What are the Roughtons doing anyway?
After posting about my violin last week on Instagram, I decided it was easier to answer everyone's questions in a blog post, than to put it in little comments. So here we go!
(I'm including waaaay more information than the Cliff's Notes version we've been telling people, because I know some of you reading this will want to know more of the details)
Three Things I Swore Up And Down And Sideways I Would Never Do:
1. Live outside of Texas
2. Live in a tiny home
3. Homeschool my kid
As fate would have it, I'm preparing to do all three of those things. Simultaneously. Someone has a sense of humor somewhere.
I'm going to back track a few months, because the further we go into this journey, the more I realize we were being "prepared" to make changes in our life before this idea was even close to presenting itself to us.
I'm a devout Texan. The thing I feel strongest about in my life is my religion. A very close second 'thing I feel strongest about' is Texas. To me, Texas is perfection itself. Minus the humidity and the summers that last from April to November (it's hard to plan Halloween costumes too far in advance because you just never know if you'll need to wear something warm, or if you'll be dripping with sweat). But aside from the weather!!! Texas is a beautiful place filled with beautiful people (I don't care what the media would have you believe. There are fantastic people here, and I'm talking about from both sides of the political divide. I know fantastic Democrats, and I know fantastic Republicans, and I guess because I don't claim to be either one, I'm able to see both of their fantastic-ness).
This is getting long winded and I've only just started. If you're new to reading anything I write, this is going to ramble a lot before I get to any actually pertinent information.
Anyway.
About a year and a half ago, I had some experiences that burned me a bit, and left me feeling pretty isolated from the people I generally socialize with. Around that same time, Mike and I started tossing around the idea of moving. Up to that point, I had no desire to leave the area we live in. I like the restaurants and activities we live near, and I really like the people we go to church with. In our church, the people you worship with every Sunday is determined by where you live (you can learn more about that HERE, if you'd like). As I was feeling burned and isolated, I started to think that I could definitely move somewhere else and start fresh. This is really out of character for me, actually. I don't like change. I like having the same people in my life, and I hate it when they have to go. But the idea started to sound kind of good. If I'm being honest, that idea initially came from a bitter place. Luckily, the bitterness went away over time, but the idea of being able to separate myself from my comfort zone stayed.
And furthermore, at one point last year, every time we got stuck in the RIDICULOUS AMOUNTS OF TRAFFIC COMING INTO AUSTIN FROM THE NORTH END OF 183 (I'm cussing in my head a little right now), Mike and I would look at each other, and one of us would say "we've got to get out of here."
Austin was magical when I moved here twelve years ago.
Austin is a completely different place now.
I get it, some people are super into the "development" and "change" it's been undergoing, but we aren't fans. It's truly kind of frightening the amount of apartments and neighborhoods going up every single day. The city is constantly spreading further and further out. There are roads I loved driving down because they were zoned for farm land or park land or whatever, but now they've been re-zoned for another cookie cutter neighborhood, or another apartment complex. I've loved the suburb city we live in because it reminded me of the city I grew up near, but this one is just 15 minutes outside of Austin. Best of both worlds! Now the suburb we live in just feels like Austin. The new Austin that isn't magical.
Anyway. (I feel like I'm going to use that word a lot in this post).
We've established that I can mentally and emotionally separate myself from not only living here, but living in Texas in general.
Now. Living tiny.
Let's be real here. Mike and I are living the American dream. We have a house, two cars, a yard to keep up with, and blah blah blah. We understand that this is perfect for some people, but we're getting tired of it. We're tired of keeping this house clean every week. We're tired of maintaining the yard. We're tired of paying the bills for all of it each month.
Our church does these self reliance classes that cover a few different topics. One of them is about personal finances, and we talked about taking the class, but never got around to it. It's a twelve week class, ideally without bringing kids, so it was a hefty commitment. We didn't make it a priority to try and go. Last September, I started to get this persistent feeling that we needed to join the class next time they started a new round. And then I forgot about it completely because "the holidays." And THEN I was talking to my sister sometime around Christmas, and she started telling me about her and my brother-in-law taking that class and I think I might've yelled into the phone "I FORGOT MIKE AND I NEED TO SIGN UP FOR THAT CLASS!!!" So, special shout out to Angie for doing the Lord's work because I'm forgetful.
