Let is snow, let it snow, let it snow!

This morning (Wednesday) we woke to the pitter patter of rain gently falling on our roof.  Actually, the enormous drops sounded as though they were going to pound through as we lie in bed.  Then they slowly became further and further apart eventually disappearing.  I soon found that the rain had not stopped but turned into snow.  This was not just any snow, but big fluffy feathers of snow.  It was so proliferate a snow that after a five minute walk with the dogs, I was covered with approximately half an inch of it.  However, thanks to our generally temperate weather, the snow melted the moment it touched the ground.

Despite the lack of accumulation, the older boys were quite ecstatic when I returned from the walk.  They had pulled all the blinds open and sat with their faces plastered to the window.  The oldest smiled as he told me, “This is what I was hoping for.”  For them, the snow was a sign of the fun to come.  For me, the snow was a cause for concern.  How do I winterize this thing?  I imagine frozen water pipes, chilled children and holding tanks full of putrid…stuff freezing cracking and slowly draining their contents.  Well, it looks like I do not have a lot of time left to get ready for winter!

How do we look?

Tonight we had some friends and their two boys come over to the campground to enjoy an evening of vacation with us.  It was quite enjoyable as we sat around the campfire and roasted marshmallows.  The crisp cool air and the warmth of the flickering fire combined to make it a very pleasant time.  With our friends, we discussed our lifestyle, the “rigs” we have seen, and life in general.

Together, we have five boys.  As they roasted marshmallows and looked for things to throw into the fire, they occasionally became a little loud and giggly.  Occasionally, I would glance over to the RV two spots away and see a gentleman looking at us.  He did not look particularly annoyed, but he continued to look our way anytime the sound level exceeded that of a whimper.  Being a responsible parent, I accordingly reminded the boys that others were in the campground and trying to enjoy their evening.  The requisite peace ensued, briefly.

As my wife and our friends went inside to warm-up and admire our humble abode, our neighbor slowly sauntered my way.

“May I ask you a question?” He implored.

“Sure.” I hesitantly responded as I was sure I was about to receive a lecture regarding campground etiquette.  My parenting seems to be questioned quite a bit as my boys are quite vocal in their opinions and generally expressive.  Therefore, I was readying myself for quite the attack.

“Would you like some things we have?  We are just going to throw them away.”

“Uh.” It was all I could muster as I was dumbfounded by his question.  He continued to explain how he and his wife flew in from New York and rented an RV.  Tomorrow they would be leaving and had more than they could take with them.  Mustard, salt, crackers, and sour cream were all unopened and to be thrown away if we did not want them.  That was not to mention the toilet paper, paper towels and pillows (we will wash those, of course) they would bring over later as they may need them tonight.  I gratefully accepted all they had as it would just be trash in the morning.

As I returned to our trailer, I proudly presented the spoils of my venture and was met by my wife’s continually positive comments.

“Wow, we must really look poor!  They are giving us stuff.”

She was wrong, I think.  They were flying out in the morning and mustard exceeds the limit of fluids allowed on a flight, their suitcases could only hold so much toilet paper and the rest would just be going into the trash.  Therefore, we were not a charity case.  They did not feel right just throwing large amounts of useful odds and ends into the dumpster.  And I will keep telling myself that every time someone offers this poor family food, clothing and other assorted handouts.

Cinnamon Rolls anyone?

Every Thursday morning for the last two years, I have attended a meeting at work to discuss our patients.  At this meeting, there is always food.  In fact, we have a sign-up list to ensure someone is bringing food.  The variety of food that shows up is rather broad.  We have breakfast casseroles, stews, bagels, donuts, hot wings, sub sandwiches, Hot Pockets, cinnamon bites, Totino’s pizza rolls, breakfast burritos, assorted pastries, fruit salad and my specialty cinnamon rolls(from what I am told the rolls are quite a hit.).

I had been bringing cinnamon rolls rather regularly for quite a while, until recently.  Most usually I have neglected bringing them because I remember I am responsible for bringing the food at 9:00PM the night before.  Well tonight is no different.  I remembered at exactly 9:05.  I could have just brought something different as I have in the past, but this time I had been challenged.

You see, the last time I did not bring rolls it was said that “[you]…cannot make them anymore.  You live in a trailer!”  Of course not just a trailer, but a travel trailer.  “Anything you can do I can do…” came to mind, but only slightly appropriate.  Nevertheless, I knew that next time I would be making cinnamon rolls in my three cubic foot oven and use all four square feet of counter space!

