That’s it, we are out…

Well, we were supposed to close on the house today, right?  I mean, that is why we’ve been keeping you all on your toes during the big countdown!  Here we are on the final day and while we made it out of the house and even moved the RV out of the driveway and over to our friend’s house to park it for a few weeks; we did not close. Without boring you with all the details, the bottom line is that we will close on Tuesday. “So what are you going to do with all your extra time?”, you may ask.  Well, at the moment we are out on a date night.  We decided to take a load off for the evening.  Not to mention…we’re just plain pooped!

We’ve been truly blessed this week with great family & friends who came by to help out. There’s nothing like showing you’re committed to this friendship quite like helping out with a move, right?  As well as those who took the kids to have some fun.  Our kids will really get hit with a strong taste of reality on Monday when we get back into schooling…double time in order to finish before we hit the road this summer.

We apologize for not getting the blog out sooner today, but we seriously packed and buried the computer we’ve been using to write all the blogs. So, here we are, on our date night writing to our beloved friends to inform you of what’s going on. We are so thankful for all the following we’ve received during this time. There’s still so much to blog about, our fingers can barely keep up! So, stay connected and we will have more (like the video I took of Tim driving the RV out of the neighborhood…he even honked and waved at our security guard who hates us) & the final walk through of the empty house.  In addition, we have half of my parent’s garage filled with more stuff to sell (even though we donated all that was left after the sale last weekend).  So, yes, we still have plentytot keep us busy until Tuesday & beyond!

So stay tuned and be sure to sign up for our newsletter to stay informed, oh and like us on Facebook to help build up our following.

For the RoamSchool Academy, I’m the mom,

Amy

Two days left in the house!

So I had a little visitor last night to lend me a hand loading boxes, a few hundred hands. Check out the video below to see my furry friend!

Do you remember that feeling…

…when school was almost over. I don’t just mean for summer break, but for good. I’m talking about your senior year of high school, when life as you knew it was about to completely change. I have that feeling right now. However, it’s not just that the excitement is building, those final days before graduation were a lot of work. Between exams and getting ready for the big graduation party, and the ceremony itself, sometimes it felt like the work was all going to somehow rob the joy of that time. But it didn’t. All that running around, all those last minute preparations, all those threats of not getting your diploma, well, okay most of you probably weren’t finding yourself getting in enough trouble to extract the threat of a withheld diploma from the adults on a daily basis like I was, but we all had different pressures that somehow melded into that fantastic memory of finishing. I have that same feeling again.

Anchor Chains, Plane Motors, and Train Whistles

According to George Bailey in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”, those three sounds are the most exciting sounds in the world. I think I pretty much agree with George Bailey on that one. Of course, I do like Uncle Billy’s answer as well, “Breakfast is served, lunch is served, and dinner is served.” I graduated high school with that same spirit of adventure as George Bailey, so with my graduation money I bought two things for myself. I bought a pair of Rollerblades and a backpack. Armed with those two items, I set out on a trip that took me from Canada, to Missouri, down to Texas, up to Colorado and back to Michigan. It was a great trip which only stoked my passion for travel. So, upon my return at the end of that summer, I enlisted in the Navy. The backpack was replaced by a Navy issued Seabag, but the Rollerblades came with me. During my time in the Navy, I racked up the nautical miles completely circling the globe in a submarine and the wheels of my Rollerblades rolled across nearly every continent on the planet. It was great, but…

Now, there are six of us up for the adventure…

Well, seven, if you include the RoamSchool Academy’s mascot, our two and a half pound chahuahua named Knox. The train whistle is on top of the RV now, and my hope is that the kids find as much joy in the learning adventures that come with travel as I do! So as the Friday deadline approaches to be out of the house, we still have a lot of work to do, just like way back when at graduation, only this time I know the work is part of the joy!

For the RoamSchool Academy, I’m the dad,

~ Tim

Old home, meet new home…

It’s not very often that the house you’re leaving gets to meet the house you’re moving into, but yesterday I brought the RV back to the house we only have four days left in. Our driveway is 38 feet long, so that left us with a foot on either end of the RV. Even though I was out there working morning til night, preparing the RV for our adventure, the excitement never faded all day. As I packed some of the essentials, BBQ grill, tool box, and the like, I was amazed at the room we had underneath. Not that it will seem like we have enough room for storage when it’s all said and done, but for now I am extremely optimistic.

But what do the kids think?

Man, you would have thought somebody popped open a party pack of pixie sticks when they saw the RV sitting in the driveway. They even picked out which bin would be theirs when I told them they would get to sleep in the under-storage! I was kidding of course, but you would have thought I had just given them all a pony. They didn’t seem to stop bouncing, hopping or skipping around the thing all afternoon. We’ll just have to see where their excitement levels are the first time I tell them they have to help me empty the poop! I’m sure they would have been excited about it yesterday, but they might be singing a different tune in a few months. We’ll just have to wait and see. For now, we are still moving things out of the sticks and bricks and into the RV.

The Real Test

Today will be the real test. Amy is going to attempt to load up the RV kitchen with the essentials from the kitchen in the house. By the end of the day, that feeling like we still had a lot of room to go may be long gone. We’ll keep you posted!

For the RoamSchool Academy, I’m the dad,

~ Tim

Umm…We Digress…

Well we are down to day five in the countdown and a friend put it best yesterday afternoon when he said, “Wow, you guys still have a lot of work to do.” Yes, yes, we do, but we are hammering away at it. In fact, yesterday, we got rid of the kitchen table and chairs and with that it left us with a huge empty space in the house. Right now, empty spaces are good because we are trading in 3000 square feet of living space for just 300. But don’t worry, I assure you, there will be no empty spaces in the RV. As I was saying, there was a big empty space where the table and chairs once were, and this is a sign of victory in our war on stuff! However, we still have to have somewhere to eat and I am a man who likes to take care of his woman, so where did I go to find something to impress Amy in the meantime? A fancy furniture store out by the mall you might ask. No, no, my friend, I went to the garage.

