Adventure Is Out There: Budgeting Vs. Disney World

If you know me, you know I love adventure.

Recently, I have been working with a financial coach who is helping me sort out juggling our personal finances with our small business finances. She brings quite an interesting approach to handling finances.

It's new to me.
It's challenging.
It's fun (dare I say).
It's an adventure. - What! balancing the weekly budget an adventure!? Boy, has my perspective changed on this, one of life's more difficult issues.

This whole budget adventure has got me thinking about how I view different seasons, situations, events or even people in my life.
I long for adventure, it is my life blood. But maybe adventure is right in front of me, maybe I'm missing out on little adventures everyday.

It is all about perspective.

Today our Disney World annual passes expire. Now that was an adventure for sure. I estimate that we went 3-4 times per month, yielding somewhere from 30-45 visits for our tribe in one year.

Interestingly, although this is considered the happiest place on earth, as I sat on my couch this morning with my two oldest, watching the video projects they've been working on, I realized that I think I enjoy time at home together more than visiting Disney World.

Now yes, I'm exhausted from a 12 hour day of saying farewell to Epcot and Hollywood Studios yesterday, so maybe my thought process is a little bias toward lounging on my couch. But seriously, as my Bigs seem to be barreling toward pre-adulthood I am finding myself less and less longing for adventure, as I once viewed it, and instead I'm feeling desperate to hold onto these precious moments we have together.

                                                                                Lately, we have been contemplating when and where our summer road trip will be. This is always such a fun time of year, the anticipation is so thick in our home about the whole matter that you can almost feel it. I love hearing each one of my Bigs' and Littles' opinions. They hash out ideas together. It is glorious. This, this in itself is an adventure. Yes, it is the beginnings of our yearly grand adventure, but this too is one. A beautiful one.

Usually if a situation (or person) is at all difficult, I tend to view it as a burden of sorts. But the Lord has been gently teaching me to view each one as and adventure straight from Him and that there is enjoyment to be found in everyone of life's adventures.

I don't want the longing for excitement to take away the excitement of the regular, the mundane, the real, the dirty, the cranky, the tired, the difficult, the needy, the cuddly, the funny, the creative, the fun, the chaos that is our everyday life.

♥ rebecca 

Summer Road Trip 2015 Begins....

We love to road trip, like looooove. 

I (rebecca) grew up taking long road trips in the summer with my family. We would all (2 parents, 7 kids & 1 dog) cram into a minivan, with a car top carrier on top and set out for weeks of tent camping and PB&J sandwiches. 

Rich and I road tripped for our honeymoon (so fun), but last year we took our first long (7,877 miles) road trip as a family. 

We packed up our 6 kids (no dog) in the Suburban and tent camped all around the USA. We had such a great time exploring National Parks and visiting family and friends that we were not ready to come home after our 5 week trip, we could've gone a few weeks longer!

*    *    *

Needless to say, we have been excitedly anticipating this year's trip! This year we are traveling in an RV (which is awesome); some of our boys think it is "cheating", but it definitely makes the traveling part much easier. The gas is $1.00/gallon cheaper this year and the RV only gets 2 miles per gallon less then the Suburban, so we are projecting similar gas expenses as last year. 

(We were totally blessed to find an RV that was right in our price range, 

but worth more than double what we paid)

It is *tradition* (since we did it last year) to visit a Bass Pro Shop in the first leg of our trip. So we stopped at one in Tallahassee last night.

(Seriously, the way they are both holding there shirts because they are slightly embarrassed...ah, sooo cute!)

I found a cowboy hat for Wilson at a thrift store last week and he has been talking about being a cowboy, so Rich told him he'd buy him a gun when we went on our trip. Needless to say, he was very excited to pick out a gun at Bass Pro!

(Daddy & Cowboy Wilson)

One of the best things about having an RV is that we no longer have to smuggle 6 kids into a hotel room when traveling one of the camp-less stretches of the trip. Last night we boondocked at a Walmart in Pensacola (which basically means we called the manager and asked if we could park there overnight).  We just parked, pulled down the shades, turned the A/C on and we all slept great in our own beds. Best part is it only cost $9 in gas to run the generator all night. A much better experience then unloading sleeping children, bags, pillows, more sleeping children and anything else that we may need late at night and dragging them into a hotel room that only has 2 beds and spending $75-$100.

(Eating breakfast in the Walmart parking lot.)

(This is what boondocking looks like. Not very exciting, but when all you need to do is sleep, it works out great.)

(Marking our progress and mapping out the next leg of the trip)

We realize what a wonderful experience we have been given and thank God for Rich's job and all the hard work he puts in and for the many other blessings from the Lord that allow us the opportunity to spend time with eachother like this. 

Stay tuned as we continue our journey...

♥ rebecca