Booked

It's official! We've secured all stops on our trip. We will be in Alaska, the Wyoming/Idaho border, Arizona, Florida, Maine, and last, but not least, Kentucky!! The trip will end with the total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. You can see more about it here:  http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEmono/TSE2017/TSE2017.html
Then we return home. We'll be at each stop for approximately two months and will be visiting surrounding cities/states/countries while there. I can't wait!!! (Okay, I can. After all, I still have to get this house packed up!)

When we were looking at places for our last stop "in the middle", we came across the listing for the house in Kentucky. We contacted the owners and it turns out that they are "world-schooling" their kids and are currently helping at an orphanage in the Caribbean. I love that! It's great to hear about what other families are experiencing around the world. I especially love that they're helping people along the way. I've never been to Kentucky, so it will be interesting to learn more about it firsthand.

This week we scheduled the painters to come in and freshen up a few of the rooms. The upstairs bathroom is 99% finished. The pictures have come off the walls and have moved to storage. Boxes are slowly building up to join the pictures. Multiple trips have been made to the donation center and the house is looking more and more like a blank canvas every day.
As of today, 91 days to go.....

Wishing you all a wonderful Easter!

- Jen

Preparation Begins

Today is January 1, 2016- New Year's Day. Our family thought it an excellent time to make the official announcement that we've decided to embark on an epic family adventure!

Starting at the end of June we will be leaving for 14 months of travel around North America!

“How is this possible?!” you may ask. Surprisingly, the logistics couldn’t have come together more beautifully. We plan to homeschool (roadschool, actually) our three children (14, 12 and 9) and my husband will work remotely. The timing is perfect because our kids are old enough to remember and participate, yet young enough to be free of the ties of life they’ll experience in just a few years. We will live in different states for approximately two month periods in order to rest and fully experience each location. As you can imagine, that kind of a life shift will take quite a bit of planning and preparation but we are excited to get started!

Goals:

1. To experience the many regions, climates, terrains, languages, foods, people, histories, arts, etc. that our beautiful continent offers.

2. To reconnect with long-unseen family and friends and give our children an experience that will stay with them for a lifetime. (I mean, really, what better way to connect with what you're learning about than to experience it for yourself?!) We welcome any suggestions along the way to help us plan.

Route (as it stands today):

1. Alaska
2. Idaho/Wyoming
3. Arizona
4. Florida
5. Maine
6. Somewhere in the middle ending with the August 21, 2017 total solar eclipse
7. Return home before the 2017-2018 school year

While in each location, we will be exploring surrounding states and areas as time permits.

Our kids are at the ages where their lives revolve around friends and trends, so we decided to create this blog so you can all follow along. The kids will be checking in with their own perspectives from time to time and we expect that they will have many experiences and opinions to share. Our plan is to check in at least once a week (Hey! A New Year's resolution!) so be sure to sign up for updates or bookmark this blog to stay current.

In the meantime, we are in the throws of preparation. We are thinking about things like storing everything we plan to keep after we return, getting our house ready to rent, deciding what we will need for a year and what we can live without. I suspect we'll surprise ourselves with how little we actually *need*.

We look forward to planning this trip and traveling with you.

Welcome to our adventure!

- Jen