Lightening Online

To celebrate the fact that our caravan is almost ready to be picked up, I started our new family “travel” blog yesterday.

I’d always planned to set up a blog that the kids could write on during our big trip. The classrooms at school all have internet access and interactive whiteboards and I thought a blog would be a perfect way for them to keep in touch with their peers while we’re away.

As we’ll be away for an entire school term, the kids schooling is a factor we’ve considered as part of our trip. Our first choice will be to keep them enrolled in their current school and work closely with their teachers to cover the essential curriculum and make use of the natural teaching opportunities the trip provides. I have plenty of ideas on things we can do as part of the trip and the blog is one of them.

We have the support of the school Principal and Deputy Principal in theory but will need to get the final okay from the Education Department next year. I can’t see them saying no. Most educational professionals support family travel as a valuable educational experience. In my mind it makes the most sense to be able to work with their teachers to cover the basics in literacy and numeracy that they’ll miss while we’re gone. If for some reason we’re knocked back, we’ll be going anyway.

So, back to the blog. My thinking with the blog is that it combines communication with literacy and information technology skills. We’ll also be doing some digital photography, including editing photographs and uploading them to the blog. I also have some thoughts on some basic small business and financial skills if we can find a sponsor for the blog.

The blog, 3 Kids And A Caravan, will also become our record of our big trip. I still intend to blog the trip here on this blog but this blog is MINE whereas the family blog will be for everyone to post their thoughts and experiences on.

While it’s main intention is the big trip, I thought it would be fun to start from right now, tracking the kids reactions to getting the caravan and our first trip away in it.

Singstar Princess wrote her first blog post last night. It was so cute and she was very excited. She chose the pen name “Shell-Bell” for the blog.

I’ve also got a great picture that Trailer Boy has drawn of the car and caravan which I’m hoping to load a copy of onto the blog. He’ll be known as TJ on the blog.

I’m hoping you’ll have time to go and take a peak and perhaps subscribe via a feedreader or via email (both options are up). There’ll be a few posts go up over the next month or so but things may then be a little sporadic until we go away in the caravan again.

The call came today. Out of the blue and much earlier than expected based on our most recent correspondance.

THE CARAVAN IS HERE!!!!

Just when we’d resigned ourselves to not making it away in time to see snow.

IT’S HERE!!!!

It sort of seems surreal.

It’ll take them a week to get the Annex sorted and some other bits and pieces done.

Then we can pick it up.

I think I had started to believe it was never going to happen.

Because I can’t quite get this to sink in.

Perhaps it’ll seem more real when I can actually see it. And we drive away with it behind us. Or perhaps when we actually SLEEP in it.

Guess I’d best get on and start planning our inaugural trip.

Our caravan is soon to hit the production line!!!! How excitement.

We ordered it back in March but to be honest it all still feels a little bit surreal. I don’t think it will seem fully “real” until we actually pick it up. Although I imagine even then we’ll be pinching ourselves for a while.

The arrival of our caravan will be the first tangible evidence that our dream of taking our children on a 3-month caravanning trip is indeed going to come to fruition.

It is now LESS THAN A YEAR until we leave.

In other words, this time next year we’ll be GONE!

Ooh, now I’m getting excited.

Ever had one of those “far off in the distance dreams” that suddenly becomes a “not so far off in the distance” dream?

This trip was little more than a “pipe dream” that I talked about with Farmboy long before we even had children. Over time it has gained momentum. We met a couple who had actually DONE this with their children. I am SO grateful to this guy (who is also a farmer). His advice to Farmboy was fabulous.

“Don’t wait until you can afford to do it”, he told him. “Decide you’re going to do it and MAKE it happen”.

That was 5 or so years ago and Farmboy has never looked back from that moment. The dream became a “maybe, one day” type dream to a “we ARE going to do this”.

From there we started to look into the logistics of making the trip happen.

One of those logistics was finding a caravan that fitted a family of 5.

Not an easy feat in this day and age of the “grey nomad“. So many of the caravans we looked at were built for only 2 people.

Our search started with second-hand caravans and the very occasional van that was built for more than 2 people seemed to be snapped up so quickly that it was difficult to find much at all. Those we did find were ancient, heavy and looked like monstrosities to tow.

So we started looking new and that was when we came across a couple of brands where the beds opened up at the ends and closed away again for travelling. There are a number on the market now and after much deliberation we settled on the Jayco Expanda.

The only thing the Jayco Expanda DIDN’T have was a solid roof over the expanded beds (as shown in the image above).

We liked everything else about it though. The fibreglass exterior (rather than aluminium), the way it felt so spacious inside (compared with similar models in other ranges), the fact that it’s mostly Australian made with Australian materials. As an added bonus, it was also cheaper.

So we settled on a canvas roof. Not a huge deal given we’re used to travelling with our camper trailer which is all canvas (see image below).

* image courtesy of www.expresstoolsandcamping.com.au/cavali5.jpg

That’s not actually ours but it’s pretty similar to what we have.

My biggest thing was I wanted a kitchen and cupboards for such a long trip. Camping style is fine for a few days or even weeks but not for 3 months!

Anyway, just after we ordered our caravan, we had a phone call from the company saying they’d developed a hard top model and would we like to upgrade.

It meant parting with a few extra thousand dollars (which we hope to recoup down the track when we sell) and having to wait a little longer for our caravan to be built.

But it also meant a tick in ALL the boxes. We didn’t have to “settle” after all. Awesome! (as my 4 year old would say)

And so the waiting game began.

They couldn’t give us a date (other than approximate) because they had to build all the older models first.

Our original delivery date was expected to be around now.

Our new estimated delivery date (as of today) is sometime in September.

I just hope it’s ready before the snow season finishes.

Because we were planning our first trip in it to include taking the kids to see snow (not staying at the snow but within a day trips distance).

In some ways it’s finally feeling more REAL.

We’re getting a caravan. WOOT!!! They’re about to start building OUR caravan. Ours! Just for us!

Well, ours unless we run out of money and have to sell it.