We loved Savannah, GA

I want to share ALL the pictures, BUT, you are ALL just going to have to agree that Savannah is BEAUTIFUL. The weather was nice, the views were amazing and the food was FABULOUS! These are a few of the things that were fun to do as a family.

• Walking tour of downtown Savannah
• River street
• Tybee Island
• Fort Pulaski​
• Skidaway Island State Park

The 1st day is always magical. Especially for Ammon with the Carousel of Progress which is oddly one of his favorite rides...? 

We all shared 1 item per country and it was awesome! Asher said "Ooooh.... we can't eat anymore food at Epcot. Just kidding! It was good!"

At blue springs in Florida, the manatees migrate to the warm water! It is REALLY hard to see, but, it was amazing! They are magnificent creatures.

We took TONS of pictures. Our cousin was able to fly to FL to come with us! Harry Potter world was even more legit than we thought it would be!

When we are by the ocean... we HAVE to see it!

Animal Kingdom is awesome, BUT... there aren't a ton of rides there. The little boys had a GREAT time getting EVERY. SINGLE. BADGE. We walked more this day than any other day. Pandora was AWESOME and Everest will always be a favorite.

Hollywood Studios! We love it there, BUT alas, Toben won't go on very many of the rides. Honestly, nobody does it like Disney and no matter what, it's still SO fun to just be there. Plus... Rockin' Roll Roller Coaster & Tower of Terror!

Pirates, Haunted Mansion, Space Mountain, Train, Small World, Peter Pan... It's all fun! 

So... we repeated Epcot. Then, Shanae flew to Dallas for a Posh event.. and the boys decided to go back to Epcot (for a third time.)

Check out THIS close encounter!

Then, Ammon did something REALLY magical... he took the kids to the BIGGEST MCDONALD'S IN THE WORLD! Which, by the way, costs more... of course.

1. A two-week stay is GREAT, but, a 6 day pass would be plenty for 1 trip. With 6 days, you can go to all 4 parks and revisit your top 2. You don't need hoppers. It takes SO long to get from 1 park to the other that it is a waste of time and really isn't worth the extra money.
2. Universal Studios was AMAZING. The passes are a lot of money and they get you because 1/2 of Harry Potter world is in each park... how do these people sleep at night? (Probably VERY well on their gazillion dollar mattress.)
3. January weather is great, but you have a LOT of people visiting from South America so it was still busier than we anticipated. (When we went a couple of years ago in Sept it was less crowded, but the weather was awful- TOO hot!)
4. We saved about $3,000.00 by staying off-property and only eating 1 meal in the park per day. Last time we went, we had the meal plan and it was awesome... but, we can go 2 times for the same price. (UNLESS you go in September, then they usually have an awesome deal.)

No matter what, Disney is Disney and we had a GREAT time. Us west-coasters still prefer Disneyland, but I'm sure we'll be back especially for the food at Epcot.

 We MISS the beach already. Panama City Beach was SO beautiful! Our stay was SO amazing there and provided a much-needed rest. Most of the time we were there, it wasn't warm enough to even get in, but we still LOVED it. The cooler weather meant no crowds and we frequently had the place to ourselves!We will let the pictures and tour speak for itself below. 

If you're wondering what we did while we were there... NOTHING. It went something like this:

1. Beach
2. Condo
3. Beach
4. Condo

Except we did go to Pine Log State Forest and it was BEAUTIFUL! 

Other than that, we did a whole lotta NOTHIN' and THAT was perfect. Enjoy the tour of where we stayed below! 

One of the most commonly asked questions we get as we chat with people about what we're doing is about money. "How are you paying for this" or some various of that. It's a question typically asked in a nervous voice with a fearful look as to say, "I hope this doesn't offend you, but I really want to know." ​Guess what - it doesn't offend. So, here it is. This is a break down of our cost for the months of November and December. We'll post these cost break down after each month.

Before we dive in to it, a few clarifications on related questions we frequently get asked:

Are we independently wealthy and traveling with that money?
Unfortunately, no.

