Leaving Bend

Before we continue any further, we want to say thank you to our friends Nick and Jen George who allowed us to stay at their vacation condo for the days we were houseless. In addition, they are letting us use half of their two car garage to store some of our stuff. We can't express enough gratitude to those two. Hopefully they will visit us in South America. We should also say thank you to Andrew (our housemate for the week at Jen/Nick's) who states he sleeps like a log and never heard any peeps from Payton in the middle of the night. We appreciate his patience and great attitude. Last Wednesday, we loaded the Sequoia to its limits. I don't think we could of fit anything else in the truck if we tried. See accompanying photo. Payton was a trooper. We had her surrounded by her stuffed animals and books, and she never once complained about it. I guess she's not claustrophobic. The drive was long, uneventful, but beautiful. We had a bitter sweet moment leaving Oregon and entering California. We now feel that we are officially on vacation and one step closer to embarking on our adventure. We will truly miss all of our friends in Oregon!

How it started

Have you ever had one of those days, weeks, months or years where you just wanted to sells all of your belongings and leave the states behind you? Well, my wife and 2 year old daughter did just that. As of 5:00pm 12/7/07, we sold it all (of course we kept a few belongings for ourselves) in Bend,Oregon. Now we are moving to South America for 1-2 years. A lot of you who live in Bend, Oregon or know of Bend, would probably ask "why?" There are numerous reasons, but mainly my wife and I decided that we wanted to take a break from the monotonous day-to-day tasks of work and all of it's burracacy and soap opera antics and actually spend quality time with our daughter. First of all, WE ARE NOT RICH AND OUR PARENTS/FAMILY are not supporting us with any financial backing. Getting any type of emotional support was hard enough. We truly are on a limited budget (in American standards) and will be living frugally.

How did this pipe dream become a reality? Well, let's just say that I am a dreamer. My wife will be the first to admit that I usually have 10 different things going on in my head, from new inventions and political views to various new adventures. Roughly 8 months ago I asked my wife if she wanted to take a year off from work and spend time with our daughter and travel . Surprisingly enough, she said yes. Truly when I approached Jen, she probably thought it was just another verbalized dream that I would never follow up on. After a lot of conversations and serious discussions with each other, we both came up with Argentina. It was a difficult decision, but ultimately I think Argentina and it's surrounding countries will provide us with an amazing cultural experience and adventure. You would think that after being together since 1996, and married since 2000 we would know each other well enough to come up with a country without any issues. WRONG! Don't get me wrong, I truly believe I know my wife very well, and she knows me. But I don't know if you truly know someone until you've jumped over a few hurdles together...