What Two Months Will Do

We moved into the house two months ago. At first I almost said we pulled in, but we did leave the bus outside, and since we completely emptied the bus, I have to admit we moved in. That was a hard concept for me to swallow at first, but I did quickly adapt. The last time we pulled off the road was when we were pregnant with Jewel and couldn't imagine bringing a third kid into our small twenty three foot motorhome. When we had originally gotten on the road almost three years prior to that we told ourselves we'd settle back down when we find the right place to raise our young family. Iowa seemed the perfect fit.....until winter hit and we all piled back into the motorhome to head south for warmth. Making us a part time on the road family, but still partially on the road.

The last time we pulled off the road we bought a house and then put all our energies and finances towards improving it & furnishing it. This time is waayyy different! The ONLY thing I've bought for it is one bar stool. We're making due with only items from the bus along with lawn furniture, and we've been quite content. In fact, I've enjoyed living in a house. Joey hasn't been working all that much, but enough, and it's allowed us plenty of time to talk out our situation. The first thing we decided was to GET RID of everything and START OVER. Joey's accident left him more than just physically scarred. Before the accident he was in a work-make money mode, but like most life threatening events, it changed him. Moving into the house allowed us to step outside of our current life and see things from a new perspective. We always knew this but we admitted it to ourselves: we still had too much stuff for our comfort. Too much stuff that was either too high a monthly payment, too big, too hard to drive, too much, too unuseful, too much of a hassle, all requiring him to work more.

Having all this time to think and talk out our options wasn't as easy as it sounds either. It's hard when you have endless options! By getting rid of everything and starting all over from scratch, we can do anything. Including, work less. Our first thought, naturally for us, was to move to Hawaii. That plan lasted a while until we really hashed it out & determined that would limit our travel, and well.....no one is ready for that. Jake wants to go to Italy, Jonas to France and I still want to travel Australia in a VW Bus, so settling down on an island won't work just yet. We then started looking at travel trailers and fifth wheels and just never really got that THIS IS IT feeling we were looking for. Then one day as Joey's cruising eBay he found another Bluebird Bus. Get rid of one Bluebird, for another, smaller even, Bluebird? Someone lost it. Then I started seeing the possibilities...and we BOUGHT IT! It's newer than our old green bus, and is set up as an RV/car hauler. Front half is a new modern RV with 3 bunks, couch, shower & sink, and the back half is an open air car hauler with attachable canvas cover, which I plan to turn into a screened in porch, complete with hammocks and a wet bar. Sounds fun, but we haven't actually taken possession of the bus yet so until we physically have it we can only guess what we want to do with it.

It was weird, after deciding to get rid of the green bus, for the first time in my life I felt homeless! Then I thought of the millions of people that rent houses and have no motorhome, and I realized our situation wasn't as scary as I thought. I actually embraced it. We could live in any house we wanted! We can have the bus and still rent houses when we want, like when we're on a job. Endless possibilities!

Right now we're just waiting to get our bus, take a couple weeks to set it up how we like and then we're getting back on the road for a couple months until the pipelines call the welders back. So we play the waiting game a little longer, but just enough time to work out all the details. Fun things are a happening!!