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“Hey honey. I have a crazy idea.”
“What now? Do I even want to know?”
“Let’s take a family gap year and travel around the world before the kids leave home.”
“Ummm…..”
Leaving my husband speechless
In 2018, when I first concocted the dream of a family gap year, the idea, while it seemed quite a harebrained idea, sparked an interest and obvious concern in my husband. We’ve been together since we were 17, so my outlandish ideas are nothing new. They don’t usually leave him speechless.
This one did.
I’m not sure if he was speechless because he didn’t want to shatter my dream immediately or if he was more afraid that I’d already created an entire scheme to make it a reality (something I’ve definitely been known to do!)
I told him about families I’d heard of doing this (of course there’s the internet families that may or may not exaggerate their lifestyles.) I did know of a few real life families - at least by proxy as friends of friends – who lived out the dream of a family gap year and loved it.
He's always the practical one
Once he realized this wasn’t a fleeting idea, he did what he always does – he became the voice of reason with pertinent (but kind of annoying) questions like “How exactly are we going to pay for this?” “Where will we go?” “What about my work?” “What about the dogs?”
So much practicality!!!
I let the dream percolate in his mind for a while; introduced the idea to the kids (who were less than amused by it); and dragged the whole family to an RV show and used my best salesperson skills to convince them that the four of us living full time in an RV and traveling all around the US would be a dream come true.
The kids didn’t think there was a chance in hell that we’d ever take a family gap year (nor were they too eager for it to happen.) However, had I said we were moving to a foreign country for a while, they would haved asked, “when do we leave?” (The poor children felt neglected on the travel front because they had never been to Europe, and when I was their age, I got to live in Germany. Minor technicality that they ignored - I was an Army brat and moving to Europe with the Army was much more doable than just up and moving to Europe otherwise.)
The odds were in my favor
While we couldn’t move to Europe, my family gap year dream didn’t come completely out of left field and wouldn’t be totally unusual for our family.
My husband likes to travel (almost) as much as me
Our kids have been traveling since they were six weeks old and are great travelers
We have always emphasized experiences over material objects
Did I mention I’m super persistent once I get one of my crazy ideas???? I generally can find a way to make them happen, even if the final product looks different from the original fantasy.
I also had death on my side.
In the summer of 2018, my dad died of a massive heart attack. I have always lived grateful for every day and knowing that life is short and you have to enjoy it while you can. My dad’s unexpected death led to many conversations about what we wanted out of life and what we wanted our lives to look like. Slowing down, traveling the world, and not being stuck in the constant rat race came to the forefront.
I finally wore my husband down and not only did he get on board, but he actually got excited about the concept of a family gap year. I proposed starting our grand adventure the next year. The oldest would be a freshman in high school and the youngest would be entering 5th grade.
Hubby noted all the reasons why we wouldn’t be able to drop everything and travel the world the very next year. I bet you can guess the number one reason since it seems to be the biggest dream crusher of adulting….
He had just gone out on his own and was building up his engineering business and we had some debt and a house and all those other pesky money things to think about. Why doesn’t money just grow on trees???
Timing is everything (and patience isn't my best strength)
We were going to do a family gap year. But, not that next year. So when?
It would be another four years before we had an opportune time, because I wasn’t going to take my oldest away after starting high school. (Our kids are exactly four years apart in school, so getting through high school for the oldest also meant getting through middle school for the youngest and having her just miss freshman year of high school instead of starting at a new school, leaving for a year, and then coming back to that school – no need to make high school even more awkward than it already is!)
In retrospect, timing worked out for the best because had we just jumped on my dream, we would have been on our family gap year during the 2019-2020 school year, and we all know that the world went topsy turvy in March, 2020!
After we rebounded from COVID, and the slow down in business and life, we jumped right back into the crazy world. And the busier we got, the more convinced I got that we needed a family gap year.
And then, junior year of high school came for the oldest and we started touring colleges far away from where we lived. For the first time, the reality that our daughter would soon spread her wings and go out on her own smacked us in the face. My husband looked at me and said, “how do we get more time with her??”
Viola!!! Signed, sealed, and delivered. We would get a family gap year right after she graduated from high school.
Now that the husband saw the gap year as a chance to extend our oldest’s childhood, and the children realized the prospect of the gap year wasn’t going away, I got to planning (one of my all time favorite things to do!) Logistics started to come together to make it happen.
Oldest daughter would apply to colleges and then take a deferred enrollment to her preferred school; giving her a year off of school.
The younger daughter would do a year of online school (thank you COVID for the only good thing of showing us that school can be done online.)
Money, money, money must be funny
(Bonus points if you just broke out into song!)
And then, that damn pesky adult fun blockade showed up again: money.
Money was still a concern as we were determined that we would not go into debt for our year of travel (and we would have all of our current debt paid off before we would start.)
Short of winning the lotto, we had one big ticket option that would set us up in a wonderful financial situation. We knew regardless of whether we took a family gap year or not, we would be leaving Florida right after the oldest graduated high school.
Five years earlier, we had built what was at the time our dream home. The market in our area was ridiculously hot…houses were getting into bidding wars and selling in less than 48 hours.
Me, being completely unattached to physical structures (the idea of a forever home is absurd to my Army brat brain), came up with another brilliant idea.“Why don’t we sell the house now while the market is so hot? We have no idea what it will be like next year when we are ready to leave Florida. We can pay off all the debt, put money into savings., and I’m sure we can find something decent to rent for a year.”
I knew hubby would be totally skeptical of this plan. I came prepared. I’d been researching how much houses in our area had been selling for, and I’d already reached out to a realtor friend about the potential value of our house. (Side note — if you don’t know your spouse really well and don’t have a solid marriage, I wouldn’t suggest dropping such a nuclear decision on your spouse out of the blue!!) Feeling a bit put on the spot, hubby was skeptical…until my realtor friend told us how much we could list the house for. Once he saw that number, he was 1000% on board.
We listed the house and sure enough we had 10 offers in 36 hours. We took an offer and had 30 days to get out of the house. Who cares that I hadn’t already lined up a new place to live???? I wasn’t worried; I knew something would work out. (One friend offered to let us camp in her living room. Another had a visible physical reaction of disapproval to our irresponsibility.)
And so, the dream can become a reality
Just like that (after several years of setting the plan into motion) the ground was laid and it was time to get serious in deciding what our family gap year would really look like.
Make sure to read Part 2 and Part 3 of The Evolution and Realization of our Family Gap Year (aka our Year of Adventures) to see how it has all progressed from this whimsical idea I had back in 2018!
Jenny Zachry, Family Adventure Maven. Thrust into a life of travel at 10 as an Army brat who left the only place she'd ever known (Utah), and moved to West Germany. 35+ years, 18 countries, and 46 US states later, Jenny. loves adventure even though she frequently has to coax her inner Cowardly Lion to be more adventurous. Mom of two wicked smart teen daughters. Currently traveling the US with her family on a modified family gap year. Zealous about inspiring families with tweens, teens, and college kids to go out and chase adventure around the corner and across the globe.