We lucked out because we have friends who were willing to have Erin come over for a few hours, every single Sunday for twelve weeks straight, so Mike and I could attend the class together, starting in January. The more we took the class, the more we realized that the dreams we have for the future, and the reality of our financial situation, weren't going to mesh together. (And, going back to the whole "location" thing. We've always wanted more space around us, and we always kind of said "Liberty Hill is where we'll go! They have space and quiet there!" Liberty Hill is a little north of the Austin area, and it's one of those places I mentioned earlier that used to be open spaces which are now filled in with houses and apartments. LAME) We knew we needed some sort of life overhaul if we were going to make the changes we wanted to, AND the changes we needed to. Otherwise we'll never be able to see our dreams become reality. I don't want us to be 70 years old and regretting that we didn't do something in our power to make awesome things happen for ourselves.
One day, back in February (I promise this will all seem moderately cohesive by the time you get to the end of this post), I was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, when I saw a sponsored post for a family of seven traveling full time through Southeast Asia. I think my initial thought was "that's crazy," and it was crazy enough that I was interested in looking at the comments. To make a long story short, I stumbled on a corner of Instagram where I discovered people live in RVs. Like, Rvs are their houses. Full time. All the time. With their families (I'm talking, 4-6 kids, isn't that amazing?!). All the time. All over the place. And again, I thought "that's crazy," but then I REALLY started thinking about it. And I realized they could clean their entire house in less than thirty minutes. And they didn't have a yard to upkeep. And what's more, their "yards" became National Parks and wide open spaces in the middle of nowhere or the beach or whatever they wanted their yard to be is what their yard was! And the more I thought about it, the more I was like "that's crazy enough to be a good idea."
So I mentioned it to Mike in passing.
"How ridiculous would it be if we did something like this?"
And his eyes kind of lit up.
We never really decided to go this route, it just happened. About a month after I initially brought it up, there was a Saturday without any plans so we said "let's go look at RVs, you know, just to see." And we started falling down a rabbit hole. Mike started researching RV and truck upkeep and maintenance. I started researching fulltime life in an RV (thanks Pinterest). Nothing really went anywhere, but we still had these unorganized, unstructured plans forming in our minds.
We also started praying specifically to know what to do. We really felt like things needed to change (again, this goes back to the financial class we were taking), we just didn't know where to start. The only direction we got from the Lord was that we needed to sell the house. That was it. Just "you need to sell this house."
Well okay. That's a starting point. Then what?
Then about mid May, we were helping Mike's mom with some yard work, (information insert here: the woman we used as a realtor to buy our house has been friends with Mike's mom for YEEEEARS, and they meet with a group of women monthly-ish for lunch) and she mentioned in passing that at the most recent lunch with her friends, our realtor had said that in the thirty years she's lived and worked in the Austin area, home values have never been higher. It was a good time to sell. A really good time to sell.
If I remember correctly, it was that very afternoon that Mike and I went on our second trip to look at RVs. Which is when we found THE ONE (go to that link to see pictures of it. That's not our dealership, they just happen to be one that posted a lot of pictures of it).
We called our realtor, and she got the ball rolling. In June, she came over to our house to see what shape it was in, and give us pointers on what we needed to do before putting it on the market. We had a few "events" in June that kept us busy, so we planned to hit the ground running in July.
And, boy howdy, we have.
The past two weeks of my life have been nothing but painting and packing and throwing stuff out and taking stuff to Goodwill (THREE trips of my car being full. THREEEE!!!), and wondering why we bought so much crap in the first place. We got a storage unit and moved the vast majority of our stuff in it (we're not getting rid of everything, like some full time RV families do. We want to go back to a "normal" life after this, and I like my piano and pictures). New carpet was put in last Friday, and there's just a few more paint projects, but we're nearly good to go. THANK GOODNESS Hallmark has Christmas in July happening right now. So many Christmas movies in the background of so much packing and painting. Tender mercies of the Lord.
A couple of weeks ago, we took another trip out to the RV lot to revisit the RV we'd set our hearts on. We wanted to make sure it was what we remembered, and we also had some measurements we wanted to check on (side note, this RV has a pantry. A PANTRY!). The RV gives me the same feeling this house did the first time I walked into it. "This is the place for us."
