Hi guys… Is anybody still here? I know it’s been a place full of chirping crickets and not much else for months on end. So, here’s the life update, otherwise known as my explanation for being a blog slacker.

To put it simply, things did not go as we originally planned.

We moved the RV to its summer spot in Hurricane, Utah last June. We were super excited about being in beautiful southern Utah and our proximity to amazing places to explore. We fell in love with our RV park and I got Riv signed up for swimming lessons. We were settling in nicely and finding a routine.

Our spot at WillowWind RV park.

Then Ben broke his foot at work. He was rigging at Lee’s Ferry and stepped just the wrong way. Boom. Broken foot. Cue first event we didn’t plan for. He obviously could not go on that trip he was rigging and then also missed the trip after that, which meant two trips worth of tips he was missing out on financially. Since I’m not working in order to homeschool Rivers, that’s a big financial hit. It might not be a big deal to a family that sold a huge house and used the profits to finance their fulltime RV life. But that’s not us. We need Ben’s summer income to finance our winter adventures, and everything else. Pretty quickly our conversations turned to what we would do this winter instead of the travel we were originally looking forward to. It would definitely mean a very different first winter in RV life.

Ben healed up well without surgery and was back on the river by mid-July. We continued back into our routines once Ben was guiding again. Lots of trips to Zion and swimming lessons, library visits and splash-pad park days. I’ll be catching up on my backlog of posts and sharing some of the adventures we had over the last 8 months in future blog posts.

The season ended without any more mishaps and we made the decision that Ben would need to do winter work for Western to make up for the lost income during river season. So we moved to the warehouse yard instead of setting out on six months of travel. I’m not going to pretend like I wasn’t bummed. We had such grand plans for our first year of this new lifestyle, and they were gone. I had to turn it all on its head and realize how lucky we were. There are actual 30-amp electrical hookups, sewer and water all available in the warehouse yard, how cool is that! Plus we had an easy, convenient place for Ben to work, just 50 feet outside the door of the RV. The big bonus was for Rivers. He got to spend some quality time with some quality human beings in Ben’s coworkers. Not long after we pulled in and set up house in the warehouse yard, river guides started showing up to do winter rubber work. Riv decided these were truly his people and spent every spare minute trying to hang out with them. I have to give a big shout out to Mickell, Mark, Daniel, Steph, Emily, Mackay, Brian, Stephen, RD, Aimee, and of course Corey for playing with my kid and tolerating his lack of volume control! He loves you guys so much and hasn’t stopped talking about all the fun he had with you this winter.

So, we’ve been here in Fredonia living life, homeschooling (mostly unschooling, but more on that later) and adventuring on the weekends when Ben is off. It’s not the big grand adventure we planned, but it has been full of quality time with awesome people, so we definitely can’t complain about that. In just shy of four weeks we will be heading back to Hurricane to get settled for Ben’s river season again. He has a great schedule this year that he is really looking forward to. I also have a chance for the first time in NINE YEARS to go on the river with him again. I’m still trying to talk myself into it, because I haven’t been away from Riv for more than three days since he was born! Ten days away from him sounds pretty sad to me right now. I’m sure I’ll get myself hyped about it in time.

All of this is to say, I’m back! I have literally 25 blog posts lined up to work on. I am finally prioritizing time to organize and edit the photos, and get all the words in order. In the meantime, I’ve also been trying to get better about posting on IG, so head over there for some visual updates of what we’re up to!