Tomorrow, we will be two weeks into full-time RVing! We are having a blast! We have had so many questions about why we chose this lifestyle, and what we are going to be doing. So….I’m going to try to shed a little light for those of you who think we’ve completely lost our marbles! (Side note: You may still think that after reading this, and that’s ok!)
Full-time RVing has always been our retirement plan. The plan was when we retired, we would get rid of everything, downsize to an RV, travel when we wanted to, or plant ourselves when and where we felt like it. As I’m learning, that is not uncommon for many people, especially retirees. But, there are a ton of young families who have jumped on the bandwagon as well! We love adventures….whether it’s down by Lake Nasworthy for the weekend or a cross-country trip. We love to explore and learn about different places and do different things. We have always incorporated education into every trip or vacation we have ever taken.
My home is San Angelo, TX. Almost all of my family is there. For the past 9+ years, we have lived away from family, in the Permian Basin. We have made many precious friends and been apart of, and on staff at, two great churches, but we have also missed many family events, birthday parties, holidays, etc. due to our distance from family. Also over the last 18 months, we have been blessed with a rapidly growing Media and Marketing business in the Permian Basin. God has blessed us greatly! As we began to discuss options for moving our family back home to San Angelo to be closer to extended family, our business in the Permian Basin continued to grow. Then, we got our first client in San Angelo, and our thinking began to change…
Join me on a journey through our thought process that followed the decision to put our house on the market and move home…..
We contacted our favorite realtor in San Angelo, Joyce Shelton, and began the process of putting our house on the market in Odessa and looking for a home in San Angelo. We still didn’t know how the back and forth to Odessa for work was going to work out, but we decided there are tons of people who commute to work, right? We would figure out the details later. Maybe we could get an RV and go back and forth. Maybe we could park a trailer in an RV park for Paul when he had to be there. When the kids were out of school, we could go too! Then, we decided maybe we could buy a house in Angelo, but rent it out for a year while we did the RV thing as a family. After about a month of being on the market, we got an offer on our house. Then, after looking at quite a few homes, we found a beautiful home in San Angelo. (Actually, Paul found it and sent me pictures. Ha!) We made an offer on it that night before I even saw it in person! When the kids and I made it to town and saw it the next day, we were all in love with it. It was perfect! I was struggling to think of our previous plans of renting it out. In my mind, I was already decorating it and making it our home. Well, the first contract on our house in Odessa fell through, so painstakingly, we let the house in San Angelo go. The sellers had a contract on another house too, and it would have messed up a chain of peoples’ plans. We had to look at it as a closed door. So, back on the market we went. We did a lot of soul searching and praying for God’s guidance during this time. Were we making the right decision? Was this going to happen? By this time, almost everything we owned was packed, given away, or in storage. Do we have to buy another house? Are we looking for another house because that’s what other people expect us to do? We are all super excited (including the kids) about the prospect of having an RV. We wander around Fun Town RV every time we are in San Angelo. What if we didn’t buy another house? What if we bought an RV that had plenty of room for the kids and for work and we were mobile? What if we homeschool the kids so we don’t have to be in one place all the time? What if we were able to travel to places we were learning about and go on field trips to far away places? What if we were able to be in San Angelo when we needed to be, and in the Permian Basin when we needed to be, and never had to pay for a hotel room again because we had a moving house??? Eeek!!!! We can do this! This is seriously a possibility! We are all SO EXCITED!!!! Once we made the decision, we started combing the internet for information on trucks and 5th wheels for full-time use. Within about 2 weeks of being back on the market, we had another offer! We also had discovered an entire world of people who are just as crazy as we are, and we had chosen the 5th Wheel we wanted….a Forest River Sandpiper with 4 slides (2 in the bunkroom, allowing plenty of space for the kids)!
So, on Thursday, July, 16th, after several delays, we finally closed on our house in Odessa. Then, on Friday morning, July 17th, we bought our truck, and drove it to San Angelo. By the evening, we had our Sandpiper parked in the back of my parents’ house, which is where our base will be for now! I slept like a baby that night and woke up to a beautiful sunrise that next morning. We have spent the last 2 weeks moving our stuff in, making it ours, and learning how to care for our new home. We have made a trip to Lubbock to get a washer/dryer combo (Note – I love it and highly recommend the Splendide 2100XC washer dryer combo to other RVers!) Our generator came in on Monday. We are just waiting for the rack gear to come in to load it on for traveling. Then, we will be fully equipped for dry camping!
We will be staying pretty close for a while, as my momma had a knee replacement last week, my sister and her sweet family just moved home from California, Paul needs to have hernias repaired, and my daddy needs to have a double knee replacement. We are truly blessed to be able to be here for all of that. My sister, Tammy, and her family are parked here in their trailer too! We fondly refer to my parents’ backyard as our “trailerhood”. Ha! Great times ahead! The kids are loving having their cousins close, and our pets think we bought the RV for them! Right now, we are just settling in and enjoying life. God has blessed us beyond measure. Life is good in the Trailerhood!!! 🙂 I will continue to post about our adventures on this blog, so stay tuned….
Our Moving House 