It just occurred to me, I totally forgot to mention Mike's truck. Back in January, about the same time we were starting the financial class, we randomly decided it was time for Mike to get a real vehicle again, and not just a motorcycle (because who doesn't want to start off a financial class with more debt?). By complete accident, we stumbled across a ridiculous deal on a used truck (in Liberty Hill, of all places), and we still have moments, six months later, where we look at each other and wonder how we managed to get his truck for the price that we did. We practically stole it from them.
Can a truck be foreordained?
Anyway (there it is again).
That's what we're doing. Selling our house, buying an RV(a travel trailer to be precise. Mike's truck can't haul enough for a fifth wheel, but the travel trailer we chose will be plenty. Erin will have her own room!).
Another side note. Sometime in March, I had what I can only describe as a gentle tap on the arm from the Spirit, when I had the distinct impression that Pete would not be part of our plans (okay, I'm tearing up a little typing this part. He was a good boy. A really good boy. I really do need to write a post about him and all his fantastic qualities). He was twelve years old, and the older he got the more his health wasn't the best. I didn't know when it would happen, or how it would happen, I just knew he wouldn't live out the year. A small part of me was kind of constantly expecting it. So when he passed, it was both heartbreaking and a relief. His collar hangs on Mike's rear view mirror now, so he still gets to go on our adventures with us 💗
Also, Louise (sigh...) and Donna (yay!) will be with us too. Physically. Because they're still alive. Three humans, one dog, and a cat in an RV. That sounds like the beginning of a joke.
At this point, you might be thinking "how does homeschool come into play here?" Or maybe this post is so long and rambling that you forgot homeschooling was even on that list at the beginning of the post (did you forget there was a list at the beginning of this post?).
I'll be homeschooling Erin because we're not just moving into an RV, we're hitting the road. Where are we going? Everywhere!
We are so excited to give Erin this opportunity, and ourselves too. There are so many places we can't wait to see and experience together as a family. There are so many people, family and friends, that we are anxious to visit. I have a handful of ladies that I'm looking forward to actually meeting in real life (what is that about? There are some women I met in family support groups on Facebook, when Mike joined the military, that have stayed in my life even though we're done with the military. I want to meet them! And I have one friend from waaaaay back in my high school days, when chat rooms and AIM was a thing 😂, that I really really want to meet in person as well. You know who you are, and you've already offered your driveway for my RV. HA!).
This is also a scouting mission. As I mentioned before, we're burned out on Austin, we just don't know where our next "permanent" home will be. We're open to living anywhere. Wherever feels right is where we'll land, eventually.
Except Alaska. I'm not moving to Alaska. Or Montana. Or anywhere that has a winter that lasts as long as the summer does here.
The next couple of months will be a bit intense. We have our fingers crossed that our home will sell quickly (our realtor thinks it will) (we live in the "cheaper" end of a desirable area, so we think people will jump on it). Once we close, we get our RV. We'll stay in the Austin area until the beginning of the new year. We want to spend time being stationary where we already live, so we can acclimate to life in a house on wheels. We'll also be a stone's throw from our storage unit, so we'll be able to move things in and out as we understand more of what we'll need, or won't need. Then in January, we hit the road. We're going west first. Well, we're going to Big Bend National Park, and then continuing in that direction. The first thing we want to knock off our non-existent bucket list is seeing the sky full of stars.
So that's it. That's the news. That's what we're doing. Don't even ask me about how mail will work (we're still planning to do our Christmas cards 😁) or how we'll coordinate doctor and dentist visits (we're keeping the same ones, which is an advantage to living in an RV; we can come back for check ups whenever we please because we can go wherever we want), or whatever long list of "hows" and "whats" will pop up along the way. We're doing what we're supposed to do, and we're really really excited about it! The plan right now is to do this for the next two to four years, and then settle down somewhere with a little more space and a little more quiet. But really, time will tell. It could be less, it could be more. I can't emphasize enough, this entire process has been a "one step at a time" thing.
Everyone we've told has been so excited and supportive for us, which is a tremendous blessing. A lot of people who take this path, get a lot of negativity from friends and family. So, thank you friends and family for your positivity!!
