Dreams are a Great Beginning

It was what we like to refer to as the "beginning of our journey.”

Matt was traveling Monday through Friday just about every week and I was home raising and schooling three boys. Matt and I sat down. Somehow it happened.

12 years of marriage, 5 moves across state lines and 3 kiddos. We looked through the To Do List we had made so many years ago and just about all those little boxes had been checked. Not sure how or why we decided that because this path was the one that we were on we should just keep on chugging. We were happy. We had reached our goals. We planned a remodel on our kitchen, picked a new vacation destination, somewhere fun to go with the girls’ for a weekend.

But that night, we pressed the pause button. We were dreaming dreams that matched the goals we forged the path for so long ago. Is that really what we were still wanting?

Was anything new coming into play? Any ideas?

I sat. We sat. I thought. We thought.

Something came to mind but it was just too big. A bit too far reaching for me. Lets just stay the track. That was pretty easy. Matt traveled five days a week for work. Sure we missed him but we were in a groove. He would arrive home Friday night just in time for baseball practice and games the next day. We would each get a workout in before the kids woke up and then spend the next two days catching up on house stuff, bills, conversations. I was grateful to his commitment to being a provider for our family. He had been working for a Fortune 500 financial company for 7 years, helping people save and invest for their future. We invested, we saved. Weren’t we right where we wanted to be? Yasssss. Exactly at that very moment. We were grateful. But with this full heart we knew it was time to recalculate. To explore. Ideas came spewing out of my mouth. “What if we do a RV trip? I know your job is high pressure and you are going non stop with meetings in the morning and dinners at night with clients but what if we tag along? On the weekend we drive a RV to your next stop? He bought into the idea for at least 30 minutes while we sat down and tried to plan around the logistics. We decided that was near impossible. However, that dream was a great beginning.

Six months later when I had one too many glasses of wine I declared that the impossible was in fact possible. You know how wine can make you do that sometimes? Take away that veil of serious business and make you giggle. That is all it took.  By the end of the bottle we had six months of learning, sights and fields trips planned all around highly important and ever so stressful business meetings. But we ditched the idea of a RV and decided a combination of driving and flying was a better fit.

And there it began. The months flew by and the children were versed in airport security, hotel buffets and historical landmarks. We met a prisoner from Alcatraz while touring the jail in San Francisco, we watched water plummet 100 feet from Multnomah Falls in Oregon, we felt the ocean mist from the ferry boat touring the islands off Seattle’s coast. The time together, experiencing the sites. On the flip side, Matt would put on his suit and tie and take conference calls on the bathroom floor at 5am. We were two adults and three children squished into a two queen bed hotel. Mornings consisted of school, reading, writing and airtimetic. The afternoons were for adventure and learning. Life was less serious and more energized.

xoxo- Jess