A Sailing Dream

Rob, my husband, and I have gone many places, seen many beautiful sites, and experienced many different things. During a couple of those times in Norway or Maryland, my husband always had a draw to the sailboats. Our collection of videos on our phone proves the obsession! ;)
He claimed he was a sailer in his past life and wanted so badly to be on one. We talked about why he doesn't just do it, and his response was, "you'd have to be making lots of money to be able to own a sail boat."  Soon after, he heard a news article written about a family from Eagle Mountain who was going to be selling all their belongings and heading out to the ocean to sail the world. He text me saying, "How would you like to sail around the world?" to which my response was, "Heck no!" (but I quickly erased that) and wrote, "The kids and I would need to take swimming lessons."
I'm not a dream killer. :'D
Then, he started signing up for sailing classes, following the sailing pages on social media, signing us up to go see the boat show in Maryland etc. It was something he was now going to push himself to do.

Now, just a little over a year since that text, we have been preparing ever since.
We've both taken our sailing courses out on Utah Lake (Rob passed with flying colors), we've been to the boat show in Maryland and seen what kind of boat we'd like, we've paid down most of our debt, we bought a freeze drier and started preparing food, we've watched countless amounts of sailing vlogs, we've bought 2 different sailboats (tiny ones for practicing), and now we're prepping our house to be cleaned out and rented out selling all our things.

My mind is okay with change. Yes, it's had it's emotional sides for me. I am still terrified of the "deep end of the pool," and I still need swim lessons, but it's in the books. I burst out in tears every now and then with the thought of drowning again. (it happened to me when I was 5 and I've been afraid ever since)
Rob wants me to "overcome my fears" because it's "holding me back." Little does he know, my mind tells me that every time I think of doing it, and it still hasn't gotten me to even go near the deep end. Someday I see myself jumping off the diving board and swimming right to the top of the water, then across and not dying. Then I remind myself that I'm just making it up in my head. What if I actually didn't come up? What if I sunk like I did long ago? What if the lifeguard didn't see me again? The thought of being trapped under the water (I'm already a claustrophobic person) just makes me feel absolutely sick. Heck, I almost threw up watching (Matt Johnson) on Americas Got Talent. I burst into tears and couldn't contain myself for at least five minutes. Let's just say, "terrified" doesn't begin to describe what I feel.
The kids, however, they are taking their lessons and doing fantastically! All of them can swim pretty good. It makes me proud that they are mine. That they have "swimming" inside of them. :)
Swimming is really the only fear that I have about this idea of sailing. You'd think it'd be sharks, or pirates, or getting lost in some random country, but it's not. Some day..some day soon...

Now that we've talked about this trip more, we've made plans, and decided we'd like to see the world, starting with our own country, The United States. There's lots of places we have never been to here, and we'd love to go there with our kids.

Our plan is to travel to all continental 48 states. We don't care how long it takes us. We want to see it all and not be forced by time to leave. About 6 months ago we went to The Grand Canyon, Four Corners, and the dinosaur museum in Vernal. Just a couple weeks ago we got a 70's like motorhome, (It's seriously AWESOME) and went through Nevada. We saw Lemans Caves and Lake Tahoe.  Went to California to Big Trees National Forest, The Drive Through Tree, The Redwood Forest (we got to meet up with Robs brother Russ), the Golden Gate Bridge, drove along the Pacific Coast Highway, and through Oregon, and Washington (Where we met up with his sister.) We then went up into Canada, got all the girls passports stamped for the first time, and then we drove home through Idaho. It was our favorite trip! The scenery was nice, the motorhome was comfortable, kids were decent ;'D, and we really enjoyed the time we had together.

Last week we had our first yard sale. We sold about 1/2 of what was there, and we're planning on another one this Saturday. I'm happy to see all of our things go. It's nice to get all these things out of our house and make some space. It'll be nice to be out on the ocean and be in a wide open area with fresh air and space. :D

I've started to home school the younger two kids. Kate's still in school, because she's doing math that I still don't understand, and Rob will need to be her teacher.
It's been going fine. Kids don't love it because it's new and they want to see all their old friends. They do love what we do FOR school though, and that makes me feel better. I really try to prep lessons, not heavily, but to the point where I can teach them effectively.

Here is some of the math that we do (Third Grade Math)

Kate's going to finish 8th grade here, then when Rob gets a job working remote, he can teach her.

Rob's job is soon to be gone. The company he is with has been laying off employees (2 times so far) and the next time they do it, they'll be no one left. Unfortunately there is not a severance package for those leaving last, so he's quickly trying to find a good job that he can work remote. If he finds one, we can leave as soon as we want. We already have some good friends who'd like to rent our house from us, so pretty much it's just up to his job.

Life is busy. I've not posted on social media. No one really knows what we're doing yet. We hope to have a blog, vlog, fb page.. it's all in  the works. There's so much to do and so little time.  Hopefully I can post more. We love to read back on the process. Hope you'll all follow us along! There's going to be some great pictures! ;'D