After returning from the store the second time at 11:30(I forgot that in all of our purging, we discarded our jar of yeast. – You can’t bake in a travel trailer anyway, can you?), I got to work.  Actually, I did not get to work right away.  Where does the Kitchenaid mixer go?  Apparently, it goes on top of the sink.  Well what about the dishes(it only takes a plate and some spoons to fill our sink)?  They must be cleaned.  Eventually, the dough is made.  But where do I roll it out?  The only smooth surface with enough acreage for rolling out dough is the dining room table(I say dining room like there is the option for there to be another table, ha!).  After several generous helpings of butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, more butter and cream cheese, the rolls are rising until morning.  …I sure hope the oven works!?

The Home Economics teacher

My wife’s run-in with a former teacher as she tells our children:

Thursday July 23rd 2009—Home Economics Teacher
I went to a different Jazzercise class this day. In walked a woman I recognized. When I thought about it, I realized she was my 6th grade Home Economics teacher. I said to her, “I never did finish my pillow!” She began to laugh and was thrilled an old student had recognized and remembered her. After class, she said she wanted to tell me something. She said that when I was her student, her 16 year old daughter was having kidney failure and was frequently in the hospital. On occasion, she would leave the emergency room in the morning, change clothes and then go to work and teach us. Her daughter later died. She said, “When my daughters were little, if I had known then what I know now, I would have enjoyed the little things with them…walking barefoot in the park and eating chocolate ice cream.” We want to spend more time with you, but we are always stressed out about making ends meet, cleaning up, doing laundry, weeds growing in the backyard, etc. I realize that there will always be “work,” but how much of the work that I do taking care of a 2700sq foot house is meaningless?

Meaning is not what we were searching for and is not what we have found in this endeavor.  We know the meaning we have in life and we are quite secure in it.  Nevertheless, I feel many people who feel they have life figured out continue their meaningless activities without stopping and considering why.  Why are you taking your children to an activity, why are you involved with a certain organization, why do you clean your house or even why do you get out of bed in the morning?

If we kept running around without considering why and reprioritizing our lives, we were soon to be out of control.  A family, like many others, in a tailspin, out of control and soon to disappear into nothing.  Instead, we decided to take drastic measures to change our course.  We could have easily changed a few things in our life and ended up with a wonderful result, but we wanted this to be profound.  We wanted our children to look back at this change and know this was the day that changed their lives forever.  It was the moment we assigned meaning to every moment of our lives.

We purposely sought to reduce the time spent cleaning, washing and organizing.  It becomes easy to just neglect those areas, but what if you could nearly eliminate them.  Our number of clothes would be reduced, our possessions would be limited, our kitchen would be streamlined and the space we call home would be reduced tenfold!  Clothes, toys and things take up less space.  Cleaning takes less time.  More importantly, we have time and emotional freedom to enjoy our family and focus on what it means to be a parent, a spouse or….

Hollow and Deceptive Philosophy

…and it continues.

Wed July 22nd 2009 – Hollow and Deceptive Philosophy
The minister at church has been the minister since I was 5! However, every time I listen to him preach the Word, I see things in a different way. We were studying Colossians. We discussed Colossians 2:8, “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather on Christ.” Alan began to talk about the American philosophies of buying and keeping more “stuff.” Our possessions can make us feel hollow…I know this for a fact. Strange how we’ve been thinking about this all week and this was the main topic of discussion at church….God is working.

God worked boldly this week.  Our possessions began to feel more burdensome than before.  With the prospect of a simple life on the horizon, the most simple tasks which will be eliminated seem much more profound as we consider their eventual disappearance.  Soon would be gone the cleaning multiple bedrooms, clearing many countertops, washing countless loads of laundry and dodging a multitude of neglected toys, symbols we were giving our children to further teach them the philosophy of having.

Wants and needs have blurred so much in our society that we had to shake ourselves violently to the core.  We had to mindfully consider the value of all our possessions and little was to remain which was not necessary to maintain our simple life.  Here began the journey to less. This is where the test of our resolve to do what we had been discussing came to fruition.  Now we must purge!

The Flood

My wife’s account continues:

Tuesday July 21st, 2009 The Flood
Our town is known for having monsoon rains in the afternoon in July. This particular time it rained 2 inches within a few hours (more than the amount of rainfall in the whole month of July, usually). The roof water from our house drained into the flowerbeds which then overflowed into the basement. The water came flowing into the basement windows and onto the carpet, breaking a bookcase and collecting enough water onto the carpet that you boys could splash around in it. It just so happened that Granna had been watching you at our house, and playing with you in the basement. She was able to keep the damage minimal. Great-granny and Papa came to help vacuum up the water.

The crazy thing is that I didn’t care about the possessions down there! I was concerned about the photo albums of you and our younger days as a married couple. The only other item I cared about was a Mother Goose book Granddaddy gave me when the oldest was born that Granddaddy personally wrote in. Other than that, it would have been a relief for those items to be ruined…this tells me that my possessions have become a burden instead of a blessing.

