Our last moving update was rather philosophical. Damien shared how we are rethinking everything in terms of the expected standard lifestyle for a family in our society. In deciding to follow our dreams and make this move we are having to evaluate all our previous assumptions, because let's face it - this move isn't going to be easy and if we want to reach some of our dreams we are going to have to make sacrifices.

The only way to get to the point of willingly and joyfully making those hard choices is to hold up everything we know and have and weigh it against everything we dream for and desire.

But this post seems to be treading down a philosophical path and that is not my intent. I want to tell where we are at in terms of the details of this move. Damien is definitely the big picture visionary in our family, whereas my mind works on the specifics. I like planning, discussing and living out the day-to-day to best reach our long term goals. So I'm here to share the nitty gritty of this life changing move.

Moving Timeline

• Year 2010 - spending & saving, simplifying, dreams & plans
• Winter 2011 - give 6 month notice at work, list our house
• Spring 2011 - sell our house and ramp up the employment launch
• Summer 2011 - move to Gaspé

As for selling our house, we are believing for this to happen and plan to "price to sell". The housing market in Maine never reached the ridiculous heights of other places and it didn't crash. We live in a desirable area, have a nice home (we've done a ton of upgrades since buying it and will do more before next winter) and have a rented suite. We anticipate all those things will make it more attractive for a buyer.

There's a lot of transition period between these stages and this is just a rough outline to give shape to our dreams. The basics are that we need to earn enough to eat and have a roof over our heads. God willing, we will manage that through all this change.

Plans for This Year

1. Saving & Spending

One of our life goals is to live without debt. To be beholden to no one. Debt feels to us like bondage. It's something that must be paid regardless of life circumstance - a job loss, a six month backpacking trip, a desire to give money to friends in need.

The only debt we have now is a mortgage and yes it helps us own a home and helps us with an investment but we don't really own anything till we've paid every last penny of that interest. Which is in oh... 25 years from now. As we see it (and keep in mind we are very idealist and some might say naive) having a mortgage is just one thing that is keeping us from reaching our goals to live more simply and to explore and adventure.

Can we live without a mortgage? That remains to be seen. And we are not so die hard on this idea that we will live in a shack; we have certain standards. But our intent is to lower our housing costs, significantly if possible.

As for the actual moving, we plan to do that debt-free. And since no company is paying for our move this time around (as they did 10 years ago when we moved from Alberta, Canada to New Jersey, USA) we are going to foot the bill ourselves. So, we save.

And then we spend. Specifically, we recently replaced our vehicle. Our '93 Honda, was too old to import into Canada and was not going to pass inspection this fall without $$ repairs and we didn't want to make that investment on a vehicle we could not move with us.

So we decided to use the first part of our moving savings to buy a "new" car. We now own a 1999 Toyota RAV4 that will get us into Canada, was paid for with cash, has the same gas mileage as our car, will drive easily on bumpy mountain roads and fits all our bums in the seats.

Now we're back to saving for the moving expenses and the transition period. We are looking at each item in our budget and figuring out how to cut costs. At the same time we need to spend money to continue fixing our house, filling our bellies with quality food, equipping our family for adventures planned this summer (more backpacking), meeting emergencies expenses and what not. We walk a bit of tight rope.

Save to meet our goals. Spend to meet our goals. Overall though we need to save.

2. Simplifying

We don't know for sure what kind of home we will buy, build or scavenge to live in but regardless we plan to downsize. Living with less stuff is one of the only sure ways we know to need less house. Because less house means less payment and less maintenance. Freeing our time and resources for what we value - simple family living and experiencing the outdoors together.

So we're doing what we can by evaluating everything we own and deciding if we really need it. It's serious spring cleaning. We've gone through the first round and have boxes and boxes of stuff. Part of this was purging the kids' rooms which we did this winter.

This month we will have our first ever yard sale and we've set up an on-line garage sale with high quality items that might appeal to our blog readers.

We are also making changes in our everyday living to prepare ourselves for less space and to just live more simply. Small things that are actually making big changes. Like storing all our extra dishes (to figure out what we really need before we give/sell them all) and hand washing instead of using our dishwasher. I couldn't believe how much this saved us in our electricity bill! Extra money for moving from a budget category I thought was fairly fixed. We anticipate having a smaller kitchen and would like to live with less appliances so we thought why not start now.

That's just one example and if you came to visit you'd see we still live fairly high off the (farm raised) hog. Every time we simplify we realize there's still more work to be done in that area.

3. Dreams & Plans

Our initial motivation in making this move was to gain our citizenship/residency freedom back, as we detailed in we have a dream. But since we're making a big change we figure it's a good time to think about everything else we want to change in our lives. As we've mentioned before, everything's up for re-evaluation.

Besides the actual move (ie: selling our home, packing and moving our belongings) there are three main components to this adventure:

• Community

  Where do we want to live in the Gaspé penisula? We choose this region of Canada primarly for the mountains and proximity to Renee's parents on the east coast. Thankfully when we went to visit over Christmas break we actually liked the feel of the place also; evidence of farms and local food and interesting culture. We're settled on a general area and a few communities we want to investigate further. So we are taking a camping trip to the area this June to do just that. We will be meeting with people (connections made through our first trip and couch surfing), looking at land and pricing houses.

• Employment

  Finding a nice community, close to mountains and farms, is all fine and dandy but we also have to support ourselves. Our plan is to have home-based work. Initially we will rely on Damien's skill and experience as a computer programmer/analyst to support our family as we move in other directions of livelihood - writing, photography, mountain guiding - who knows. We are moving to have the freedom to explore alternative work (remember we can't do so right now in the US) and we plan to grow into this. Damien will be creating a professional website this summer to highlight what he does and will start to make employment connections later this year and into next.

• Housing

  This cost is our biggest monthly expense and we are seriously considering ways we can to reduce this. To live debt-free is our overall long term goal. Do we know what this will look like, in terms of an actual home? Nope. But I will say we are seriously considering a yurt. I am still trying to wrap my brain around this and I admit to getting lost in the details - land, permits, size, location - all such unknowns. I'm used to city dwelling on a small parcel of land but we really want to give our children more space to roam, yet have less house to pay for and maintain.

That's where everything stands right now. As I sit down to do my final edit and publish this (I've been writing it for a month now) it feels like we are mostly standing still. We are excited to visit the area again next month and we know we are inching forward - we have a concrete moving plan, Damien is scheming employment options and we're doing our best to save money (if the kids would just stop eating so much!) but the waiting is hard.

In the meantime, we're reading inspiring life stories to keep us motivated. I reviewed a few at FIMBY but will add here that we've also read Yurts: Living in the Round (a good book if you are interested in yurts). And speaking of inspiration for radical family living, be sure to read Checking-in With the Joneses, an interview Damien did with the Jones family who are living and traveling in a converted truck around Europe and Northern Africa.

Bon Voyage.