We have a TOAD..... His name is Luigi!

Meet LUIGI!!!!

This is our TOAD - Our vehicle we will be towing behind The Nest when we hit the road... We love this car. It is a 2012 Fiat convertible and he is awesomesauce! 

Evan gets tickled at me cause I am also excited over the fact that Luigi's color matches The Nest and we will be color coordinated on the road... 

We previously had  THIS Yukon aka Gas SUCKER. 

I have to say that we NEEDED this Boat when we purchased it. We carried 7 people around for several years... Us 2, 4 kids and my MIL. But since we are moving only 4 of us are going therefore we were able to minimize to Luigi! And we LOVE HIM! 

Luigi is awesome on fuel... we drove him 334 miles before filling up this weekend. 33 miles to a gallon. How flipping cool is that???

Since we are moving in 4 days - YES 4 DAYS - to Columbia for 7 months, we are planning to drive back to the Upstate, every other weekend for family dinners. So Luigi will totally be worth the purchase in fuel alone. 

Here are a few pics from this past weekend...... Us in Luigi! 

Fun times had by all this past weekend...... Since Sunday it has been full on work... Cleaning out the house, moving it into The Nest. 

Washer & Dryer picked up yesterday along with a ton of "Stuff" we did not need.

Bunches going on this week... My 18 year old is graduating Thursday, my parents are coming into town for ceremony, my 7 yo is finishing 1st grade, movers on Saturday, final cleaning of house on Sunday, Shopping trip with teenagers on Monday then I am off (with 2 yo in tow) to meet up with Evan and son in Columbia to start our 7 months in the campground...... 

Yes, I am just a weeeee bit stressed.... But I am Happy!!!! 

Count down to June 1st......

It has been over a month since I last posted and boy oh boy did that month fly by......  Our notice to vacate our house has been turned in to the landlord... We have The Nest home from the doctor (shop) and we are really itching to hit the road....

Yesterday I was out near our new home - well the campground we will be living in for the next 7 months..... I have totally fallen in love with it... and yesterday despite the cloudy skies, it was like sunshine to me driving in to take some pictures of where we will be in 10 days - OMG 10 DAYS we will be living in The Nest....

Our New Home!!! 

Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park at River Bottom Farms

Our Site - #24

Big, Shady, Clean, Near Walking Trails

New Playground being built

New Swings

Pool Pool Pool!!!!!!

Other side of Pool Pool Pool!!!!!!

We are so excited! Kids are excited! 

Now is the time to crack down on getting our house emptied and our stuff in the rig...... 

We experienced a rough weekend with the hard rain that came through our area. In fact we had a leak! A LEAK! Scared me to death. All I thought about was the floor rotting and falling thru and us not having a place to live out our dreams..... After much head scratching, searching for locations of the leak and consulting on the "nomadic do it yourself" facebook page we concluded the partnering of the rain, open slide and the fact we were not level allowed for water to get in the rig and soak our carpet.... 

The water was in the carpet in the middle of the hall AND in front of the bench seat in this picture. 

I was scared to death but once we decide the issue, we re-leveled the rig and sucked the water out of the carpet with a carpet cleaner.... now the carpets are dry (And clean since we cleaned all the other carpet with the cleaner) and I am once again HAPPY! 

One step closer..... :) 

On our way to living our dreams..... 

Our Family knows......

We have an awesome family. I have feared telling them of our plans. I just knew they would want to kill us but this past weekend went surprisingly well. There was no gasping, yelling, crying or anything.... Now there also was no jumping up & down and celebrating either but that is totally ok with me.... The fact they did not get upset is a milestone for me and I now have less stress........ 

Now we have time to focus on what we need to do to get ourselves in the rig in Columbia and closer to our goal of hitting the road. 

This past weekend was also our 1st and ONLY Yard Sale..... I say only because I HATE yard sales.... Since we are storing our furniture then our yard sale was to get rid of JUNK... and we did get some gone... We made a little money that we promptly blew through but that is totally ok.... 

