If you expand the map and drag it so you are moving South you will clearly see the Wileman homestead where we are currently staying.

I quit my job on January 2. Well, technically I quit at the beginning of December. My last day was January 2. After a wonderful farewell party put on by my staff, a frenzied, final 3 days of packing and cleaning, the move out to where we are now – my parents farm in Russell, MB was complete. If you’d asked me a year ago if we’d be living here, I would have told you that you were crazy. So, how did we get here, you ask?

It was probably a year ago that Richard, my husband, best friend, love of my life (well, you get the idea), came home from work with this announcement: “I think that we should quit our jobs, sell the house and go travel the world for a year”. My outside voice said “Hey honey, that sounds like a great idea!”. My inside voice said “Wow, he’s had a rough day. I wonder what we should have for supper?” As the days wore on, I could see that Richard was mulling over the computer and every now and then would say things like – “Should we do some hiking on our RTW? (Round The World)” or “I think that Australia and New Zealand are definitely on the list”. Meanwhile, I just kept my head down, went to work, came home, walked my dog, saw my friends and basically continued to live my fairly normal, boring, completely uninspired life. Every now and then I would get into the spirit of his musings and say “how much do you think that will cost?” And so, the spring of 2017 carried on in this fashion until I realized that he wasn’t just goofing around. He was actually serious about this thing!!

We were busy planning his youngest daughter’s social (spring) and wedding (fall), planning a trip with friends to Costa Rica for 2018, planning some camping-horse riding trips for the summer, planning suppers, planning when to spend time with family, planning, planning PLANNING!!! Yet, it seemed that we weren’t getting much accomplished. I started to pay more attention to what Richard was saying. Could I actually sell my house? What about my dog? My horse? My job? What would we do for money? Where would we live when we got home? What would our friends and family think? Were we crazy? Could we just drop out of our lives for a year? I started doing some reading and research. Amazingly enough, there are people that are doing this – and not just millennials!! There are people that are our age (25 plus shipping and handling) and older that are travelling and having the time of their life. I mean, you never know what life is going to throw at you. You can keep planning for someday but someday you will be dead and nothing will have been accomplished. So, ever so cautiously, I said “I’m in” and planning took a new turn. When would we go? When would we sell the house? When would we quit working? What are we going to have for lunch?

We started looking at alternative living arrangements – ie. downsize to something – a trailer, an apartment, condo? At the end of August, my  93 year old father fell and broke his hip. Unfortunately, he would not be able to go back to the farm. My mother made arrangements to move to town but that left the farmhouse empty for the winter. How would she keep it heated, what about vandalism, who would feed the birds and the deer? Being the oldest daughter, I came up with the harebrained scheme to move out to the farm and solve all these problems. Just one BIG problem – it is four hours away from our jobs. The commute would be brutal!! So, (you see where this is going, don’t you?), we sold our house, quit our jobs and moved to Russell.