Heading out letter

Dear Friends and Family!


It is Saturday afternoon the 15th of August. I am writing you from the green mountains of Vermont where we are now official residents, wear tie dye everyday and flash the peace sign as we drive past folks on the dirt roads. Evan and the boys are making blueberry jam from the buckets of blueberries we picked yesterday and we are listening to an interesting combination of Green Day, Weird Al and the Simpson’s Sing the Blues. I am sorting through lists, freaking out and eating chocolate.


We have had an action packed summer cleaning out our storage facility in Roswell, Georgia, road tripping up the East Coast, playing in Vermont at the Holiday House with a ton of fabulous friends who have helped up keep our sanity and taking care of the details for our Adventure Year! We are registered to vote, have new driver’s licenses, and the home schooling curriculum we put together is all approved by the VT Dept of Education. All our stuff (over 500 boxes from both the UK and Georgia) is in a storage facility in Framingham, Massachusetts. Don’t get me started on the stuff conversation.

We are getting into the RV this Wednesday the 19th of August – 4 days behind schedule. But wait a minute! Whose schedule are we on? We just revised the schedule. Never mind.

Our new home is a 30 foot Winnebago Itasca Impulse. We will be holding a Name the RV Contest on our website with the winner receiving a jar of the previously mentioned home made jam! Right now I keep calling it the Big Pig. Simon calls it Chuck. It clearly needs some help!

If you haven’t checked out our website and all our blogs lately – do so! www.familyadventureyear.com. At this point, the Web site also has a Calendar that is reasonably up-to-date with our itinerary through the end of 2009. We plan to update the 2010 itinerary in October. Evan still has not finished the integration with Flickr (for photo sharing) or the button that lets you see where we’ve been on a map. The Web site also shows where we are at any given point in time (Evan can update it from his Blackberry, but we’re not planning to update it more than once a day).

Our hope is to send out monthly updates to our Google Group email list (you can sign up on the left-hand side of our Web site). If you know someone else who wants to sign up, go to the left side of our Web site and enter the email address and then click the “Subscribe” button. If you're having trouble, send Evan an email at evan@familyadventureyear.com and he'll sign you up for it

Here are some blog highlights:

Homeless No More and RSVP Evan’s blog about the American South and the RV –with photos!

Notes Upon Reentry and 4 New Things Wendy’s Blog about coming back to the US with too many self absorptions.

Bromley Mountain and Turkeys – Simon’s blogs about life as a 7 year old

Penguins, Summer Camp and Poet William Cowper – Josh’s blogs about life as a 12 year old.

Peace, love, admiration, adoration and clean laundry to you all!