I've always been pretty weird, I learned to embrace it from the time I was young and my family homeschooled, something that is definitely not the norm. That experience gave me the confidence to do my own thing and not worry about what other people think. Sometimes this has led me to be a leader, and other times it has led me to just being a weirdo. But I don't usually give it too much thought either way. I'm weird, you're weird, we're all weird, some people just own up to it more than others. And so here I am today, owning it and doing something pretty unusual with my crazy family, and loving every minute of it.
Most people don't get us or what we're doing. They don't understand why we would want to give up the comforts and familiarity of home to travel, or why we take our little kids out camping in the cold on the weekends. But a few people get it.. There are a few of you out there that are odd like us. To those people I say, don't worry about what everyone else is doing. Don't get caught up in what other people are doing to build their dream lives, and pause for a bit to think about what you want to do to build yours. For us, that looks like a life focused on travel. Can we have a massive house on a large property and still travel as often as we'd like? No. Some people can have both, but for us we have to be willing to make some trade-offs. The saying, "You can have anything, but you can't have everything" keeps playing in my head.
I assumed we would travel for 2 years until Beckett began kindergarten, but we didn't have an exact plan. A few months ago a great opportunity came up for Mark at work, but it required living near Salt Lake. The idea of moving home seemed to come to soon, but the opportunity was something we didn't want to pass up. We really struggled with the decision for several weeks.... weighing pros and cons, disagreeing, agreeing, etc. After lots of thought and discussion, we are moving to Utah in April. We were only able to feel good about this decision after agreeing that we would move home, but not go back to what was once our "normal" way of life.
Our priorities and goals as a family have been flipped completely upside down while traveling around. We've learned to live on less, with less, while spending more time together and experiencing more than ever before. That is something we don't want to give up. We can't give it up. I don't think we'll ever go back to the lifestyle we had before again. So we started getting creative and making plans. We'll be living pretty simply, and budgeting about 25% of our income for travel. Our goal is to begin traveling internationally, and doing several big trips a year. This means a smaller house and older cars than before, but those things don't really even feel like a "sacrifice" because we've learned that we are perfectly happy practically living out of our truck or staying in a 1000 square foot house.
Although traveling full-time didn't last as long as we'd originally thought, I wouldn't do anything different. We've learned so much about ourselves this last year, and about what makes us happy. We have nothing tying us down or holding us back, and who knows what adventures are waiting for us down the road. People ask how it feels to know that our journey is coming to an end, but really, I feel like it is just beginning.
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