I know this post is a long time coming, but its harder than I thought writing my thoughts out, and finding time to just get it down while watching a 4 year old, especially when I thought I'd do posts while he napped, he's had a total of two naps and I was so tired out from the struggle that I ended up napping (turns out trying to keep up with said 4 year old is tiring).
So, it's been a month and a bit of being houseless, and I'm surprised by how well it's all turning out so far. I'm finding some of the things I was apprehensive about I didn't need to worry about and other things I have found to be a little bit more of a strain (which I will get to on another post).
Some of my worries going in after we decided to go for it, during the couple months of getting ready, had to do with leaving the day to day routine. The hardest transition I think was leaving my job that I loved at 4imprint (where I worked for 17 years in various positions). And it's true I do I miss my morning chat with my coworkers in the marketing department, running into everybody at work and the friendly smiles and hellos I got walking to and from my desk, it seemed trivial while there, but now I realize it was really nice and something not to have taken for granted. I do also have to say that I met some of my best friends at work and although we didn't do or talk as much as in the past, it's still sad that I probably won't see anyone from the group in a long time, and the whole group together until our annual girls weekend, which hopefully we'll all be able to get together for. But all in all, I do have to say at least there is social media including Facebook, so everybody doesn't seem as far away, never thought I'd say it, but I'm thankful for Facebook.
Saying goodbye to our huge house and our furnishings and seeing all of Crayton's big boy bedroom furniture that I had envisioned him growing up with was a little traumatic. We deliberated over buying all this stuff less than 3 years before and were still paying on, in my mind, I had a hard time justifying this transition from this really nice life we had. We sold the big stuff on Craigslist for much less than what we paid for, which was another thing that started to really bother me, Ken organized all the sales and after time I didn't even ask how much we got for stuff knowing that it'd really bother me and start questioning our decision. As the house emptied though, it started getting easier on one or our last days we had a rummage sale (my first time having one) and towards the end I was enjoying just giving stuff away (I realized I just didn't need it anymore) and that felt really good. The stuff we deemed important we boxed up and put in storage, we filled one storage unit compared to three that we had to get for the month in between the move from Appleton to Neenah, and we had bought a whole bunch more to fill the big house in Neenah, so I think we did well getting rid of stuff. Now we have all the stuff we decided on together that we really wanted and could fit in the camper/RV and after a month it's really feeling like home, it's actually really comfortable, and as a benefit it's easier and faster to clean than a 3500 sq ft house. So, honestly I love our new house!
Taking Crayton out of daycare and being a fulltime stay-at-home mom was another worry, but that is a bit more of a long story, so I'll tackle that one in another post of how we're doing...right now we just try to find somewhere to throw rocks or dig and that seems to be enough to make him happy, for now.
And another one of my worries was how was Truman going to deal with this change and the drive days...well, so far so good!
So those were my biggest worries that turned out to be not so bad. I miss friends at work and my job sometimes, but really living a vacation-style life has been really good so far.
Stay-tuned to hear about where we've been and where we plan to go, we're a little behind, but plan to have a route and map post sometime in the near future...
Thanks for reading my very first blog post, hopefully it will get easier the more I do it!
