Home Is Where You Park It

Besides being a very classy window display, "Home Is Where You Park It" is also how many many people are choosing to live. One of these is parked down the lane from us and you cannot tell me that that isn't a house! I am pretty sure there are plenty of people in NYC that would be jealous of all that space, and yet it all folds neatly away into a 40 ft trailer that can be pulled to just about anywhere.

After San Diego we leave for Huntington Beach and then on to Sequoia. After that we think we'll hit Napa and San Francisco before heading for CO and the Holiday season. It is a bit surreal when Chris and I sit around talking about it all as it feels like life and also like a "permavaca" as my sister in law calls it.

It is mind blowing that there are so many people living like this. We walk around and we see full patio sets outside of people's rigs. They have lights outlining their "yards" or large river rocks building small walls. Their tags for the park say they will be staying for another month or two and then they pack it all up and head on out.

Now that we are a month in, people are asking how school is going, if we are keeping up with it, and if I think the boys are learning at the same rate that they would in their traditional school. The answer is, I don't know. I know they aren't learning the same things, but are they learning as much, I think so, I hope so.

We start our days by looking at a calendar and a map. On the calendar we talk about the seasons, the days, upcoming travel days and special days. We keep track of the moon cycle and the temperature. The boys write this all down in their own calendars so they each get to think about it. On the map we learn the states we've been in, the states around them, and the main landscapes for each state. They learn the bodies of water, the surrounding countries, and what that means to be a different country or part of the US. From there we move into reading/writing which is sometimes done by me reading a story and then them drawing a picture and writing a sentence (Austin does phonetic writing and Oliver copies my words) and sometimes it's by using readingeggs.com . I like this part of the day, and it is very important, but sometimes it feels like YAY! We got that done! Let's get moving! So far this week we have been able to

-play at some awesome parks,
-hike and talk about deserts vs oceans and where all of our water is,
-ride bikes to feed the ducks and talk about natural prey vs predators,
-swim :)
-play at the beach where we collect hermit crabs, limpets, and study anemones (which we then look up on the computer later and read about)
-check out the sea lions on the rocks and beaches, talk about the girls vs boys and their predators (the food chain seems to be one of our main topics)
and tomorrow we will ride the trolley into town where we will go to some boat museums.

When we started out we were doing much more school at home, but it's hard to sit in the trailer and do paper crafts when there is so much going on around us. It would feel like a lost opportunity to finish this year and talk about all the stuff that was so close to us but we couldn't do because we had to check off the school list and I know they are learning as we do these other activities. Through all of our plans we are talking about it all, looking at maps together and figuring where we want to go or talking about the hours in the day and figuring out how much more time we have. The boys help figure out tips, we talk about the personality traits of the people we meet and the boys have to report what time it is to me. Oliver lists off letters we see (he seems to be much more into reading than Austin which is interesting to me) and Austin corrects my directions as he is much better at orienting ourselves as we walk down the streets together. When I first started looking at home schooling I was scouring the Internet for advice. It is basically shouted at you from all sides (JUST TRUST THE PROCESS!) and now I am finding out what that means. It just works.


It's not always sunshine and Hallmark moments. Chris travels a lot, and that is hard on him that he is not with us living this life and it's hard on this mom who gets a bit edgy come 7pm! We have ants. I have been battling them with Peppermint oil, but I turned up the notch today as they seem to be hanging about in places that have nothing to offer them and that shows me they are just invading for the company and that is so not OK. Financially this has been a bit more that we had been thinking but being parked now for a month seems to help out in that department which is great or we would be headed back for my parent's living room and making ourselves comfortable. We miss our Colorado people. We have some really special relationships back there and it was the hardest thing to leave as we pulled away.

So, one month in and it still feels like I am a spectator in this whole thing. It is interesting to watch how it all unfolds. How the boys are sliding into this life and wonder what it will feel like next year when we are looking at the school system again. I think it has been an easy road for us so far because neither Chris nor I knew what to expect. We had no idea about homeschooling, working from trailer parks, or where we were going. We make up the plans as we go and figure out the days as we go and it all just seems to work out which I figure is a pretty nice way to live these days when "home is where we park it."