The BIG Announcement | Zimmerman Family Airstream!
When Brian and I were dating, we always dreamed about travel.
We had a list a mile long of all the places we wanted to see together. Ever since then, I’ve always said that I work to travel. Growing up in small-town Arkansas, where people tend to stay put for generations, I knew there was a lot of world out there that I wanted to see.
The more we talked about it, the more practical our dreaming got. We decided we needed to do as much international travel as possible before we had kids. Not that you can’t travel overseas with kids. You can, and we have, but it just gets more difficult with passports, airfare, hotel accommodations… every expense is multiplied!
We were married for eight years before we had Stella, and we traveled to fourteen different countries. We were so happy seeing the world together, whether we were backpacking through Prague or taking our yearly trip to NYC.
We knew when we had kids, we wanted to focus on traveling through the U.S.; we had so many places we wanted to see, some right on our own backyard!! Even then, when we were dating, we dreamed of renting an RV for the summer and packing up the family so we could go check some adventures off our list.
After a few years of being so focused on keeping babies and a business alive that I didn’t have time to shower, let alone dream about travel, the idea of taking a summer to travel the U.S. started to creep into my mind again. (If you want to read about those early days of business and babies, check out my book, Sleeping with a Stranger.)
Living in an RV and traveling for a summer started to make its way onto my vision board and my goals lists, especially after my work started to look more like full-time education, not summers filled with weddings. If you know anything about my course, Know Your Numbers, you know that with my annual planning system, if something is on your yearly vision board, it’s as good as done.
In June 2019, for the first time, we went to an Airstream dealership and looked at travel trailers. I started researching, figuring out what it would take logistically to travel in an airstream. How families live in such close quarters. What people do with their houses and their things while they’re gone.
Six months after that initial glance at an Airstream, we went back in January 2020, and we took another look.
By then, I was convinced. This is what I wanted. And I didn’t want to just go for a summer, I wanted to travel in an Airstream with my husband and daughter and twin sons for one whole year.
Now, I don’t get overwhelmed easily. When I researched how to logistically arrange the inside of an Airstream to fit five people, I didn’t get overwhelmed. When I looked up how to buy a truck, sell our van, sell our house, and basically get rid of or store every earthly thing we owned, I didn’t get overwhelmed.
But the idea of schooling our three kids ourselves? That made me feel overwhelmed.
It was the one thing neither Brian or I felt like we were qualified to do, or even wanted to do.
Enter April 2020.
Covid-19.
Overnight, basically, we found ourselves homeschooling our children. And we realized we weren’t having to, like, teach geometry. We were equipped to handle early elementary!
That sealed the deal for us. That’s when we knew it was time.
Everything started coming together. We found the Airstream that would best suit our family. Everyone would have their own space. Stella would have her own bed, and the boys could share. They shared a womb— they could share a bed.
The kids still want to be around us all the time, and we know that won’t last. Soon, they’ll be teenagers and the idea of living in a Pringle can with wheels won’t seem so appealing.
We knew this was our window.
So in May, 2020, we decided we were really doing it.
We started the process of selling our stuff, buying our Airstream, and getting ready for adventurous life on the road, together.
Now, it’s November, 2020. When this is published, we’ll be on our way to our first adventure. And I can’t wait to share it with you.