Sayla'n Away!

 

Evelyn created a name some time ago for the new baby: Sayla. She originally wanted to name her “Trailer”—that’s just how much she enjoyed camping in our old trailer—but when we objected, she was proud to have found the solution as a name that sounded similar to her first choice. As we’ve transitioned into a Fulltime Trailering Family, we suggested that her creative name for the baby instead be bestowed upon our new home. She was really excited! She said our new trailer could be named “Sayla”, absolutely! And so, we have a name for our new home, and we’ve officially “Set Sayla’n”.

Of course, Evelyn was most excited that now she could name little sister “Fettuccini” instead, but that’s another matter.   

We are nearly two weeks into Sayla being our new home now. It’s been a crazy month of sorting, packing, donating, storing, and organizing. We’ve had as many emotional bumps as physical as we’ve compartmentalized nearly twenty years of living in a home in order to transition into this life. It was not an easy ordeal, and for me at 7-8 months pregnant through the process, helping to make it all happen and keep the waterworks under control had its own challenges.

Our House is Officially in the Rear View Mirror!

 

But here we are. I’m typing this sitting on the couch in the trailer—Sayla. I’m looking out the windows over a field that spills into wetlands and then crawls up into the hills. The sun has not yet risen and the sky is a soft shade of periwinkle spreckled with soft clouds.  Emmy, the sweet pit bull, is snoring in her bed at my feet. Crows are cawing overhead and birds are just beginning their first songs of the day. The baby is kicking the day into gear from within, seemingly as content with the peace and quiet as I am. We have arrived.
 

Home, Sweet Home (for this week!)

 

It’s nice to enjoy the quiet and simplicity now, but the first week out wasn’t nearly as serene. We started our journey by pulling the new trailer away from our newly vacant house on Sunday, July 17. Our destination was Doheny State Beach, the very familiar locale of our annual camping trip with friends and family. We pulled in after dark and Brent did beautifully parking the 42 foot home in a blessedly larger spot for the campground (and our favorite, site 3). Friends and family immediately welcomed us despite the late hour and were excited for the official launch of our new life.

The days that followed were filled with the challenges of settling into a new home—one that needs electricity and water hooked up to function at its best in a place that does not have those things to offer. Brent drove 150 miles in the next couple of days just gathering the parts he needed to get the solar panels up and running enough to keep our residential fridge running on battery power. Then, he spent hours either on the roof or under compartments getting the wiring in place. I sweated and swelled up in the heat, cursing the lack of air circulation in our new trailer, keeping fans running when and where I could to find some comfort in the new home. Evelyn’s dog, Heidi, got sick and christened our new bedroom with two urine stains and three vomit stains. I cursed a lot. Cousins and friends kept Evelyn busy breaking in her new bedroom and play loft, adding a fair amount of healthy chaos to the week, but their presence and role in helping her find pride and comfort in her new home were priceless. The week didn’t start to feel like a vacation until the last two days but we knew all along it was different—this was our new life and home, not just a vacation anymore!

First Camp as a Fulltime Family-- Site 3 at Doheny

 

Some Family Fun at Doheny

Us at Doheny

When we pulled into Prado Regional Park in Chino on Sunday, July 24, it was like a breath of fresh air: open spaces, rolling views, a concrete patio pad, and most importantly HOOK-UPS. With the air conditioning inside breathing new life into us, we turned on “Monsters Inc.” and enjoyed our first down time as a family in our new home. We enjoyed the evening as the city lights of Corona emerged in the darkness, shimmering over the hills and wetlands behind the campground. We were finally getting settled.

Our View, Day One at Prado

 

It’s been 100 degrees this week. I wish that could be different. Despite this, though, we’ve visited the splash pad here twice and have had welcome visitors from cousins to friends to enjoy the time with us. We’ve spent time outside, playing baseball, throwing the ball for Emmy, taking walks, riding bikes, and playing in the small inflatable wading pool we brought as Evelyn’s make-shift bath tub. We’ve taken in sights we wouldn’t have seen in a normal day at home: peacocks, skunks, coyotes in the fields behind us. We’ve seen lots of cows as there are more dairies still here in Chino than I’d imagined. We’ve stopped to look at the old planes at the Chino Airport and are planning a trip to the museum there next week.

We’ve actually visited the house a few times this week removing the last of our belongings. It’s vacant. It feels as familiar as an old friend, though it feels good to have drawn a line and set it off on its new life as we’ve set out on ours. Evelyn has asked when we’ve been there if we can go back to the trailer, making me happy to know she’s making a smooth transition into this new home.

Enjoying Her Bed and Best Friend, Heidi

 

Evelyn's Room, Decorated Herself

 

Enjoying the Play Loft

 

We enjoyed a supportive and love-filled celebration yesterday. Our family and friends held a “Great Adventure Party” for us, helping us celebrate our new home, upcoming travels, and new baby—all a recipe for a great adventure, to be sure! We left with a labeled map of locations recommended to visit, an annual pass to America’s national parks, lots of generous gifts, and most importantly the love and support of the people we are blessed enough to call our closest friends and family.

Of course, the first huge step in this transition has officially been climbed and staked: moving out of our house and into the trailer. We still have the next huge transition on which to focus: having this baby! I’m 36 weeks along yesterday and she’ll be here in four weeks (give or take, of course). We can finally start shopping for the bare necessities we’ll need to accommodate her now that we’re getting the lay of our new land. Maybe we can finally put more thought into what her name will be! That might be nice!