Are we living off saving or the sale of a house?
No.

Do you still work?
Yes. Both of us, everyday.

In planning to do this, our goal was to stay as close to normal monthly spending as we could. We started that by figuring out how much we spend every month on average. You can read a little more about that HERE. 

First of all, please understand we are not those people who budget very well - or at all really.  We talk about it from time to time and have tried spreadsheets, keeping receipts and all the other penny watching techniques over the years. Most of the time as part of new resolutions. And like most new years resolutions we typically abandoned our budgeting before February started.

In order to see how much this whole adventure is actually costing us, we are working a bit more diligently to ensure we track what's happening.

I can safely say I've always hated budgeting. So, I knew if this was going to work we had to figure something out that was easy. Here's what we did:

To start - a plan. We determined we did not want to have a bazillion spending categories to track. We'd have 4.

They are:

• All Life (anything from gas to t-shirts to amusement park tickets - it's all here)
• All Food (fast food, grocery food and everything else we ate)
• Rent (rent, internet, utilities, etc.) 
• Health (insurance, doctor, etc.)

We then set a goal for what we wanted to spend in each category per month.  

• All Life - $800
• All Food - $800
• Rent - $2000
• Health - $750
• Total - $4350

These were our starting spending goals. 

We then needed a way to track everything. We ended up using Mint.com. Set ups our budget categories and categorized everything into one of the 4 as we spent.

The budget represents  everything we spent outside of saving money. Health insurance, car insurance,  rent, utilities, clothes, etc., etc. All included. 

Could be have spend less? Probably. There are things we certainly could have cut out or spend less on. Could we have spend more? Easily. We have tried to find a balance of comfort and experience on a budget we think works well for us. 


NOVEMBER 
Not so good...

Rent - Nailed it!
1 month stay at 3 bedroom condo in New Baunfels, TX. All utilities and internet included in cost.
$1846

Health - Boo yeah!

​All Food - :(
no go

All Life - :(
as you can see from our mint.com screen shot, we did NOT make this goal. ​

November summary:
Rent: $1846
Health: $600
Food: $935
Life: $2774
Total: $6155

$1805 over our spending goal

Our first month was quite a bit more expensive than anticipated. A look back at the month to see where that money went and we see a few big things. We traveled inside Texas quite a bit. Lots of gas money. We also decided this month to sell our large and bulky Wii U and get personal game systems (Switch) that would be more suitable for travel. We did get $250 for the for Wii U on ebay - so technically we could take that $250 off the $2774 - still a more expensive month that we had planned for. 


​DECEMBER 
Closer to target spending - sort of...

To start this month we adjusted our spending goals for December to the following:

• All Life - $1000
• All Food - $1000
• Rent - $2000
• Health - $750
• Total - $4750

We knew December would be a little different for two reasons.
First - We booked a cruise for the second week of the month. Because this was book and paid for well before we set out on this journey that cost is NOT include into the budget. 

Second - Christmas. We are limited on what we can have due to our space constraints, but Christmas is not a cheap time of year. Our thought was maybe  the two event would balance out our spending for the month.

​Here's the damage:

Rent - Yup!
$487 - 1 week (first week of the month) in near Beaumont, TX
$160 - 2 night in a hotel in New Orleans, LA
$850 - 2 weeks in 3 bed, 2 bath 18th story beach front Panama City Beach, FL Beach.
We rented 4 week here for the total cost of $1700 (last 2 weeks of Dec and first 2 weeks of Jan.) - this might be the best deal of our trip. Amazing location at a stupid low price. 

Total $1497


Health - Got it
This included a trip to a doctor and cortisone shot to Shanae's knee - not what she wanted for Christmas.

