We owe you an apology.
Hey guys, Gabby here. I’m sure you’ve noticed that we’ve been quiet for several months now, six to be exact. We want to take a second to apologize. The last thing we wanted was for our readers/followers to feel like they’ve been abandoned. So let us explain the reasons behind the hiatus.
1. We had to do what’s best for our kids.
Our children will always be our first priority. As most of you know, our soon to be 8-year-old, Isaac, has autism. He also has a couple of learning disabilities that make it difficult for him to understand language and reading.
We made the decision to send him back to school for now so that he can benefit from the services that they offer him at no cost to us. This includes speech therapy, behavioral therapy, and an education assistant that helps him stay focused throughout the day. There are certain things that we are not trained to do as parents of a child with special needs.
Furthermore, for the time being, we’ve decided that this is the best decision we could make for Isaac. The school he was in for first grade last year was an absolute nightmare. That being said, it was very important to us to have him in a better school this year.
The school he was in for kindergarten two years ago was absolutely incredible and he had made so much progress there. We decided that the best thing for him would be to go back to that particular school.
2. We moved into another house.
In one of our YouTube videos, we’ve mentioned that we were tired of paying outrageous amounts of money to live in a house with so much unused space. Ironically, we are now living in yet another fairly large house. When we decided to have Isaac go back to school, we knew exactly which school we wanted him to go to.
However, they did not have any spots available for open enrollment, so in order for him to attend we had to move into the district. Further, when we began looking for a place to live, there were no homes available in this district.
After waiting for several months one finally became available. It was a three bedroom and a little more expensive than the house we originally moved out of, but we did what we felt was necessary for now.
3. We needed to figure out our finances.
If you follow our YouTube channel, we mentioned about a year ago that Ben had been laid off from his job. We were receiving unemployment for a while but eventually that came to an end and we both needed to go back to work.
As life goes, we have a lot of expenses that need to be paid. This includes our beloved bus conversion project and the house that we’ve recently moved into.
4. Ben got a new job.
While Ben was unemployed, we found out that he was qualified to take a course to get his class A CDL which would be paid for by the South Dakota Department of Labor. It lasted 30 days and he passed with flying colors. Shortly after completing this course he began a job working as an over-the-road truck driver. He was gone for a week at a time and it became exhausting and emotionally stressful for both of us.
We ended up deciding it would be best for our family if he worked locally rather than driving long distances from home. Fortunately, the company he works for has been very good to us in the sense of finding him work to do locally.
5. Gabby is growing her business.
Before the whole bus project began, my focus was on starting a photography business. I had just upgraded my camera and lenses and had started getting a steady flow of clients. I was also very focused on getting through school.
After announcing our original plan, that we were going to be moving to Missouri, the photography work slowly fizzled out. My goal this year is to regain the momentum I had now that we are staying put for a while. I’ve been pouring my heart into learning as much as I can about building my own business and working toward growing in that direction.
I’ve also picked up a part-time job delivering pizzas, which surprisingly pays better than most graphic design jobs, the field that I attended school for. I average about $30/hour after my hourly wage, tips, and mileage reimbursement so it’s hard to complain about that. In addition, I basically get paid to drive around and listen to educational podcasts that keep me motivated to grow in all other areas of my life.
So what’s happening with the bus?
This is the most exciting part of the update. The bus project IS NOT OVER. In fact, when we moved into our new house, we moved the bus back to our wonderful friends’ Tommy and Cherith’s house! It has been a long, cold, and snowy winter here in South Dakota, but we are excited to say that as soon as it begins to warm up we are going to get back to work! We are excited to get back to making videos again and working on the bus.
It is still our goal eventually to move into the bus full-time. We still have plans of traveling with our family and doing all of the same things we’ve previously talked about. The important lesson to be learned here is that sometimes life happens. And that’s okay. Sometimes big projects take much longer than expected, and that’s okay too. But we are not giving up. We are getting more and more excited to keep this fire alive every day.
We also wanted to say thank you for all of the kind words of encouragement and for sticking with us through this whole process. We love all of you and can’t wait to keep moving toward our journey to bus life! If you follow our video series on YouTube or Facebook, we’ll see you there again soon!
