The Rusty Bucket Family

Stupid title for a blog, I know. Ashley wanted to name our blog something more reasonable like AndersonFamilyAdventure2019, but I wanted something that was easy to remember and had a ring to it, just in case we get a million followers and this becomes our full time job, haha (although I do have a glimmer of hope).

Ashley suggested we make a post about what we are doing and why. Pretty reasonable suggestion, so here goes.

In 2018, my business partner and I sold our veterinary practice, which was something bittersweet I think for both me and him. It was a great practice and we got along well, but selling the practice opened the door to a different chapter in life for my partner–one he was ready to move on to. In any case, it changed what the future looked like for my career a little. I was still very committed to the practice I had owned a part of, but wasn’t married to it in the same way.

Ashley and I have always regretted that we hadn’t traveled more, both when we were single and after we had gotten married but before we had kids. Our kids are still young, but our oldest is getting to the phase in life where maintaining close friendships is becoming more important, and school, although still elementary school, is becoming a little more rigorous.

After a lot of thought and deliberation, we decided now was our chance to travel. If we waited even one or two more years, things would only get harder. It wasn’t really the right time for me to leave the practice I was working at, but it was the right time for our family.

So I quit my job, we rented out our house for a year, got our kids set up for an online home school program with their school district, farmed our pets out to various family members (tears were shed), we each packed a carry on bag, and bought plane tickets to Europe. By the way, the process of getting that all done takes MONTHS.

Our goal is to travel for a full year. Mostly Europe, but also Russia, Morocco, and maybe Georgia. We’re going to keep to a budget, so our travels will involve a lot of buses, trains, and AirBNB.

We are going to try to post a photo and few paragraphs every day so that at the end of all of this, we have a daily journal of sorts. Today, we start our first full day so……..we’ll see how it goes!