My first blog - Let the Journey Begin.

 In this, my first attempt at writing a blog, I'm providing a bit of "history".  So forgive the length, and I warn you, you may have no interest whatsoever in reading my introspective thoughts here.  I will not be one bit offended if NO one reads a word.  It is my attempt to use this as a tool to log the memories we'll be making in the next year as we travel the US and Canada.

The time we have left in our home of 22 years is swiftly coming to an end.  I have to admit it has been a bit of a roller coaster.  One day I'm excited thinking about this next chapter in our lives, the travel to new and fascinating places, the joy of life on the road - we know we love RV life already.  Another day I'm sure I have lost my mind.  WHAT was I thinking to leave this beautiful home loved by our entire family.  The only place our grandchildren have ever known as "Grammy and PopPop's  Are we crazy to give all that up?  Our home is lovely, we've poured unending amounts of love and money into this place. While beautiful, it is HIGH maintenance.  The manicured lawn with lots of expensive landscaping, enhanced by exterior lighting to highlight the fountains and garden art, all  costly to put in place, and is a consistent expense to maintain.  Inside are 5 bedrooms, formerly perfect for our homeschooling family.  Those rooms are no longer really needed though all of them were full of STUFF, much of it quite costly, and requiring attention, time and money to maintain.
Somehow in the past few years, I've become a bit weary of it all. 

Over the years, we have enjoyed a very comfortable lifestyle and when we moved to Eustis, Earl's career as Director of Diagnostic Imaging at Florida Hospital Waterman afforded us all we needed and much of what we wanted.  Then after 13 years of homeschooling, I, almost on a lark, decided to play around with real estate.  I could not have dreamed of what the future would bring, as it became a very lucrative career which provided a great deal of the extras in life as well as giving us the ability to be a blessing to many others, which gave us great joy.  In 2005, in the midst of a booming real estate economy, we opened Vangie Berry Signature Realty.  Earl took an early retirement from the hospital to assist in running the company.  That year we bought our first RV.  When Earl first started talking about RVing, I was less than enthusiastic.  My idea of "roughing it" had always been running down the halls of a hotel barefooted.  I liked my creature comforts and "camping" did not appeal to me at all.  We went camping ONCE in our early marriage with some friends, sleeping on the beach.  I honestly don't remember if we were in a tent or in the open air - I think I've blocked it out.  :-)  What I do remember is hating bugs and in my imagination, if not reality, things were crawling on me, and I didn't have my toothbrush in the morning - yuck.  THAT was camping to me, so I reminded Earl that I am not a camper!  But he insisted we think about it and having an RV would not be like camping out.  Long story short, I LOVED RVing!  My own clean sheets, air conditioning, all the things that make life comfortable.  That year we went RVing for one weekend every month, and I was hooked.  Then we started making it a long weekend, then soon after, a week a month, which we did for several years, though admittedly I still worked a good bit of the time we were away, as I have a full office setup in the RV and in general continued business as usual.  On the mornings we were to leave to come back home, we'd sigh and say how wonderful it would be to just load up to go someplace else!  Someplace different and after awhile there, do it again.  But alas, duty called and a busy real estate practice kept us busy - busier than we really wanted to be.  Without going into all that, let's just say I began to grow weary of working 16-18  hours a day.  While I truly loved the job, it was a struggle to have balance as real estate can be all consuming.

We began to talk more and more often about simplifying our lives - having the freedom to do the things we longed to do, without so much of our time being spent maintaining all the responsibilities we were grateful for, but weary of time spent on them.  We longed for less stress in our lives, more time to just "do nothing" if that was what we wanted.  For in the past, our lives were so incredibly structured and every moment filled and appointments and obligations and "to do's" that just never ended.  While we were young and still have the energy to go and enjoy all this, we decided to take the plunge. 

I wrote all this about a week or so ago, but did not post as I didn't feel ready - but will I ever feel ready?  I'm new to blogging, and I promise in the future, these will be MUCH shorter.

