For our Thanksgiving today, I had some time while I wait for the yams to cook in the oven before I put on all the marshmallows, so I decided to write a Thanksgiving post for this very important holiday. Growing up my parents always made sure I sent thank you letters after birthdays and Christmas, so it’s only fitting I write a Thank you letter to all those who have made this journey of ours possible.
Thank you to our parents, Mike’s and mine for their help, encouragement, and support. As I said in our first post, we were nervous about telling our parents about our plans – worried they would tell us we are crazy, foolish, or naïve to think leaving perfectly fine jobs and traveling the country was a good plan. But they surprised us all with love and excitement for our endeavor. In talking to them, we found out our parents are all people who once, twice or many times took risks in their lives and good or bad it benefited them in their journey of life. Mike’s parents left their hometowns to travel to DC for work, my father joined the military in the time of Vietnam War (thankfully he wasn’t sent there, but he served), my mother went caving in treacherous conditions to study bats during graduate school, and my step-mother started her own small business. Buying an RV and traveling the country seems rather simple when I compare it to the strides they made in their lives. I am extremely grateful for their love and support in mine and Mike’s life, and I sincerely miss them this holiday.
A special thank you to my aunt Stacey – she has been my constant cheerleader in so many things I have tried in my life, and she was a big supporter of our plan to travel. She requested a spot in our RV and we would be more than happy to have her – I love you very much Stacey, it means the world to me to have your love and patronage!
Thank you to our siblings – our sisters, who welcomed our news with the same enthusiasm and encouragement. Family is important to me, especially around the holidays, but I appreciate that with Facetime and Skype we are able to reach out and talk to our siblings.
Thank you to our friends, who we dearly miss but we are so blessed to have so many well-wishers and kind words about our upcoming adventures. Many of them told me – “keep in touch, I want to hear all about it. I’ve always wanted to do something like that.” That’s the reason we started this blog, to stay in touch and keep that connection alive. I am thankful for the reviews we’ve had from friends, who visited our website and given suggestions of places to go and ways to get there, it means so much to us to have your enthusiasm.
Thank you to Heath and Alyssa for the June 17th podcast "Don't Wait to Live Your Life". I cried after hearing it because we were so fixated on planning for every eventuality before we set out that the stress was debilitating. Many things in my mind nearly stopped us from taking this adventure, I became so afraid of "failing" at this, but I lost sight of what our goal was originally. Hearing this podcast made me realize, "how could I fail if I never try? And I can't try without taking a first step." Despite all the planning and preparation you do before you start something, you may find that water is still coming in to your RV (sorry Mike), but that's part of the adventure. John Lennon put it best “Life is what happens when you’re making plans.” You may not have everything worked out, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and go. It meant so much to me to hear people I admired and who seemed to have it all worked out had their bad days too. Thank you, Heath and Alyssa, for your candor and fortitude.
Thank you to all the RV blogs we found providing advice, comedy, and how-to’s – Technomadia, Gone with th Wynns, OurVie, RV Love, RV Geeks – all these we found through the RV Entrepreneur Podcast, so thanks for that Heath!
A big thank you to my husband, Mike – his relentlessness in trying to fix everything on this rig (#RVsBuiltLikeCrap), his meticulousness in finishing any project he starts, his brilliance in solving any problem that comes up, and his savvy in doing it all and still loving the ride. I am thankful to have such a wonderful partner in all this, I would not be anywhere without him.
Though we cannot be with our families this holiday – we are lucky enough to be staying at an RV park with lots of other full-timers and our campground hosts invited us to their Thanksgiving celebration with several of the campground’s residents. So I am trying my hand at cooking – stuffing with celery, apples, and onions and sweet potatoes with marshmallows. Fingers crossed it all works out.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! Thank you for reading!
Gobble Gobble!