E-Diva was a great helper during the sale.. 

She kept trying to keep things I was trying to get rid of.... 

Then she decided she was worn out and 

I couldn't get her to do a thing.....

We had quite a bit of stuff left over. A facebook friend had mentioned her church had a clothing closet so I contacted her to see if they wanted our left over clothes. She came to pick them up and we loaded her mini van slam full of just clothes. It made me happy to know these clothes were going towards a good cause of helping families in need..... All our other "junk" was loaded up and hauled to Goodwill. 

I still have a crap load of stuff to get rid of but I will Freecycle them and/or head to Goodwill again and again and again.... 

After notification of our plans to our family was announced, I felt so much better and relieved. It was telling them that was holding me back from actually completing projects. Now that is over with, we can move forward. 

We have 6 1/2 weeks left before we move into the rig.... 

We have BOOKED our New Home.................

What a difference a week makes.... We have only completed a little more purging (we have TONS left to do), I have gone over & over our budget trying to ensure there are no flaws (I remember things to add almost every minute and it is driving me nuts), we have thought and thought about how we will be able to do this and that and get this and that......  but yesterday things seem to iron out a bit more and our idea of becoming adventurers started to come together for us.  

Our goal for our adventure is to move into our rig in June 2013 and live in it until January 2014. In January, our plan is to hit the road and go where ever Evan has mapped for us. (And boy oh boy has he been mapping it out - Ha-Ha)

We both have been trying to find a campground in the area to move to for the 7 months we plan to live in the rig (June until December). The campgrounds around here have not been "blowing our socks off" & some are absolutely not worth even driving through let alone living in for us. 

Yesterday, it was as if the stars aligned correctly and I suppose we were holding our tongues just right because we were able to locate an incredible campground with an awesome monthly rate of $315 + electric.  It is a Yogi Bear Jellystone Park. I am so EXCITED!  

If you are not familiar with the Yogi Bear Parks here is a link: Yogi Bear's Jellystone Parks

Last year we visited the Jellystone Park in Marion NC and were totally smitten with them. The Jellystone Park in Marion, NC  has a pool & water slide but we did not try them out while we were there. We had so much fun with all the other stuff that going to the pool & water slide just did not get on our agenda..... 

Here are some pictures from our stay in May 2012

at Jellystone Park in Marion, NC.

Our Rig on a Creek Site

Yogi visited all the sites on Sunday Morning

Evan & J-Man as they head out to explore on their Scooters.

Playground & Sand Box

Putt-Putt Course

Canoeing and Kayaking the lakes

Yogi & E-Diva

Yogi and J-Man

Normally these parks are seasonal (the Marion, NC is one of them) but the one we have booked for June - December is open year around. It has all the amenities we were wanting: Fishing, Pool, Nature Trails AND activities for the kids EVERY weekend.....  

You can check our soon to be home site we have chosen by clicking this link -->  Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park @ River Bottom Farms   You really need to check out the Events page where they show the theme for each weekend. J-Man and E-Diva are going to have so much fun... as am Evan & I.   (We have never been to this location before and next week I will be in town for work so I will be going by to check it out. We feel comfortable enough with booking this location because it is a Jellystone Park and they are required to have high standards which is a plus in my book. I will take pictures when I visit and post)

By the way, this campground is in another city than where we live now so it will be a totally new adventure for us being in a new area as well as living in the rig. We are familiar with Columbia, SC but we do not venture there often due to the distance. Columbia is the capital of South Carolina and has so much to to for family's and kids such as......  Riverbanks Zoo, Edventure, South Carolina State Museum, Columbia Museum of Art, there is even a FaceBook page 365 Things To Do in Columbia.... We will not (SHOULD not) be bored at any given time when we move here..... 