This I wrote Saturday and ended today, and for better or for worse - here it is. 

Today feels like both the end of an era and an exciting new beginning.  We have spent our last night in our home of 22 years here in Eustis.  We watched Ryan and Lisa grow from ages 12 & 14 to adulthood here.  Jason, age 19 when we moved here from PSL, chose to stay there when we moved, not wanting to leave his friends and his job there, so this was never “home” to him like it was to the rest of us.  This home was my haven, my safe place, my joy to fix up.  We poured so much love and time and money into this home.  I now am gazing at empty rooms reminiscent of the first time we saw in back in ’93.  Now it has beautiful window treatments, but other than that, the walls are bare, and there is no furniture in any room.  Jason and Dana got my furniture that was mine when I was growing up in NC and then was Lisa’s as she was growing up and then our guest room furniture providing rest for lots of friends over the years.  Now it will be in Sarah’s room.  Our furniture was my Daddy’s furniture that we got after he died.  Solid oak, strong and great quality (like my Daddy), and that is now in Mark and Lisa’s home in Hannah’s room, and will provide many years of joy to them.  We kept 4 pieces of furniture – my mother’s secretary, my daddy’s rocker, and 2 cedar chests belonging, one to my mother, one to Earl’s mother.  That’s it!  The rest is scattered all over Lake County now in various homes – whoever came to our huge estate sale and took advantage of the bargain prices.  We chose to not be present during the sale, leaving it in the good hands of a professional estate sale team.  It just would have felt too weird watching strangers roaming through the house, leaving with this and that.  I cannot say this all happened without some anxiety and misgivings.  Some days I had a sinking feeling that I had made a huge mistake and what was I thinking to let go of so much of the things we treasured.

On the other hand, I kept reminding myself of the many conversations we’ve had over the past 3-4 years, the books and articles I’d read about living more simply and having come to believe that “less is more”.  While I truly loved our home and all it represented, I have to admit it was HIGH maintenance!  A large manicured lawn, 5 bedrooms and 3 baths to keep clean,  a pool and large deck constantly requiring attention….it just at times felt more like a burden than a joy.  All those hours of maintaining (not to mention the money required) could be spent in peaceful pursuits of travel, spending more time with family and friends etc. 

We have taken the plunge.  Our home is leased for a year to a local physician.  I hope it will be in good shape in April of 2016.  Yikes.  I really wanted to just sell it and be done, but Earl thought it would be wiser to lease it as the market is in full recovery mode here and likely worth more in a year than now.  Seeing the wisdom of that, we had prayed about both, put it on the market for sale OR lease, praying that God would guide us, and we’d go with whichever happened first.  The last few weeks have been busy with tying up loose ends at work,  packing up the things we put in storage,  patching holes in the walls from so many pictures, painting, cleaning, leaving everything spotlessly clean as I’d want to have it if I were moving in.  The carpet cleaners are at the house this morning.  Tomorrow we do a walk through with our tenant and turn over the keys.  And a new era begins….. We know that God knew before the beginning of time that this is where we would be today, facing this challenge.  I believe He is smiling at the joy we feel in setting out on this new adventure of seeing His beautiful world before we come back and settle down again.  I am already missing my family, knowing there will be some heartaches involved with that, but time passes swiftly and we’ll be back.

Update – today we turned over the keys to our beloved home.  While we retain ownership, it no longer feels like ours.  Someone else will live there now and make their own memories.  Bittersweet for sure.  I wish them well and hope they’ll be as happy there as we were. 

Earlier today, we took the Smart Car over to Ryan and turned over the keys to him.  That too is another “final”.  All day today as we drove here and there, I kept thinking, this is the last time I’ll do….. going through the car wash, going into our garage, saying goodbye to loved neighbors and friends…… but now it’s time to look forward.  New adventures await us. And if you’re interested, feel free to come along with us.