The chance that we would be ready to leave by October has pretty much dropped to zero. The minor bump came when we noticed our poor little Pug's eye was looking bad again. She's had problems in the past but nothing too serious...til now. Now aparently she's got glaucoma in her left eye and will eventually have it in the right as well. So we have the choice of removing the eye (for around $250) or starting her on meds that might work but cost around $150.
But the vet bill is nothing compared to the news we got when the a/c guy came out...we have to buy a new a/c system! We knew it was on it's way out, but I was really, really hoping that it was going to hold on for another year or two. We've got an unrepairable leak (several opionions agree it can't be fixed), so it doesn't look like we've got a choice. So now we're going to be out $3,000-$5,000 to get a new system installed.
Here's hoping we can still manage to leave by January!
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
How this all began...
I stopped to try to figure out when we started considering this new "plan" and it took me a while to retrace my thinking back to where it started. I finally realized it was after our vacation to Florida when we were talking about wanting to live near a beach. Okay so how did we get from wanting to live near a beach to wanting to go travel around Europe for a year? Somehow one of my searches for "cheap places to live near the beach" got me to some websites about how to travel the world on a dime.
We are totally sold on the idea now, so as soon as we can we're packing up and flying to Europe for a year. We will be working on mostly organic farmstays in exchange for a place to sleep and our meals. Hopefully we will learn enough to be able to set up our own place when we come back. The main thing we want to learn about is natural building since we have been wanting to build a cob house and possibly live off-grid for a few years now.
We weren't sure how open people would be to taking in a family with 2 small kids, so I've emailed lots of potential hosts to get an idea if this trip would even be possible. We've gotten enough positive responses that we should have enough places to stay to make it work, so now we just have to get enough money together to pay off our credit cards and to get by while we're there. We've been wanting to do a major downsize for a long time, so now we have the perfect motivation to actually get it done. I'm trying to get several items onto Ebay each week and we're planning on having a big estate sale shortly before we leave to sell off everything else. I just can't wait to get rid of everything! We have so much stuff that we don't need...it's ridiculous. I'm really excited about the trip, but I think I'm actually almost as excited about freeing ourselves from all our "stuff".
We are totally sold on the idea now, so as soon as we can we're packing up and flying to Europe for a year. We will be working on mostly organic farmstays in exchange for a place to sleep and our meals. Hopefully we will learn enough to be able to set up our own place when we come back. The main thing we want to learn about is natural building since we have been wanting to build a cob house and possibly live off-grid for a few years now.
We weren't sure how open people would be to taking in a family with 2 small kids, so I've emailed lots of potential hosts to get an idea if this trip would even be possible. We've gotten enough positive responses that we should have enough places to stay to make it work, so now we just have to get enough money together to pay off our credit cards and to get by while we're there. We've been wanting to do a major downsize for a long time, so now we have the perfect motivation to actually get it done. I'm trying to get several items onto Ebay each week and we're planning on having a big estate sale shortly before we leave to sell off everything else. I just can't wait to get rid of everything! We have so much stuff that we don't need...it's ridiculous. I'm really excited about the trip, but I think I'm actually almost as excited about freeing ourselves from all our "stuff".
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