I think we're really blessed with wonderful people in our life. We can't wait to see more of you face to face!
(I'm including waaaay more information than the Cliff's Notes version we've been telling people, because I know some of you reading this will want to know more of the details)
Three Things I Swore Up And Down And Sideways I Would Never Do:
1. Live outside of Texas
2. Live in a tiny home
3. Homeschool my kid
As fate would have it, I'm preparing to do all three of those things. Simultaneously. Someone has a sense of humor somewhere.
I'm going to back track a few months, because the further we go into this journey, the more I realize we were being "prepared" to make changes in our life before this idea was even close to presenting itself to us.
I'm a devout Texan. The thing I feel strongest about in my life is my religion. A very close second 'thing I feel strongest about' is Texas. To me, Texas is perfection itself. Minus the humidity and the summers that last from April to November (it's hard to plan Halloween costumes too far in advance because you just never know if you'll need to wear something warm, or if you'll be dripping with sweat). But aside from the weather!!! Texas is a beautiful place filled with beautiful people (I don't care what the media would have you believe. There are fantastic people here, and I'm talking about from both sides of the political divide. I know fantastic Democrats, and I know fantastic Republicans, and I guess because I don't claim to be either one, I'm able to see both of their fantastic-ness).
This is getting long winded and I've only just started. If you're new to reading anything I write, this is going to ramble a lot before I get to any actually pertinent information.
Anyway.
About a year and a half ago, I had some experiences that burned me a bit, and left me feeling pretty isolated from the people I generally socialize with. Around that same time, Mike and I started tossing around the idea of moving. Up to that point, I had no desire to leave the area we live in. I like the restaurants and activities we live near, and I really like the people we go to church with. In our church, the people you worship with every Sunday is determined by where you live (you can learn more about that HERE, if you'd like). As I was feeling burned and isolated, I started to think that I could definitely move somewhere else and start fresh. This is really out of character for me, actually. I don't like change. I like having the same people in my life, and I hate it when they have to go. But the idea started to sound kind of good. If I'm being honest, that idea initially came from a bitter place. Luckily, the bitterness went away over time, but the idea of being able to separate myself from my comfort zone stayed.
And furthermore, at one point last year, every time we got stuck in the RIDICULOUS AMOUNTS OF TRAFFIC COMING INTO AUSTIN FROM THE NORTH END OF 183 (I'm cussing in my head a little right now), Mike and I would look at each other, and one of us would say "we've got to get out of here."
Austin was magical when I moved here twelve years ago.
Austin is a completely different place now.
I get it, some people are super into the "development" and "change" it's been undergoing, but we aren't fans. It's truly kind of frightening the amount of apartments and neighborhoods going up every single day. The city is constantly spreading further and further out. There are roads I loved driving down because they were zoned for farm land or park land or whatever, but now they've been re-zoned for another cookie cutter neighborhood, or another apartment complex. I've loved the suburb city we live in because it reminded me of the city I grew up near, but this one is just 15 minutes outside of Austin. Best of both worlds! Now the suburb we live in just feels like Austin. The new Austin that isn't magical.
Anyway. (I feel like I'm going to use that word a lot in this post).
We've established that I can mentally and emotionally separate myself from not only living here, but living in Texas in general.
Now. Living tiny.
Let's be real here. Mike and I are living the American dream. We have a house, two cars, a yard to keep up with, and blah blah blah. We understand that this is perfect for some people, but we're getting tired of it. We're tired of keeping this house clean every week. We're tired of maintaining the yard. We're tired of paying the bills for all of it each month.
Our church does these self reliance classes that cover a few different topics. One of them is about personal finances, and we talked about taking the class, but never got around to it. It's a twelve week class, ideally without bringing kids, so it was a hefty commitment. We didn't make it a priority to try and go. Last September, I started to get this persistent feeling that we needed to join the class next time they started a new round. And then I forgot about it completely because "the holidays." And THEN I was talking to my sister sometime around Christmas, and she started telling me about her and my brother-in-law taking that class and I think I might've yelled into the phone "I FORGOT MIKE AND I NEED TO SIGN UP FOR THAT CLASS!!!" So, special shout out to Angie for doing the Lord's work because I'm forgetful.
