The first few weeks

I think that we are adjusting well to our new home.  We have done a TON of down sizing.  Getting the things that we really need set up and storing the things that we will need later.  The kids have their bunks and I am working with my Mom and Aunt on some wall hanging caddies to outfit their storage spaces.  I like the caddies and by the time we are on the road, hope to have several scattered about the place.
The space is tight, but many people make do with this kind of space.

Our routine is getting pretty well set.  We are so busy we really don't spend much more time than the evenings at home.  Sports, work, family, and running around take up our days.  We want to spend as much time as possible with everyone here before we take off.  We have another busy week ahead of us, and I am trying to get as much done to the trailer as possible.  We have more ideas to make our space more efficient. I read other blogs from people doing the same thing we are doing to get more inspiration.  It helps to know that we are not alone in our feelings of the adventure.  Many people around this great country are doing the same thing.  Fed up with getting by and setting out to experience what must have been the feelings of the pioneers.  There is something better out there.  We just need to find it.  Be brave and fight thru the tough times.  Great things come with sacrifice.

I ran into an ex co-worker from my non family oriented job at the grocery store last night.  I was good to see him.  He gave me the scoop on what has been going on.  Two more of the great people that worked there have quit.  Sounds like they were also fed up with the direction that they were being taken.  I told him about our plans and he couldn't believe it.  He said that he is going to be doing the same thing in about a year, once he retires.  We are just jumping earlier in life.

Struggling

Once the decision to do this was made, we began the planning process.  We needed to start saving as much money as we could.  I was out of work in a terrible job market, we have two children (L.D. & H.D.), a rent payment that was getting harder and harder to make and all of the bills that come with a family.  Thank the Lord that Tres has a pretty good job or we would be really up a creek.
The decision was made to move in with a family member.  We were advised against it, but we thought that we could make it work for the trips sake.  The cost of splitting a rental with a family member made more financial since than doing it alone.  We could help each other out.  As anyone that has lived with family knows, it can be a very hard thing to get thru.  Different personalities, likes, dislikes, ideas, and ideals can take the best relationship and turn it inside out under one roof.  That plan went out the window within 6 months.  We needed a new cheap plan.  We are committed to making this trip a reality.
We decided that rather than spend the money on renting someone elses house we would put our money into our camp trailer and live in it until the kids were out of school for the year.  Seven weeks to go, we would get a taste of living the way we will need to for the next year.  CLOSE!!
This is a very brief explanation as to how we got to the point we are now.  Hopefully my writing will get better and I will take some more time as the trip goes along to revisit some of the finer points to this tale.

How this all came about

This adventure started with a dissatisfaction with the way things had been going for our family.  No matter what we did, we always seemed to come up short financially.  My wife and I both had good jobs, I was a Quality Assurance tech., and she worked in marketing for a good company.  We were always working for something better.  Better meant more money, a better house, a better car, a sweet vacation.  Better didn't really mean better for our little family.  With all of the time spent working and struggling to make things "better", we started to loose the closeness we wanted.  I had become tired of the rat race and asked if my wife wanted to just leave it all behind for a while and see what happens.  This was not what she wanted to hear.  She is not a fan of change.
A few years went by and the financial mess that has effected so many people globally finally got a hold of us.  We lost our home and had to make a move into a rental.  My employer cut hours and benefits.  I became more and more frustrated with our situation, but we kept plugging along.  Still trying to make it better.  Things began to pick back up at work for me.  More hours meant more money coming in.  Better right?  That also meant more time away from my family.
My previous job was as a wildland firefighter so I was very used to spending long periods of time away from them.  Not ideal, but we do what we do.  When I was finished with fire, I vowed to make my family a much higher priority in my life.  I missed many birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and the like.  I barely made it to the hospital for my daughters birth.  No more putting other things before my family.  This is where my QA job was taking me.  The work load got to the point where we needed someone to work the night shift.  Guess who?  My supervisor came to me with a request to take the night shift.  We had discussed my previous 10 years of work experience which kept me from them.  I told my supervisor that I could not work the night shift and see my wife and children.  Weekends is not the time for full time fathers.  I was given an ultimatum, work the nights or you are out.  I chose my family.  They fired me two weeks later, on a Monday no less.  When the reality of this sunk in, Tres (my wife) started to see the value of a year on the road, taking the time for our family that we had never taken before.  She became a fan of some change.

The adventure was born.