Brent, Me, and Baby at the Adventure Party

 

What is our plan from here? I canceled the week we would have spent again at Doheny this week in favor of extending our stay at Prado, though we did keep the upcoming weekend at the beach. From there, we’ll move on to a two week stay at Jurupa Regional Park, where we’ll be a bit closer to Yucaipa if the baby should arrive early. For the last two weeks in August, we’ll be at Yucaipa Regional Park, which is two miles from the birthing center. We’ll be there during the window she is actually due, so we’ll see if she cooperates with our scheduling. Labor Day weekend has us settling back in at Prado, where we’ll stay through the middle of September. After that, with a 2-3 week old settling in to our family, we’ll hit the road.

Our first leg of the trip for the Fall will take us from Arizona up through Utah, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. Then, we’ll head back south with the destination of Oklahoma in our sights, where we plan to spend some time parked on my dad and step-mom’s ranch through November into December. We’ll set path back to California for Christmas. As winter descends, we’ll plan a new path, either sticking to the west coast or traveling along the south where the weather remains moderate. As for specific destinations, we don’t have many original thoughts!

Would you care to add to our “Bucket List” destination guide? To where should we “Set Sayla’n”??

I Wished to Live Deliberately

Since Brent and I met, he's longed to explore. In our young 20s together, he wanted to backpack from snow resort to the next, working to snowboard and stay in dormitory lodging. Our compromise then was good for both of us: we backpacked Europe and even attempted to make London our home. We had a blast, though living in London didn't pan out when we realized how hard it was to find work. 

When we returned from Europe, we started looking for a house. We found this house on Dorset St. in Rancho Cucamonga and we've been here ever since. That's 18 years here. We've spent our entire adult lives living here and in doing so have loved, lost, cried, partied, laughed, and learned together. We've brought the house from funky to modern and have now raised a daughter and are growing another under its roof.

1998-2016: Dorset St. has seen us through a generation!

This is a lot more than we had planned for our time in this house. As we all know, once we start investing in things, we become bound to them. We start spending money, and making money to spend more money, and working to find vacation time, and then working until we hope we don't have to work anymore one day. We become fastened to our investments and we start looking to upgrade to the next investments. Then we die, right?

We were locked into that version of the American Dream and have been since we bought this house in some way. We've spent the last decade or so looking at hundreds of other homes on the market throughout Rancho Cucamonga and Alta Loma, looking to do what any seeker of the American Dream is looking to do: upgrade. We dreamed of a half acre and eventually a good school district and school zone for our family to mature and probably retire. The travel dreams were forgotten in favor of settling for that once a year vacation and we had molded ourselves into that traditional version of the American Dream. Perhaps it was fate that we never found the right fit and stayed put... in this starter home that would seemingly become our forever home.

Then, I became an activist and a law was passed in California that changed everything. This matter is a whole other entry, but it jolted me into remembering what Brent and I had pushed to the back of our hearts and minds. It reminded me that there is a whole country and life out there and that we would never experience it if we stayed in the pigeon hole we had allowed ourselves to believe was our intended path. Taking an abysmal epiphany about reality and shaping it into a future we could embrace and revel in, we developed our own version of the American Dream.

We started by selling the lot on Red Hill that we had bought in 2003 when we began to dream of building our dream home and dream life. Though we still had a fading vision of the dream home and life there that would never be, we also couldn't wait to get it off our hands. With money in the bank and new sense of freedom after shedding something so significant, we pressed onward. We bought a home on wheels-- a 42' palace of a fifth wheel with not one but two special spaces for Evelyn to sleep and play. It would become our new home. But what of Dorset St.? We put our home of 18 years, the home we know like the back of our hands, on the market. Within a day we had an offer and within a week, we were in escrow. I guess this is really happening.



The New Home

So, what are we doing?

We're pursuing life, knowledge, family. We're seizing the opportunities blessed upon us by my job and the sale of our investments and we're investing in our own small and growing family. We are taking a break from the state we've known and are instead seeking experience. We're removing Brent from the daily grind he settled into and are bringing him into the family, where he can spend quality time with us-- be a husband and father while exploring and sating the wanderlust he has long suppressed.

We're pursuing simplicity (albeit in a luxury home on wheels) and purpose. We're seeking comfort and experiences. We're open to new places, a potential new life, a potential new future.

And it's happening in less than two months.

Escrow closes mid-July. Our first stop, appropriately enough, will be our annual camping trip at Doheny with family and friends. After our seven day stay at the vacation spot we love so much, we will likely be staying local to friends and family, bouncing from Prado to Jurupa to Yucaipa Regional Parks. I'll be plenty huge with Baby #2 by August, and we'll be staying in Yucaipa at that point to be near the birthing center where we will welcome her into the world and our new adventures. While we'll stay local throughout some portion of September, the four of us will be setting off for new adventures before Fall's end.

Though I've always loved Thoreau, and teaching his works and philosophies was a highlight of my year in the high school classroom, I had never thought I'd be taking a step into his world. So, here we go... on our quest to learn what life has to teach... and in the process strengthen our existence as a family and as individuals.