Since October, my family has talked about how long we will continue this lifestyle. My husband and I would like to continue roaming and traveling, but the boys, while they love traveling, miss having a set group of friends that they see regularly. In each place we have visited they have made friends and continue to e-mail with many of these friends, but it's not the same as seeing the same friends day after day and building relationships that way. After many family conversations and really listening to their concerns, we accepted a job in Albuquerque with the plan of being here until September. However, the job wasn't a good fit for us and we left after a month. At that point, we had to take a step back and decide what we wanted to do. We knew life would have to change to stay stable and a compromise would have to be made, but we weren't sure exactly what that would look like. Our considerations were:
1.) Staying still in one place during the school year so that my oldest could attend "real" school because he misses social learning
2.) Staying still long enough for the two younger homeschooled boys to do activities and build friendships
3.) Having time and money to travel frequently, if not all the time
4.) Saving money to be able to continue working on paying off our student loan debt
After some brainstorming, a compromise began to emerge. The key for our family's compromise is for me to go back to teaching (I taught in a classroom for 9 years before we began this lifestyle.) and for my husband to take over homeschooling the younger two boys while building his online businesses. (He has both a Teachers Pay Teachers store for language resources and an Etsy store called Raki's Redeux for repurposed goods.) By taking on a teaching position, while my husband stays home, we can have enough money for student loans and travel. (Our main monthly living expenses are still covered by my Teachers Pay Teachers store and teacher resource blog.)
This compromise also allows us to the ability to travel during ALL school breaks. So our goal will be to travel for Christmas break, Spring break and pretty much all summer long. We will continue to live in our RV, which confuses some people. But if we moved into an apartment or a house we would need to continue to pay rent and utilities during the times that we are traveling, which will not be the case at an RV park. We would also need to furnish the new place, which would take a lot of set up money. Plus, we like our "home". It may not be everybody's cup of tea, but we really enjoy living in our RV, and we especially like having our "home" with us when we travel.
So, will this compromise change this blog? Not really, at least not right now.
We are still new to the Albuquerque area, which we have found we really like. So we will still share pictures of our adventures, which will be happening mainly on weekends and breaks.
We will still be living in our RV. So we will share hacks and strategies to living in an RV that will be just as pertinent if we were traveling every week.
My younger two sons will continue to homeschool. So we will continue to share activities and tips that have worked for us in our homeschool "classroom".
Now you might be asking yourself, well why did you even feel the need to share this information on the blog? I am doing so for many reasons. Reason number one reason is this blog is about our life and this is a major life change for us. However, I also wanted to share this because I know it's easy to get set into the mindset of "This is our life and it may not change." This idea is big in "normal" lifestyles, but it can be a part of the RV lifestyle too, especially because when living in an RV you often spend a good amount of time defending your lifestyle. So you start to think "If I change my lifestyle, I was being hypocritical all those times I told everybody how amazing our lifestyle is." But if life has taught me anything it's that life often changes at a moment's notice. Althought we may not WANT it to change, life happens. And the beauty of our lifestyle is we are able to embrace change and make compromises a bit easier than if we were tied to a mortaged house in the suburbs.
I hope you will continue to follow our adventures here at RVing with the Rakis. Have a wonderful day!