That’s right, find the key to her heart in the garage…

Oh come on, stick with me. You’re not seeing the vision, you’re not seeing the past. I went and dug out the ol’ green card table we got as a wedding gift nearly 17 years ago. “A card table?” You might ask. Well yes, you see when we first got married, that little green card table was our one and only dining room table. That is where we had all those romantic candlelight dinners when we were first married. When I was stationed in Hawaii, we would eat our meals at that table looking out over Waikiki and Diamond Head volcano in the distance. So I set up the card table, lit a candle and put on a little Michael Buble. Now, I know what you’re thinking guys, but Michael Buble puts on a really good concert. Although, even he makes fun of you for being at his concert if you’re a dude. Anyway, the table is set up and I am just waiting for those nostalgic romantic feelings to kick in. Of course as I write this, it’s 12:30 am and I can hear Amy vacuuming downstairs, so maybe I’ll wait until tomorrow to try and bring up all those nostalgic romantic feelings.

For the RoamSchool Academy, I’m the Dad,

~ Tim

Okay, I have to admit, this is the one serious drawback to selling most everything you own and heading out on the road; endless garage sales. If we weren’t trying to raise money for our RV trip, I would say enough with it, and donate it all. Don’t get me wrong, we have already donated a lot of stuff and there will be a lot more that we do, but  garage sales, as much as I loathe them, are a necessary event when you’re downsizing. I joke that we are funding the RoamSchool Academy one ceramic rooster at a time, but there is a lot of truth in that. It does add up.

We hope to be through it soon, but we may have a few more left. So if you are in the area, Friday 4/27 or Saturday 4/28 we are having our garage sale at Amy’s parents house in the Savannas sub-division just off hwy 27 in the four corners area. Their address is 15826 Pine Lily Court, Clermont, FL 34714.

So come out and see us, your purchases will go toward our children’s first hand education of this country’s history! I am sorry though, I do believe we already sold the ceramic rooster, but we still have plenty of other useful items.

For the RoamSchool Academy, I’m the Dad,

~ Tim

Just like the Mob…

A number of years ago, I read the book The Godfather by Mario Puzo. There was a phrase in the book that I always loved. When the gangsters are having a mob war, they can’t go home for fear of an ambush, so they stay in sparsely furnished apartments were the mattresses are simply thrown on the floor. They call this “going to the mattresses.” It essentially means we are at war and ever since then, I’ve always felt the phrase “Going to the mattresses” was appropriately applied to moving. Whenever we have been in the process, whether it’s when we first arrive at the new place, or we are getting ready to leave the old, the mattresses always end up on the floor. Besides that, moving feels like you are getting ready for war.

We are at War…

We are not at war with a competing family. We are at war with stuff!!! A year or two ago Amy and I really started to feel like we were drowning in all the possessions we were accumulating. It’s not like we were just going out and buying up the stores, it just happened over time. We were just filling the space we owned. It sneaks up on you. There would be a lawn project that would require a certain tool, or I needed something for the business I was running out of the house, or just having four kids. That’s four birthdays a year, and since the practice of getting “not your birthday, birthday presents” was implemented somewhere along the way, we get overwhelmed with stuff for the kids without ever even having to buy them a thing. Well Amy and I are fighting back. We are trying to radically simplify the “overwhelming stuff” problem in our lives. Even if the RV lifestyle doesn’t become a permanent lifestyle, we will have at least taken this opportunity to purge our belongings.

So the cool bunk beds are gone, but…

We are trading the bunk beds for a bedroom with a view of the ocean one week, or a view of the mountains the next. We are all getting very excited. And don’t worry, I am a firm believer that bunk beds are one of the coolest inventions ever. So we will find a way to bring them back into the kids lives one way or another.

For the RoamSchool Academy, I’m the Dad,

~ Tim

Only 10 more days in our sticks and bricks!

Last year, when Amy and I started dreaming up this crazy plan to take the kids across the country in an RV, we knew it would not be easy preparing for such a drastic change in lifestyle. Our goal to downsize everything and simplify life has been challenging to say the least. However, we are starting to feel as though we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. At least we can see the end of the first phase coming at us.

In Phase I, we’ve put the house up for sale, studied an endless amount of books and blogs on RVing, we’ve sold  a ton of stuff - literally, a ton.  The wild thing is, after all this work, doing countless number of garage sales, flea markets and just selling things on Facebook, we aren’t reaching the finish line. On the contrary, we are almost to the starting line!

We close on the house in just ten more days, YAY!!! So, as we continue to bring you the journey, we are going to keep you updated with our Ten Day Countdown blog. Now, this isn’t the ten day countdown until launch, it’s just the ten day countdown until we reach Phase II – the Interim Phase.

Phase II begins once we close on the house (scheduled for May 4).  We will be staying with Amy’s parents, just down the road, for a few weeks. During that time we will be preparing the RV for the long haul. What RV, you may ask?  Don’t worry, we will have some exciting news on the RV during the next ten days (insert sound effect here – bum,bum,bum).  We are also planning a short trip to test out the RV during the Interim Phase. So, stay tuned to see how a couple of RV novices cope for three days, let alone six months! Then, our ten day countdown til launch will commence towards the end of May. We are planning on hitting the road around the 8th of June.

So stay with us as we launch the RoamSchool Academy!

~ Tim