Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans
Hello friends and family!
So, it’s been a little while since our last blog post. In fact, it’s been the better part of five months. I certainly didn’t expect it to take this long for us to put pen to paper again, but there it is — even when you’re not working, life keeps you busier than you might desire.
Actually, “busy” might be a bit of an understatement. In retrospect, I think Matt and I have undertaken almost every stressful event a newly married couple could undertake and have compressed them all into the last 3ish months. Here’s a quick recap of what we’ve been up to:
- I (Kristi) stopped working in January only to make planning our wedding my new full time job
- Got married on April 1st
- Matt stopped working on April 15th and dove headfirst into packing
- Moved from DC to Richmond on April 22nd, and put half of our things in a storage unit, half in my house in Richmond to stage for sale
- Coordinated multiple contractors to work on various aspects of the house while we were on our honeymoon
- Drove back and forth to Northern Virginia from Richmond approximately 300 times
- Left for three weeks in France on May 1st (which was our honeymoon — more on this trip later)
- Returned home on May 22nd to partially-finished home renovation projects
- Either coordinated the completion of unfinished home renovation projects or simply did it ourselves
- Listed the house for sale on June 2nd and sold it in less than 12 hours
- Researched various options for our next trip destination, then decided to drive cross-country and live out of our car
- Researched and purchased a rooftop tent
- - Realized we needed to add factory-installed roof racks to the car in order to support said rooftop tent, so did that
- Went to REI approximately 100 times to purchase everything we could conceivably need while living out of our car for 2 months
- Repacked/moved everything out of the Richmond house and went into temporary crisis mode when we couldn’t fit the remainder of our stuff into the storage unit
- Installed our rooftop tent in 95+ degree heat and 100% humidity
- Threw everything in the car
- Left on June 18th
To summarize: We’ve moved twice; undergone the stress of prepping a house for sale and then actually selling it; drove around a foreign country (where we don’t speak the language) for three weeks; and began living out of a tent… all in the span of 2.5 months. Oh, and we haven’t had a paycheck since mid-April. It’s been a little weird.
But now that the stress of transition is behind us and we’re officially on the road, the feeling of freedom is incredible. We have a massive, amazingly beautiful country to explore, and nothing but miles of road ahead of us. After we’ve seen the US, we could literally spin the globe and point — we have nothing but options.
We drove hard the first day of our trip and ended it by chasing the setting sun across the plains of Indiana into Illinois. If I hadn’t been driving at the time, and if we didn’t have a giant tent strapped to the roof of our car, I would have stood up through the sunroof and cheered.
I want to take a moment to acknowledge everyone who helped us get our rear ends out the door — especially our parents. They put in hours alongside us to project manage while we were gone; to help us with yard work; to help us pack, unpack, repack… you name it. A huge thanks to them, to my sisters, and to our friends who have helped us launch this endeavor. We would still be in Richmond, probably packing or doing something with the house or some other non-awesome activity, if it wasn’t for you.
We will be posting much more frequently now that we are underway. I hope you’ll hang with us as we go! Cheers, everyone.