The idea behind living in a campground until we hit the road is for us to save money for our trip & complete some upgrades to the rig (Possibly adding solar & getting all the towing equipment for a toad)  By moving into this campground, Evan & the kids will be entertained (pool, fishing, walking trails, as well as going into town for the Zoo, children's museum, etc... during the week) while I am working and we will be saving ALL of my salary EACH month and living off of Evan's income.  (Currently I live 1.5 hours from my company's main office, when we move here, I will be 30 minutes away - So I will have more opportunities to work with the big wigs as well in my last few months) 

When we settle at River Bottom Farms, we will no longer have to pay for home phone/internet at $60 a month (we will use our cell phones & wifi is included at campground), satellite at $70 a month (we will be using netflix & red box streaming at about $9 a month a piece along with our antenna for local channels), water bill $30 a month (included with site), yard maintenance $90 a month during grass cutting season (included with site), trash pick up at $20 a month (dumpster on site), renters insurance at $40 a month, a $300 a month electric bill (we are estimating around $100 a month if that when we move), or a $900 a month rent payment.... yes ALL of those will be GONE and or reduced tons.....  (Just in rent alone we are saving $600 a month.) I have our budget all planned out and as we move forward in to this saga, I will post about the differences in the old and new budgets as they evolve but just with what I have listed above we are NOW paying $1510 a month and when we move we will be paying $433 a month. A grand savings right off the bat of $1077 a month. Amazing!!! 

For now we are focused on purging our stuff, having our yard sale, getting the things we will be storing to my mother-in-laws house (Yay, no storage fee to add to my budget) and within 2 months moving to Yogi Bear's park.....  Oh my, we have LESS THAN 2 MONTHS.......  Eeeeeeeek! 

The Mindset of Purging.....

Purging..... 

My motivation to purge is almost non-existent.... It comes and goes... We are set in our minds to live this life on the road, yet we are still stuck in the rut of this sticks & bricks house..... 

Work, eat, sleep, kids to school, youngest kid taken care of, older kids back & forth..... Work, eat, sleep, yadda yadda yadda...... 

I have accomplished several closets. There is a stack of junk to sell at a yard-sale .. I ABHOR yard-sales .. Love to go to them, HATE HATE HATE to have them..... 

My life would be so much simpler if someone would just offer me a lump sum of a decent amount to come get this junk and carry it off for me.... 

As we purge our lives (does that sound dramatic enough?), we (actually just ME) are hit with some thoughts.... 

Doubts enter now:

• What if we cannot make it work on the road? 
• What happens if we run out of money?
• What do we do it our rig breaks down?
• How to we handle medical issues?
• Will the kids be able to adjust?
• How will the kids have friends?
• Our family is going to KILL US! 

The focus is on purging for now.... I still have tons of work to do and I have issues to deal with... Like...
I do not want to sell our brand new living room furniture or our wonderful brand new king size bed for fear we decide this is not for us and when we return home we have NOTHING..... 

I shouldn't have the thought of failing & I should not be thinking this may not working, but I am the practical one and I want something to come home too if we come home........ 

My mother-in-law is allowing us to store stuff at her house... so we are luckily in the fact that I will be able to keep my bed, living room furniture, and some other items that MUST BE KEPT....  

Now reality kicks in, we have 2 months to rid our junk, get our saved stuff to MIL's and all I can think is how the hell are we going to get all this done????  

My brain is a mess..... 

Homeschooling Prep is Confusing...... Wait, scratch that.......

So, in prepping for our launch, we are researching different Homeschooling options for J-Man. We want to begin homeschooling him in the fall so when we hit the road in January, we have a schedule in place and his schooling is underway......

I never knew that preparing for homeschooling would be such a headache for us. Maybe I am making it out to be more difficult than it truly is but goodness, I cannot seem to wrap my head around all the do's and don'ts of the process.

We have spoken with K12 and like the "free" part of the program but because this program is government driven, then we would have to have J-Man back in the Spring to physically take tests. The whole idea of going on the road is to be out and about without the requirements of having to come back at required times.

When we research the other options, I find that for the State of SC, we HAVE to sign up with a Homeschool Association. 

Why do you go away?

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

E, E-Diva, J-Man, and T, the stars in this play!