November summary:
Rent: $1497
Health: $718
Food: $1256
Life: $1188
Total: $4659

$91 under 

These first two months have been a learning experience for us in so many ways. Through the highs and lows of trying to figure it all out our spending and budgeting has been at the heart of much of that learning. For example - buying groceries. Grocery shopping and eating at home is cheaper than eating out right? Not to mention healthier. But, how do you buy groceries when you don't have items that you reuse in a pantry. And what if you don't have the space to pack up a pantry of goods and transport them from place to place? One of the areas we're trying to figure out how to best spend money with effectively.

​We'll continue to report our spending each month through the end of this journey. Hopefully getting better at sticking to our target spending. 

We may have spent a LOT of time, energy and discussion about WHERE to go and WHAT to do... Here it is... drumroll please... We present to you leg #2 of our trip. There are a few things going on here. 

1. We stayed close to the coast for the most part since it is WINTER. 
2. This traveling leg begins after our time at Disney World in Orlando Jan 27 and will go through the end of March. 
3. We are taking suggestions for things to see and do and most of all, if you want to meet up with us friends- let us know!

We have been talking about how travel is fatal. It's fatal to who you were before, and the things you thought about the world, but mostly, what we thought about ourselves. One thing about our travel being mostly US based is everywhere is very much different, yet the same! We can still shop at Target (not that we can buy anything because of limited space,) we can still eat at Chick-Fil-A- (Thank the Heavens!) but then there is another element of things that are unique to the people/cities/areas we are in. So, it is all different and all the same.
We met up with some family here in Panama City Beach last week and one thing my cousin said has stuck with me- "I love MY beach." Where we choose to live becomes part of us. We have only popped into Mexico, Honduras, and Belize. We will also likely go in to Canada before we are done. So, when you don't have a place to "live" or a real home address... where are we from? It's a real trip. Pun intended.
So- let's hear it- What do we HAVE to see along this route. We aren't afraid of a bit of a drive and each of these stops represents 1 week-1 month. 

      Here we are, in Panama City Beach Florida, on Christmas, away from family, friends, our community, and... we are together. It is a strange experience to walk away from everything and only rely on each other. We would be lying if we said it was easy or perfect or even smooth! We would also be lying if we didn't admit to having to talk each other down when we get that crazed look in our eye with the ominous, repeated, question, "What the heck are we doing??" 
     One thing we NEVER question is that we are learning and growing. We have gotten to know our children so much better. We have gotten to know ourselves better (and how uncomfortable is that?!) Life is too short to do what's safe and expected. We cherish the opportunity to explore life, ourselves and to build our future. As entrepreneurs, we challenge the "norm" and are fiercely dedicated to providing a life experience for ourselves and our children that is challenging, different, brave and yes... a little crazy. 
     We won't pretend, we miss our family, friends and community and also know that once you leave, you can never really "go back home." We know we are already different. Taking this life sabbatical was a choice we had to make for us. We are certainly living up to the blog name... We don't know where we are going, or where we will end up, but we know that we will be together and that it will be awesome and messy as life ALWAYS is. 
     And now, for your entertainment here is REALITY and what we are really getting for Christmas...

     We are having a hard time deciding what to do for the next leg of our trip. We are moving up through the South. Yes, it's cold, it's off-season and yet, we persist. We have "different" ideas about how we should attack the next portion of our journey. We have from January 27th to March 3rd that we need to figure out. Suggestions welcome!
Oh, and hey... we break a fence in this video. Oops.

     ​Brookeland, TX was gorgeous... and REMOTE. When booking things way ahead, we always look at pictures, and ask about internet. Funnily enough, we had seen pictures of the resort and the internet was via satellite at the clubhouse.
     Since it was a lake resort and it was December, NOBODY was there and so our standing joke was that we were living The Shining. I can't make any promises that we all would have survived an entire winter! 
     When life gives you lemons... make lemonade. Or, at least, only cry about the wifi and your home-based business once. ;)

Yes, we are WAY behind on posting, what of it? Asher and Toben decided to do the tour of our Texas home. It's VERY raw, and VERY fun. Our boys are the best and practice makes perfect!  Enjoy the tour-