When I told my friend about The Flood she said, “Get in your Ark!” Hmmm.

Where are we going to live?

My wife’s account of our continued pursuit:

Monday July 20th, 2009 Campgrounds
Before Daddy’s softball game we had extra time. We drove to a campground right off the freeway, in the mountains. It was beautiful and the cost is $375 a month to stay there. By the way, this is what we pay monthly in utilities! However, it is “out of town.” We looked at KOA it costs $575 a month, ugly, but conveniently located. The campground actually has a swimming pool, hot tub, mini golf, recreation area, and a place for you to ride your bikes.

…and boy were we excited!  We still had nothing to live in, but we were seeing the places we were going to live.  It was awkward going into the offices and asking what the monthly rates were.  The awkwardness came not so much because of our potential lifestyle, but because we did not yet have a trailer.  “So, what size rig do you have?” asked the manager at one campground.  My response was less than confident, “Well…um…I think it will…is probably going to be…oh maybe…28 or 30 feet.  I haven’t yet decided.”  Decided?  I had not even seriously looked for one yet, but the search continued.

As I mentioned previously, our dream was to live in a van down by the river.  Well, there is a river here and there is a campground one-hundred yards from it, so I thought I would take a look.  The campground is nestled in a beautiful neighborhood of homes far outside of my budget, and looks quite out of place.  I thought about trying to get some information regarding the place, but decided I would forgo such an endeavor.  As I drove by, repeatedly, silently stalking the place, it began to feel strange.  It was very lived-in and began to feel as though it had the attractiveness of meth and child porn.  It may be perfectly safe, but not for my family!

So it was settled, we would live in a nice campground in the city with all the amenities of a vacation.  Therefore, our motto: It’s like we are on vacation everyday!

The Bookshelf

I have said there was a major financial benefit to changing the way we live, but more importantly has been the intangible benefit of our lifestyle.  The way we would like to approach parenting and our role as parents fundamentally changed during this time.  My wife recounts one moment which lead to this transformation:

After small group, we were cleaning up all the toys in the basement. I sat down by the bookshelf and thought, “If we could only take 10 books with us, which ones would we take?” I actually became very saddened going through the books. I had only read a handful of these books to you, especially Liam and Rowen. Most of them I had only read to Shelton, when life was simple. I realized that the time I spend with you in true quality moments is scarce.

We both came to this realization looking at those books and began tearfully discussing the parents we wanted to be.  Additionally, we began to consider the type of spouse, friend and Christian we wanted to be.  It was here, at this moment, when our transformation departed from the financial to the intangible and the greatest rewards of our potential lifestyle began to unfold.

Our friends think we are crazy.

At this point in the story, no one knows what we have up our sleeve.  We are afraid to tell anyone because we still want friends and we would like our family to believe we are sane.  Nevertheless, we knew the time would come and we would begin telling people so they could pray for us.  Prayer was necessary because we knew this was something we wanted to do, but we felt God’s blessing was the most important.  Knowing where we are in the story today, I am confident God is blessing this decision daily.

Again, an excerpt from my wife’s account to our children:

Sunday July 19th, 2009 - At small group we told our friends about our plans. It is scary to mention such a life change. Will we have friends if we have such an “alternative lifestyle?” We told them we would listen to any criticism they had because God can speak through other people. However, they were positive about the idea. They asked a lot of questions to help us work through potential problems, but they were great. We are blessed to have friends who also know what is important in life.

While we say they “knew what is important in life,” they did think we were crazy.  However, they set out to pray with us regarding this issue and offer any help they could.  While this group of friends was very limited, our circle of friends, who prayed with us, slowly began to grow.  It took a little longer for us to consider telling our families.  As you will see, they are not always understanding of the unconventionality of our life.

We want to live like no one else, so we can live like no one else!

Our decision to search out simplicity grew out of our initial desire to be financially free.  I have endlessly reminded my wife how I love the simplicity of our living situation and she reminds me how much we are saving.  Daily, the stated benefit of our living changes.  When we have enough money to eat out without stress, the financial freedom is great.  When we are sitting under our awning watching the boys ride their bikes without a care in the world, the simplicity is nearly overwhelming.  Nevertheless, how ever you view our lifestyle, it is not normal!

