You’re doing what? Here’s the story of how we got here.

In early 2020, you could have found us rushing every morning to drop the kids off at school before heading off to work across town.  After a day of running non-stop, we’d pick the kids up,  part ways to make it to each of their activities and then get home just in time to throw together a quick dinner, get everyone bathed and fall into bed. 

The kids were not even out of first grade, and already it felt like our family was separated for the majority of our week. Things didn’t feel right. But this was just life as a family with 4 kids, right?  That’s what we told ourselves.  

Then Covid hit. And everything stopped.  What a crazy time. 

I remember little glimmers telling me what I had never paused long enough to consider - that it was time for a big change for our family. The thought of homeschooling had crossed my mind before, but I always said I could never do it. I didn’t have enough patience. It was too much pressure. I didn’t know enough.

When rumors started that Spring Break might get extended, I crossed my fingers and prayed that it would. I found myself wishing the schools wouldn’t call everyone back (a privileged way to think, I know). We settled into the new normal with ease, and while we missed our friends, family + activities, we thrived with more evenings on the porch, hours spent reading under a blanket and slow mornings.

As the summer came to a close and back-to-school dates were announced, we knew there wasn’t much we wanted to go back to.  We had found freedom in our days and more time together to learn and explore through homeschooling. Jon had launched his own business and was thriving working from home and spending less time in traffic everyday.  We realized we had built a new reality. And we were addicted.  

In July, we had set out for a socially distanced two-week roadtrip out west, and we realized how much we thrived being on the road together. We felt more alive and loved the feeling of pushing ourselves, taking risks and being outdoors all day.  Things that were hard to accomplish back at home in Oklahoma.  We had traveled some before, but with the new freedom in our schedule, we knew we had only scratched the surface. In the following months, we spent a couple of weeks road-tripping to the east coast, a month in Costa Rica and 5 weeks in Portugal/Paris, and it left us wanting even more.  

A new era for our family had begun, and would continue to evolve as we dreamed even bigger dreams of more freedom + exploration.  Over the next 3 years of growing our business, traveling more and for longer periods, and diving deeper into homeschooling, the seemingly crazy idea for full-time travel kept knocking.  It became the topic of most date nights + every early morning prayer and journal entry.  Slowly over time, it started to seem less insane and more like a dream that we had to bring to life.

Finally, in January of 2023, we realized it was time to stop talking and start taking action.  With a lot of hard work and planning, everything began to line up and fall into place for us to put our house on the market and head out mid-summer. Hours of painting and fixing so many issues on our 100 year old house left us exhausted but determined.  We were tired of spending so much of our time managing/organizing stuff, fixing the house, taking care of the yard…and so little time adventuring + spending quality time with our kids.  Every evening and weekend that we devoted ourselves to preparing the house only reinforced our motivation to leap and take back our time and energy.

It ended up taking much longer than planned and teaching us more lessons than we had anticipated…but finally on December 11th, 2023, we walked out of our sweet house for the last time and pulled away with nothing but ourselves, our Subaru and our little 8 foot trailer.  It was a painful ripping up of roots as we said tearful goodbyes to our family, friends and neighbors who had become like family. The pain of it left me doubting and praying that we’d made the right decision. But the decision was behind us now, and the only thing left to do was to go, trusting that this wild adventure had been planted in our hearts for a purpose and that whatever lay ahead was meant for us and would be the greatest story we could imagine.

Years in the making, taking this leap of faith was way more challenging than we ever imagined. It was fraught with so much fear, so many tears and hours of analyzing.  It taught all 6 of us how to be resilient, listen to our hearts, stay open to possibilities and to be ready to adapt at a moment’s notice…lessons we’re continuing to learn on a daily basis now that we’re on the road.

We’re grateful for every high and low. Every hard lesson. Every breath-taking moment.  They all weave together to create this beautiful story we’re living and we don’t take a single moment for granted.