We lucked out because we have friends who were willing to have Erin come over for a few hours, every single Sunday for twelve weeks straight, so Mike and I could attend the class together, starting in January. The more we took the class, the more we realized that the dreams we have for the future, and the reality of our financial situation, weren't going to mesh together. (And, going back to the whole "location" thing. We've always wanted more space around us, and we always kind of said "Liberty Hill is where we'll go! They have space and quiet there!" Liberty Hill is a little north of the Austin area, and it's one of those places I mentioned earlier that used to be open spaces which are now filled in with houses and apartments. LAME) We knew we needed some sort of life overhaul if we were going to make the changes we wanted to, AND the changes we needed to. Otherwise we'll never be able to see our dreams become reality. I don't want us to be 70 years old and regretting that we didn't do something in our power to make awesome things happen for ourselves.
One day, back in February (I promise this will all seem moderately cohesive by the time you get to the end of this post), I was mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, when I saw a sponsored post for a family of seven traveling full time through Southeast Asia. I think my initial thought was "that's crazy," and it was crazy enough that I was interested in looking at the comments. To make a long story short, I stumbled on a corner of Instagram where I discovered people live in RVs. Like, Rvs are their houses. Full time. All the time. With their families (I'm talking, 4-6 kids, isn't that amazing?!). All the time. All over the place. And again, I thought "that's crazy," but then I REALLY started thinking about it. And I realized they could clean their entire house in less than thirty minutes. And they didn't have a yard to upkeep. And what's more, their "yards" became National Parks and wide open spaces in the middle of nowhere or the beach or whatever they wanted their yard to be is what their yard was! And the more I thought about it, the more I was like "that's crazy enough to be a good idea."
So I mentioned it to Mike in passing.
"How ridiculous would it be if we did something like this?"
And his eyes kind of lit up.
We never really decided to go this route, it just happened. About a month after I initially brought it up, there was a Saturday without any plans so we said "let's go look at RVs, you know, just to see." And we started falling down a rabbit hole. Mike started researching RV and truck upkeep and maintenance. I started researching fulltime life in an RV (thanks Pinterest). Nothing really went anywhere, but we still had these unorganized, unstructured plans forming in our minds.
We also started praying specifically to know what to do. We really felt like things needed to change (again, this goes back to the financial class we were taking), we just didn't know where to start. The only direction we got from the Lord was that we needed to sell the house. That was it. Just "you need to sell this house."
Well okay. That's a starting point. Then what?
Then about mid May, we were helping Mike's mom with some yard work, (information insert here: the woman we used as a realtor to buy our house has been friends with Mike's mom for YEEEEARS, and they meet with a group of women monthly-ish for lunch) and she mentioned in passing that at the most recent lunch with her friends, our realtor had said that in the thirty years she's lived and worked in the Austin area, home values have never been higher. It was a good time to sell. A really good time to sell.
If I remember correctly, it was that very afternoon that Mike and I went on our second trip to look at RVs. Which is when we found THE ONE (go to that link to see pictures of it. That's not our dealership, they just happen to be one that posted a lot of pictures of it).
We called our realtor, and she got the ball rolling. In June, she came over to our house to see what shape it was in, and give us pointers on what we needed to do before putting it on the market. We had a few "events" in June that kept us busy, so we planned to hit the ground running in July.
And, boy howdy, we have.
The past two weeks of my life have been nothing but painting and packing and throwing stuff out and taking stuff to Goodwill (THREE trips of my car being full. THREEEE!!!), and wondering why we bought so much crap in the first place. We got a storage unit and moved the vast majority of our stuff in it (we're not getting rid of everything, like some full time RV families do. We want to go back to a "normal" life after this, and I like my piano and pictures). New carpet was put in last Friday, and there's just a few more paint projects, but we're nearly good to go. THANK GOODNESS Hallmark has Christmas in July happening right now. So many Christmas movies in the background of so much packing and painting. Tender mercies of the Lord.
A couple of weeks ago, we took another trip out to the RV lot to revisit the RV we'd set our hearts on. We wanted to make sure it was what we remembered, and we also had some measurements we wanted to check on (side note, this RV has a pantry. A PANTRY!). The RV gives me the same feeling this house did the first time I walked into it. "This is the place for us."
