Our New (and Unexpected) Family Adventure

We have had a lot of exciting things happening in our family lately, and it’s time to start sharing what is going on! I’ve been quiet on the blog, between life feeling overwhelming with the virus stuff and then everything else going on, it’s been hard to focus on blogging. I’ve been dying to tell you our news though, so I’m just going to dive in!

We are officially under contract to sell our house!

That’s right. It’s pretty crazy, and it all happened so fast.

Let me back up a few months. Well, first of all to last year.

Sean thought about selling our house last year, but knew I wouldn’t be up for it. We live right next to two good friends, one behind us and one two streets over. I just didn’t want to leave a good neighborhood, and we haven’t been able to afford a house in the country. The market has been high, which would mean a good time for us to sell, but we didn’t want to sell high and purchase high, so we stayed put.

Fast forward to early this year. A good blogging friend of mine shared that they were selling their house and going to buy an RV and live in it for 1-2 years. I like adventure and change, and told Sean we should do it, sort of joking, sort of not. He thought it was a crazy idea, so we moved on in life.

A few months later we went to Texas for the Great Homeschool Convention, right when the country started getting shut down. We followed a travel trailer for hours on the way down there, and it got Sean to thinking about the adventure of living in one.

He just blurted it out as we drove home, and I about fell over. I initially didn’t want to do it. But the more we talked, the more we realized what an adventure this could be for a year, and how good this could be for our family financially. It could help us save up for the house in the country that we have always wanted, and that our children are wanting so badly!

So…we did it. We called up a realtor friend of ours, but everything was on lock down and we still had some work left to do on the house before we were ready to take pictures and list it. In the meantime, he had two different families he brought over that he knew. The second family ended up falling in love with it and said they wanted to buy it, and we are under contract right now!

It’s so unreal! We always knew this wasn’t our forever home, but I didn’t expect to be selling it so soon. I honestly love my house, the layout and space is amazing. I love my kitchen, and I love having all the bedrooms together on one level so it’s going to be hard to leave. But then I think about the future, and how much our children want to live in the country and it feels worth it to do this short term sacrifice.

Here are the plans we have. 

We are selling our Transit 12 passenger van and purchasing a Nissan 12 passenger van, as they are more powerful for pulling. We are buying a large travel trailer with a big bunkhouse and have plans to fix it up, paint it and make it look super cute. You won’t believe how a travel trailer can be transformed from looking dark and dreary, to cheery and adorable.

My mother in law lives on 10 acres, and her dad lives right next to her on property, so altogether it’s close to 100 acres. We are going to park the RV on her 10 acres, hook up to her septic system, propane, and electricity and just pay her monthly. Sean is going to work in her office room (she doesn’t use it), and it’s set up perfectly for all our business inventory to be stored there – we will still be shipping Character Badges and the Homeschool Planner!

(A picture at the beautiful property we get to stay at!)

We are going to travel quite a bit, do week long trips and come back Saturday evening to be home for church. We can work on the road, and I can’t wait to share with you all of our adventures!

Our hope is to do this for 1 year and work hard on saving up money to put towards a house in the country on some property.

Some questions that I know might pop up in people’s minds.

Are your children going to share a room?

Yes, they are all most likely going to be in a big bunk room together. We have talked through this quite a bit with them and they are ok with doing that. Again, this is not a long term goal of ours to be in an RV, but it feels right to do for a year.

Do you think this will be a huge challenge for your family?

Yes and no. Obviously until we get in one we won’t know for sure. I have times where I’m 100% on board and excited, and other times where I wish we could back out and not move. I’m the one that is most hesitant, a few of our children have some mild concerns but overall they all want to do it.

I’ve actually heard other large families that have done this say they were closer than ever after they finished their time in an RV. I can see that happening for us, and I’m thankful for this year of growth for our family. We will be forced to learn how to get along with each other on a new level!

Will you still be homeschooling?

Absolutely! I think this will enhance our school year a lot, we will get to go on more adventures and be outside way more than we are living in the city! I’m looking forward to hiking at state parks, and being outside at the property we will be staying at a lot! I see more peace in our homeschooling day as we have less house to keep up on, and more family time. I’ll definitely try to do more nature walks and nature time.

What about your children’s activities, like music lessons?

We still plan on keeping this up! My grand piano is going to be in my MIL’s house. I’m still working out the details on if we are going to get a keyboard for the travel trailer, or just use the piano in the house. Mosiah and Deborah will continue cello lessons, and Carrianna and Olivia will continue violin lessons. It will be a good way to see friends each week, as a good friend’s daughter teaches our girls violin.

We already talked to our cello teacher and he is willing to do zoom lessons if we are out of town, so there is that option. I’m thinking we will store the cellos on a top bunk in the travel trailer during the day, and put them in the living room at night. The violins will be more easy to tuck away somewhere. 🙂

How will you make money while you are on the road?

When we travel for a week it won’t be all vacation time. Sean and I will still have to work, and in the fall we will have school to do! Sean can do graphic design work on the road, I can blog and keep up my businesses of Lilla Rose and Young Living on the road, so I think it will work out just fine!

Thankfully Mosiah is 16, so he can safely take the children out of the travel trailer and go on walks with them, explore a little of where we are out and that will help. It will help us all be motivated to get our school done in the morning so we can get outside in the afternoon and explore!

If you want follow along on our adventure, make sure you are following me on Instagram as I’ll be sharing lots of behind the scenes stuff there!

And stay tuned, part two of our family adventure news is coming tomorrow!