Life in a Caravan: SIx Months In

We moved out of our house the end of September last year.  We spent about five weeks in America, then came back to our van.  The end of November we started our life on the road.  By the time we got to Sydney, we’d been living in our van for six months. Life in a Caravan: Six Months in! ~ How Many More Minutes? Six months!  The kids are calling this journey our ‘one-year trip’.  At this point I’m pretty sure it will be longer than a year.  We don’t have a specific end date in mind.  My husband (happily) quit his job and is studying full-time.  We aren’t rushed. Life in a Caravan: Six Months in! ~ How Many More Minutes? We’ve completely adjusted to this lifestyle.  There are things that we love about life on the road.  There are things we don’t love.  There are plenty of advantages and disadvantages.  But we are finding that right now this lifestyle very much suits us. Life in a Caravan: Six Months in! ~ How Many More Minutes? Less stuff.  More time.  Living on top of each other.  Chasing a toddler with no house or yard to contain him!  New towns to get lost in.   New friends to make.  Plenty of sights to see.  I can’t tell you how frustrated I was with the amount of stuff in our house.  Sometimes it felt like I couldn’t get out from under it all.  I love having less stuff and a smaller space to keep clean.  I also love all the time we get outdoors.  There were many days in the past where I’d get to the end of the day and realise I hadn’t stepped out of the house all day long.  Not even to check the mail, the kids did that.  With this lifestyle it would be very hard not to step outside. Life in a Caravan: Six Months in! ~ How Many More Minutes? We have our routines for packing up and moving to a new place.  We have school days and rest days and sight-seeing days and shopping days and laundry days. Life in a Caravan: Six Months in! ~ How Many More Minutes? Are you wondering about the pictures in this post?  Rocks, trees, plants, and whatnot.  These are pictures I found on my camera.  The kids took them while we were in the caravan park in Sydney.  I love seeing what’s special to them. Life in a Caravan: Six Months in! ~ How Many More Minutes? The kids have adjusted well.  They easily make friends with any kids that are around.  They happily tell people about our ‘one-year trip’.  They talk about what life will be like once we are in a house again.  They talk of their friends at home, and their toys, and our pets that we found new homes for.  But they don’t seem to be too homesick, I suppose because their home and family are with them.  It’s not like a holiday where you make do with what you have for a short time before you go back to your regular life.  This is our regular life.  It’s a different mindset. When we were in America and moving around from place to place it was harder on them, especially little TurboBug.  Every time we’d pack up to move to a new hotel he would fall to pieces.  That hasn’t happened during this trip.  He has the consistency of the caravan as his home.  It makes all the difference to him, and to all of us.  It makes it feel like a normal life, just in a small space with a constantly changing view out the bedroom window. Life in a Caravan: Six Months in! ~ How Many More Minutes? When we got to Sydney, this little guy’s favourite bear stayed in the car.  At night we often lock up some things in the car so they don’t disappear.  Things like our grill, boogie boards, bike helmets, etc.  Since we didn’t use our car much in Sydney, things ended up piled on top of this lovely little bear and TurboBug didn’t see him for a few days.  When we got Bear out again, TurboBug was ecstatic.  He happily cuddled and carried him around for ages.  It may have been the cutest thing ever. Life in a Caravan: Six Months in! ~ How Many More Minutes? Life in a Caravan: Six Months in! ~ How Many More Minutes? Life in a Caravan: Six Months in! ~ How Many More Minutes? Life in a Caravan: Six Months in! ~ How Many More Minutes? We left Sydney pretty darn tired.  We needed a place to veg for a couple of days.  (Spelling veg that way doesn’t look right.  I know it is right, but I still want to spell it vedge.  My spell check doesn’t like that.) We stopped in Tahlee.  This is the only picture I have from our stay there, but it’s enough for me to remember.  To remember the kids climbing around in the rocks finding creatures, collecting buckets full of them.  Fishing.  Asbestos in the bathroom roof!  The boat full of sand.  The scary dock and swimming area that had been damaged by a recent storm.  The beautiful wooden bench with a Bible verse carved into it. Life in a Caravan: Six Months in! ~ How Many More Minutes? So many memories on this one-year trip.  Sometimes it is very hard living together in this small space.  If one of us is in a bad mood it affects all of us in ways that it otherwise wouldn’t.  But then we get to go outside and see things like the view in the above picture.  And we adapt.  And we move on to the next place.  So much of our journey still ahead!

  1. […] on the shelf.  So it seemed like the perfect gift.  It’s not quite as important to him as his bear, though. His new truck.  This was worth climbing on the table for. A train cake for my […]

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