The Plan:
Family of 8, Dad, Mom, 6 children and a dog. Get rid of 90% of what we own and be full-time travelers by land and by sea.
Long term we want to try to live on a catamaran sailboat. Our goal is to set sail in 2018 ( but we are also always open to wherever the Lord leads and His timing). We think we'll start in the Fl Keys to learn ( to sail and adjust to living on a boat), get our sea legs and then hop over to the Bahamas. We may Island hop all the way down through thr Virgin Islands to South America if all goes well, then north, up along South then Central America and then Mexico. Or we could start in Mexico ( or travel around the Gulf in the US coast to Mexico) and head South. We'll see....But we are thinking Caribbean and/or Latin America right now.
I mean everyone's first question and ours too, how to financially do it? So we don't really know yet about how to support ourselves during the sailing part (though we have some ideas) but God provided an interesting twist.
Dana got the opportunity to be an Agile Coach/Enterprise Transformation Consultant which would be short-term contracts in different areas. Wahla! (ok so Dana said, "don't you mean viola?" and I said "no" Because he said vee-o-la not vWAHLA- so it threw me off ok? We had a little disagreement.... and then we found this, Eeerg, his favorite moment EVER!!!)
We could start our travel journeys by LAND! This was great bc we could do it right away and in so many ways this still get's us ready for our sailing aspirations ( minus the sailing, and ocean, and sea sickness and.... ok but still it really does in lots of ways:-).
So...... drum roll.............
Thomas Family and RV
We are living on a converted bus/rv and getting to travel by land right away, while we prepare for the sea travel part. I'm calling it "travel by turf then surf":D
Hannah Loading Up on Bus
Dana was able to take the next step in his career. And become a full-time Agile Coach/Enterprise Transformation Consultant ( Agile is an IT project management methodology). Something he loves and is very good at. We also both plan to blog and work on writing books. Dana would also like to do more public speaking.
I am having to get over my aversion to writing and all my self-consciousness about sharing our life with such a broad audience. To put ourselves out there and exposed to more ridicule but then also more love. To be so raw and real (our family just wears our hearts on our sleeves anyway, just haven't done it on the WORLD WIDE web until now). Feel like an awkward new kid at the lunch table wondering where to sit(or that Forrest Gump scene on the school bus,"can't sit heeah"). So we are diving in! We are going to share our journey!!
This is the general WHAT, we are going to also get up even more details for those that want to dive deeper. This wasn't a rash decision and has been in the making for a LOOONG time, it just finally came together and was time to take the plunge. One, 2, Three, JUMP!!! ......
Burrrrr it's cold, our first stop is Minneapolis, MN ( actually it's summertime so we'll be A ok).
Each of the contracts Dana will be doing will be 3-6 months ( give or take:-), so that's how long we'll have in each region we go to. For now we will be stateside with our "turf" travel but who knows, we saw many listings for Agile Coaches in other countries too so it's possible for us to take to other lands turf side.