls and the girls and I played. We really didn't do any school that trip but I could picture it - I was the only one.
Fast forward 4 years and we are actually doing it, although slightly differently than I always pictured. Full-time RV'ing is significantly different than going on long RV trips. We have always loved camping but have also loved coming home. Our plans to go full-time will no longer include the "coming home" experience.
That's right! We are selling everything, including our current camper, so that we can get a bigger camper to live in full-time. Jeff will spend the time building his new business (www.jdhardwaresolutions.com) and the girls and I will do school and cook and eat and plan adventures. With Lucy Pearl planning to go away to college next fall, I don't think we could have picked a better time. In fact, we would have never picked this time but it looks like it was picked for us.
Making this decision was not hard. I have always been able to imagine the best-case scenario. Unfortunately, that is not how most situations turn out and I am learning to temper my expectations so that I am not so disappointed when things are not perfect. Jeff, on the other hand, is always expecting the worst and can always foresee every possible negative outcome. We are still working on meeting in the middle.
Imagine my surprise when halfway through quarantine Jeff announces that he is ready to do this. Huh??? With no job offers on the horizon but some promising things happening with the business, we just needed some time away from our monthly expenses to make things work. We hashed it out over and over and over and over. At the end of June we took our camper to Hanna Park in Neptune Beach, FL and realized that we could never live in it with 2 kids and a dog. That same week I played tennis with a lady that I had seen around but never really spoken to. Her name is Kim Loferski and she is an amazing realtor. A mutual friend set up the foursome and after the usual tennis chat Kim offered to do a market analysis on our house. A few days later she came over and checked out the house, gave us a "short" list of things to do and we set a listing date. That tennis date was 25 days ago and our house has been on the market for 5 days. WHEW!
In the days in between we have painted, stripped, re-painted, stained, grouted, repaired, scrubbed, rearranged, decluttered, drywalled, yelled, screamed, cussed and prayed our faces off. I won't bore you with the details but suffice it to say that we never want to own another house again.
We have absolutely loved our lives here. We brought Ivy home to this house and LP was only 6 months old when we moved in. Every single one of their memories is entrenched in this home. When it was all done and the stagers and photographer had finished, we looked around and saw the home that we had spent 16 years building. We may not have built the house but we had expended blood, sweat and tears as we built it into the best home that this famly could have ever wanted. And this is when I started freaking out.
What are we doing? Why would we give up 2,600 square feet for 400? What are we doing to our children? How will we ever get rid of all of this stuff? "Mama, everything is going to be okay. Just relax," said Ivy.
And this is just the beginning.
We still have so many more hurdles to jump in this process. We had an interesting hurdle today when we had our septic tank pumped. We put in an entirely new system about 12 years ago and had really not thought about it since. When I mentioned this to our realtor she suggested that we have it pumped. They came today and boy am I glad they did. That sucker was full to the brim! The guys that pumped it were super nice and allowed me to observe and ask questions. I only gagged once. They said the filter needed to be cleaned. They could clean it for $75 or we could do it for free. I volunteered Jeff and we saved $75!!!
Bring on the next hurdle!
I'm so excited for you guys and a little bit jealous!!! I can't wait to read all about your adventures. Hopefully we can meet up with you at some point!