Preparing for Launch

The nervousness is kicking in full gear, with a twinge of excitement and, occasionally, a little sadness about what we will miss. Will I have everything I need? Will I forget something important? Do I have a plan A, B, or plan C, if the RV breaks down? Will I be able to tow my van on the new dolly or will I scrape it up against a rail or perhaps lose it off a cliff? Hey, it can happen like this.
We have been traveling PT in our RV for 2 years now, looking forward to the opportunity to launch FT. We *think* this is it. We waited this long because God called me to do an, a few, OK, several adoptions, which required being in a sticks and bricks house. I've participated in an adoption every year for the past 5 years, a process that takes approximately a year or more. First, I adopted 3 boys, then a brother/sister set, then a teen boy, then I attempted to add another boy that hasn't quite panned out yet, then another brother/sister set. At this point, we have no adoption in the works so, when we decided to join the the FTF rally annd homeschool day at Leggoland again in FL, we realized we had no reason we *had* to be at the house.
For a year, I got the house ready to sell. We conveniently had a pipe break in the upstairs bathroom resulting in damage. When the homeowner's insurance payment wasn't even enough to fix the bathroom, I took the payment and did all work myself: gutting both bathrooms, the kitchen and the laundry room and rebuilding it myself. Well, that didn't help the house sell. Actually, we got almost no traffic what-so-ever. We continued to purge anyway. I sold what I could on craigslist, gave away what friends could use, freecycled a bunch, and continued to donate the rest to VVA or Purple Heart, who will conveniently come pick up what we leave on our porch. Today's pile is small in comparison to the 8767657988979089088 other piles we've left out there this past year or two.

Aside from purging the house, I had already started homeschooling 2 years ago, so we've had plenty of time tweaking that routine for ourselves. We started off unschooling, then I toyed with many schedules and curriculums (mostly free and online) until I found a system that works for us, both while on the road and off. I have been scanning all of our important documents onto a flashdrive with Internet back-up. I gutted the RV completely inside and am rebuilding it to accommodate all 9 of us. I reused everything I took out of the RV, rearranging and rebuilding it. I also reused furniture from the house that didn't sell and tweaked it to fit into the RV, so I spent very little money for the actual rebuild materials. We hope to launch in about a week and are so excited.

If you're still struggling with how to follow your RVing dreams, you can check out this book: How to Hit the Road.