Core Truths

For the past several months we have been sharing bits and pieces of our journey, but I can’t help but feel like the collective stories are incomplete. It may appear that we vacationed to the mountains, fell in love with the mountains, then moved to the mountains. End of story. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. To be honest, I believe this story began nearly ten years ago, long before we ever took the trip that seemed to have started it all. And there are many lessons we have learned along the way. Place Time Over Money Nine years ago Brandon and I began the shift in how we wanted to live our lives. We wanted to focus on having more time, even if that meant having less money. This led to me being able to resign from my career and begin staying home with our kids. At the end of that year, Brandon also made a drastic career move, leaving the path he had been on for the previous 14 years and ultimately changing his trajectory, and even his retirement plan (gasp). We had a tug o...

TAKE VACATIONS!! You can always earn more money, but you can never earn back the time. This week, as we’re on our twentieth vacation in 20 years, we’re reminded how invaluable this time is. Sure enough, we’ve made more than our fair share of bad decisions in life…racking up crippling student loan debt, financing new cars, being house poor, and allowing ourselves to be defined by our careers. But one thing we feel we got right from the very beginning was taking family vacations. No matter the circumstances, we’ve always managed to take an annual summer trip. As classroom teachers, and young parents who hadn’t quite figured out the concept of proper budgeting, it didn’t matter if it meant me working Saturday school or Opal teaching summer school to earn the extra money, we always prioritized taking a family summer vacation. Even in the days of getting a Ph.D., I would write papers in the middle of the night and complete doctoral coursework while our young kids took afternoon naps…all fro...