Our Deadline and OUR DECISION

We gave ourselves a deadline: June 30, 2016. We wanted to know by that date what we were going to do with our lives. Yeah, well, that deadline came and went. The trip to my Dad's, Cape Coral, Fourth of July, our 10 year anniversary, a trip to Siesta Key and finally Reno's 9th Birthday all passed by in a blink of an eye. Summer is wrapping up and we've been going back and forth with our decision quite a bit. Understandably.

In the end we did put an offer in on a house in Port St. Lucie. It is a really nice house.  We went back and forth a few times and the seller did come down $22K in price which is huge. We ended up walking away as it just didn't seem right. Don't think we didn't doubt that decision quite a few hundred times. Ultimately, we really thought about it and asked ourselves: 'Why would we stay here when we risked everything to uproot our family for a new way of life?' We would be living the same lifestyle: the routine and the whole rigamaroll. The housing market in South Florida has also exploded in the last 18 months. We find houses that sold in 2014 for $185K that are now listed for $285K. That is disgusting! The bubble is going to burst people-- it IS going to burst.

Our final decision:DRUM ROLLLLL PLEASE... We are going to....

Image courtesy of GoRving.com

Holy smokes (or Holy MOKES as Cayenne would say)! It's a crazy choice but it's the right one for us right now. There will never be another good time like our current situtation. Our stuff is in storage, our kids aren't connected to this place or their school and BA-BAM! We are headed out on the road and will have a TON of stuff for the blog to share with all of you. We are thinking this will be a 1-2 year extravaganza in order to see everything we want to see. My hope is that we will find a place we fall in love with along the way. If not, it isn't the end of the world. We have a house in VA that will be available in May 2018 and we know we have a place to come back to in FL.

We are going to share a ton more as the weeks get closer but we are excited, extremely nervous about the unknown and overwhelmed by everything that still has to be done. Exhibit A:

1. Selling cars/trading/posting or blah blah
2. Finding our RV- the one we really like is the Forest River Georgetown 364TS- E is working with 2 different dealers to get the best deal
3. Finalizing homeschool options/plans and sending notice of intent to superintendent, ensuring we have access to an annual evaluation
4. Learning how to operate poop pump, water tanks, etc. - E's got this!
5. Dealing with wifi, satellite stuff to ensure we have what we need for work, communication
6. Going through all of the stuff we have at both parents houses and determining what we need to bring and figuring out what we do with all of the other stuff. In other words, downsizing AGAIN.
7. Working on registering vehicle, insuring, etc.
8. Figuring out our route. We are looking at staying at national parks, if possible and RV parks and then supplementing with a night at places we find through Harvest Hosts. Check that out-- it's amazing! Our plan is to be in warm climate during winter months so we don't have to pack coats and everything that comes with winter. We will share with you the first portion of our route soon as we've finally gotten somewhere with it.

Most people do all this stuff with time on their side. That is not the case with the Cortes Clan. We've got one month to get 'er done. Stay tuned as our adventure starts to unfold...