A discussion of what “normal” people do would not be complete without trying to define normal.  I want to take a moment to focus on normal defined by finances.  You see, I like to listen to Dave Ramsey (a financial nut) and if you have ever heard him, you know where I am going.  In the United States of America:

• 7 out of 10 American households live paycheck to paycheck
• The average American family carries $8000 in credit card debt

As Dave says, “Normal is broke!”  We have conscientiously made the decision to live differently.  When we started this journey, many people gave us differing suggestions on what we should do, but they were all the normal options.  Rent out our basement.  Down-size in house.  Rent an apartment.  However, we knew that to achieve simplicity and financial freedom on the level we wanted, we HAD to be extreme.  We have to live like no one else so that one day we can live like no one else!

Ooooh, Pretty!!

A excerpt of my wife’s account of this story for our children:

Sunday July 19th, 2009 - RV Lot
After lunch we went to the RV lot to look at trailers.  We know that we will buy a used one on eBay or Craigslist, but we wanted to see them “in real life.”  It is tempting to want a bigger, better, state-of-the art, trailer, but doesn’t that defeat the purpose?  We will look for something that fits our needs and costs less.

Oh, that was close!  I was almost sucked in.  He was not a slick salesman at all.  Montana, as his nametag called him, had the appearance and excitement of an aged salesman but lacked a firm awareness of his inventory.  He kept confusing all the trailers and mixing up the prices.  It would have really been annoying if we cared.  Little did he know, we were just using him and his time to familiarize ourselves with the intricacies of travel trailers.

Regardless of our intent and Montana’s lack of salesmanship, it was difficult to look at the new trailers and not be intrigued.  We would be able to have a trailer free from someone else’s dirt, one with only our grime and one that lacked odors of unknown origin.  Despite having set out to free ourselves from stuff and financial liability, the lure have and spend remained.  By the way, for only 120 easy payments of $249.99 we too could be the proud owners of an aluminum-structured, fiberglass-clad, rapidly depreciating trailer!  Boy did we miss a bullet.

We must act now!

Ok, now we are pumped!  We must get busy.  After meeting the tent dweller, we came home and got to work.  In a matter of hours, I was a registered member of the “Mobile-Living” Yahoo Group, our house was overpriced and listed on Craigslist and we were knee-deep in eBay listings for travel trailers.

Travel trailers are a curious breed.  They range widely in size, color, age, smell, and state of deterioration.  Our price-range was well below the large, good-looking, newer, clean smelling and structurally sound trailers we found to be plentiful.  The hunter’s special seemed to be easy to find at a great price.  On eBay, the hunter’s special usually had very few pictures and vague descriptions that let you now it was equivalent to a dog house on wheels. It was somewhere you would imagine a pedophile, serial killer or the “Unabomber” living.  We knew this search was going to be tough.

5 Bedrm, 3 bath, 2700sqft, BSMT - $2100.  What?  Why did we ask that much?  Well, we didn’t want it to be rented this month unless we got a great deal for ourselves.  I knew our house would NEVER rent for that, but my wife wanted to get it out there and pray that some wealthy person who did not have the wherewithal to buy a house would want to rent ours.  Oh well, with a few pictures and some annoying abbreviations, our house was for rent and the journey toward leaving was begun.

There are Yahoo Groups for anything!  Cat lovers, knitting groups, parenting groups and even trailer royalty (not to be confused with trailer-trash) all have a home on Yahoo.  I found a group where I too was to be accepted.  I was warmly welcomed into the Mobile Living Yahoo Group.  Many of the members eagerly answered my questions and offered suggestions on how to enjoy a life of freedom and mobility.  They also provided me with the bumper sticker which will soon adorn the bumper of our trailer.

“I am not homeless, I am mobile”

Our journey had finally begun, but mountainous tasks veiled by the fog of excitement lie before us.

Normal people would not live like this, right!?

Now, back to the story...

Saturday July 18th, 2009 Hippies
We were at a friend’s party.  I talked with a woman we had met at a party a year earlier.  I asked her how she knew the host and she told me that they house-sat for them because they lived in a tent at the time.  Given what we had been discussing, my ears “perked” up, “Did I hear ‘tent’?”  It was like music to my ears!!  Even now, with a family of five they live in a house that was built for many families to live in, on some beautiful land.  They live in a small room, with a patio and enjoy the outdoors.  This “lifestyle” sounded so appealing to me.  I wonder if God put me at the party to have this very discussion with her.

Wow, she looks so normal!  I say that because no one in their right mind would live like that, in a tent or in a communal setting, right?  We were astonished by her story and motivated to reconsider our lifestyle.  After the party, we went to the park and started dreaming.  How can we make this happen?  Where could we live?  What about our new house?  We have so much to think about, but already we feel free.  The understanding that sometime in the future we will be free of everything, starts us dreaming.

To have seen a young family like us tell of their unconventional living gave us hope.  We now had hope that we really could live our dream.  We could now live in a van down by the river!  Move over Matt Foley, here we come.