It just occurred to me, I totally forgot to mention Mike's truck. Back in January, about the same time we were starting the financial class, we randomly decided it was time for Mike to get a real vehicle again, and not just a motorcycle (because who doesn't want to start off a financial class with more debt?). By complete accident, we stumbled across a ridiculous deal on a used truck (in Liberty Hill, of all places), and we still have moments, six months later, where we look at each other and wonder how we managed to get his truck for the price that we did. We practically stole it from them.
Can a truck be foreordained?
Anyway (there it is again).
That's what we're doing. Selling our house, buying an RV(a travel trailer to be precise. Mike's truck can't haul enough for a fifth wheel, but the travel trailer we chose will be plenty. Erin will have her own room!).
Another side note. Sometime in March, I had what I can only describe as a gentle tap on the arm from the Spirit, when I had the distinct impression that Pete would not be part of our plans (okay, I'm tearing up a little typing this part. He was a good boy. A really good boy. I really do need to write a post about him and all his fantastic qualities). He was twelve years old, and the older he got the more his health wasn't the best. I didn't know when it would happen, or how it would happen, I just knew he wouldn't live out the year. A small part of me was kind of constantly expecting it. So when he passed, it was both heartbreaking and a relief. His collar hangs on Mike's rear view mirror now, so he still gets to go on our adventures with us 💗
Also, Louise (sigh...) and Donna (yay!) will be with us too. Physically. Because they're still alive. Three humans, one dog, and a cat in an RV. That sounds like the beginning of a joke.
At this point, you might be thinking "how does homeschool come into play here?" Or maybe this post is so long and rambling that you forgot homeschooling was even on that list at the beginning of the post (did you forget there was a list at the beginning of this post?).
I'll be homeschooling Erin because we're not just moving into an RV, we're hitting the road. Where are we going? Everywhere!
We are so excited to give Erin this opportunity, and ourselves too. There are so many places we can't wait to see and experience together as a family. There are so many people, family and friends, that we are anxious to visit. I have a handful of ladies that I'm looking forward to actually meeting in real life (what is that about? There are some women I met in family support groups on Facebook, when Mike joined the military, that have stayed in my life even though we're done with the military. I want to meet them! And I have one friend from waaaaay back in my high school days, when chat rooms and AIM was a thing 😂, that I really really want to meet in person as well. You know who you are, and you've already offered your driveway for my RV. HA!).
This is also a scouting mission. As I mentioned before, we're burned out on Austin, we just don't know where our next "permanent" home will be. We're open to living anywhere. Wherever feels right is where we'll land, eventually.
Except Alaska. I'm not moving to Alaska. Or Montana. Or anywhere that has a winter that lasts as long as the summer does here.
The next couple of months will be a bit intense. We have our fingers crossed that our home will sell quickly (our realtor thinks it will) (we live in the "cheaper" end of a desirable area, so we think people will jump on it). Once we close, we get our RV. We'll stay in the Austin area until the beginning of the new year. We want to spend time being stationary where we already live, so we can acclimate to life in a house on wheels. We'll also be a stone's throw from our storage unit, so we'll be able to move things in and out as we understand more of what we'll need, or won't need. Then in January, we hit the road. We're going west first. Well, we're going to Big Bend National Park, and then continuing in that direction. The first thing we want to knock off our non-existent bucket list is seeing the sky full of stars.
So that's it. That's the news. That's what we're doing. Don't even ask me about how mail will work (we're still planning to do our Christmas cards 😁) or how we'll coordinate doctor and dentist visits (we're keeping the same ones, which is an advantage to living in an RV; we can come back for check ups whenever we please because we can go wherever we want), or whatever long list of "hows" and "whats" will pop up along the way. We're doing what we're supposed to do, and we're really really excited about it! The plan right now is to do this for the next two to four years, and then settle down somewhere with a little more space and a little more quiet. But really, time will tell. It could be less, it could be more. I can't emphasize enough, this entire process has been a "one step at a time" thing.
Everyone we've told has been so excited and supportive for us, which is a tremendous blessing. A lot of people who take this path, get a lot of negativity from friends and family. So, thank you friends and family for your positivity!!
I think we're really blessed with wonderful people in our life. We can't wait to see more of you face to face!
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