Alone with children

[happyhs]

Hi everyone

I'm new here...we don't yet have an RV but will be getting one before the end of this year.

My husband and I have decided that the kids and I will go full-time after the first of the year, spending half a month or so close to home. The reason is my husband isn't in a position to work from an RV yet and won't be for at least a couple more years. Our oldest son is in college now and won't be going with us all the time, only in the summer. Our next is 15 and is one of the reasons we decided to go full time now and not wait for my husband to be able to be with us all the time. We want our younger son to go with us and enjoy himself all the time, not just during summer break from college!
We have two more kids ages 13 and 9. We have been homeschooling since 2000, so that's not an issue.

So...am I crazy? Is my husband crazy? Sometimes I feel like I am for being ok with being away from my husband for two weeks or more at a time....(maybe I'm used to it..he has always been a workaholic and spends quite a bit of time at the office.) Sometimes I think my husbands crazy to be ok with us being on the road a lot of the time. He just tells me that he wants me to do what would make me happy and would be good for the kids. We would be spending about half of each month with him...and probably once every three months or so he will be able to go with us for a week or so.

What are your thoughts on this? Are we crazy?

D

[dutchdi]

No I don't think you're crazy. Life is short so do what you think is best for you and your kids. Couples adapt and hopefully you will be able to ease into this new adventure with few problems. Who knows maybe this being apart will change your hubby from a workaholic to wanting to spend more time with you and the kids. Diana

[queenbee]

I find the idea of hitting the road alone with my homeschooled kids very alluring. My husband is also gone from the house over 12 hours a day. He doesn't want to retire yet--and really can't now that the economy and the stock market is not good. But, I find myself bored and restless most of the time. We do eventually plan to RV our way around the whole border of the USA, but these kids will be mostly gone by then.

Another issue is, the expense of it. Our mortgage is so big and our living expenses are such that we really couldn't affort to maintain both lifestyles, without selling our house and finding something smaller/less expensive. Right now housing prices have dropped so much around here that we would take a big loss to do that. But, oh.....it sounds so good to me!!

Tell me more of your plans!

the queenbee

[happyhs]

Well, my husband and I have decided to sell the house...and much of our *stuff*. We have found an RV that we really like and are hoping to get the financing to go through this week....once we have it, we're going to park it out front and just gradually move in.

We hope to be on the road by January. We want to stay here for Christmas...but right after that we'll go.

While my husband is here working he's going to stay at my moms in the guest room. When we come back home every couple of weeks he'll be with us in the RV. There are a couple of local campgrounds for us to stay while we're here...We've also thought about an older TT for my husband to stay in while we're gone. We found one for sale locally for $1000...it has a bedroom, kitchen, living area and bath...it's older, but would be perfect for my husband...he would only be there to sleep and shower, anyway. :-) We're still looking in to that.

We're very excited...we've already had one small yard sale...we didn't get rid of as much as I would have liked, but that's ok...I'm sure we'll be able to find homes for our stuff.

Everything right now hinges on us getting financing for the RV we want. If that falls through (we still own a house with a huge mortgage..so it's going to be difficult) we'll save up until January or February..plus our tax refund...we'll be able to get one that's a little older...but we'll trade up later..

The kids can hardly wait...they've been going through all of their stuff and have done great getting rid of things! They've already marked their maps and written down where they'd like to go.