Big news on the travel front, one-way airline tickets to Quito, Ecuador booked! We officially leave the country on October 2nd. It took about 20 minutes of staring at the computer screen, double and triple checking every spelling (and chewing off a few fingernails) before hitting the ‘Confirm Purchase’ button. Thank you Priceline.com for the ‘Name Your Own Price’ feature which saved us an extra 15% off the lowest published rate we could find and thank you Capital One Travel Rewards for mostly paying for the rest of the tickets.
Big news ‘part two’ finds us with our house officially rented! No more worrying about covering the mortgage while we are away. If only the rent we collect could also pay my student loan we would be home free! As it is, we are more than satisfied to have this major monthly bill accounted for.
This process has also taught us a few home repair skills which have ultimately saved us a ton of money. Who knew repairing and texturizing a wall would take only 20 minutes or so for six patches and probably less than $2.00 in supplies. Bonus tidbit, a little 409, even on a matte wall, goes a long way towards cleaning up the ‘dirty’ spots. Post patch and spray, we haven’t needed to do more than minor touch ups with the paint. This is a far cry from repainting the whole house which we initially anticipated and has saved us quite a bit of cash that we can now funnel back into our trip. To the seasoned and handy homeowner, this may sound ridiculously easy, but to us, it was a monumental step in ‘do it yourself’ home maintenance.
With the major stress of renting the house out of the way, we have now been free to disassemble all of our remaining furniture in preparation for moving into storage. The mass exodus officially took place over the Labor Day holiday and has left us sleeping on an inflatable bed and eating cereal and soup from tupperware bowls. The cats on the other hand have been in cardboard heaven with plenty of empty boxes to play with before the last big cleaning push. With the final countdown to departure underway, our biggest hurdles now are getting all of our health/property insurance arranged and paring down the rest of what will officially go in our packs.
Awww man. Had I known this was going on before this Monday, I would have 1) Been following this blog for much longer, and 2) Made an effort to get up to Vegas and see you guys before you leave. As it is I’m already headed to South Dakota in the middle of the month with my brother Jay (whom you met), and 2) Won’t make it back to Vegas until after you leave. Well, I will say this, you have given me motivation to pursue my big plan. Though I’m still debating on how much to let the world know about it and how much I’ll blog about it.
Hey, Mike! We started the blog “early” just to get it up and going and get some practice administrating it. The idea being we’d need to mess with it a lot less while actually on the road. We’ll see how that works out.
As far as who you tell and choosing to blog about it, of course, is totally up to you. We went through the pros and cons of blogging and obviously decided to do it. Neither of us claim to be good at it. I can’t even guarantee we’ll keep it up to date at this point, but we are going to try. If the blog starts to feel like work, we would start updating it less frequently or stop all together.
Too bad we are missing you, but have fun in S.D. and good luck with your big plan – make it happen! One pro for telling someone else about your plan (goal) is it may make you a little more motivated to actually achieve it.
w00t! I watched the clock tick down its last 23 seconds….
We watched it too! It was better than the last seconds of an ebay bidding war!
I love to see your posts so I hope you will continue this blog during your travels. See you in a couple of weeks.
Shari! We can’t wait to see you in a couple of weeks! We promise to do our best to keep the posts going.
Keeping it regular is going to be the tricky part. 
Love and hugs to the family!
Oh please please ……even if the blog is a little work …..keep it going!
I need to live through your pictures!! lol ….miss u already !!
Colette! I promise we will do our best to keep the site going! I miss you too! Say hello to everyone for me.
Hugs!
So where are the cats?
Hey Kiki, we left the cats with my parents for the duration of our trip. They are affectionately referred to as the grand-cats and we get regular Skype updates on how they’re doing. 😉