“Enjoy the time with your kids while you can!  It all goes so fast!”  For those of you with young kids, you know that comment all too well.  Whenever we heard it, we felt guilty.  You see like many other dual career couples, our kids (Zoe, 5 and Alex, 3) spent the majority of their waking hours in other’s care.  Parental outsourcing – a necessity to support 2 corporate, global careers.

A year ago Travis and I vacationed in the Rocky Mountains for a long weekend without the kids.  We sat in sun chairs on the slopes with beers in hand contemplating life.  We talked about how short life could be, how our kids are at a prime age to do something a bit out of the ordinary and how even though our lives on paper sound awesome we aren’t feeling awesome.  We thought there has GOT to be more to life than working to live and living in a place where you only get a quarter of the year to enjoy the outdoors.   We talked about our bucket lists – Travis has always wanted to be a ski bum for a season and I’ve always wanted to live on the beach.

Then we started asking the question – “what if?”  What if we both quit our jobs and didn’t work for a year?  What if we eliminated the stuff we had that we were working for – our house, the stuff in it and my car?  What if we could spend a ton time with the kids before they start school?  What if we budget ourselves like hell to be able to financially make this work?  What if we lived our dreams in the process?  Then we said “Why Not?!”

So today is my last day at work – after 14 years with the same company, I am cashing out and walking away with great experience, a load of memories and great friends made along the way.  Travis will follow in a month and our dream will become a reality.  We sold the house and now I am in charge of selling the contents.   We are taking one year off of work with our kids – beach and mountains here we come!  And here come the cliches:  You only live once.  Life’s too short.

As we’ll have nothing but time on our hands, we’ll capture our adventures on this site – dedicated to the loves of our lives, Zoe and Alex.