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EATING AN ELEPHANT

Preparing for a trip like this is a lot like eating an elephant, if you think about more than one bite at a time the task seems impossible. In just over two months we have sold our house, prepared to leave our business, bought, serviced and modified a 40′ diesel motorhome, packed for a 6 to 9 month trip, planned a constantly changing 11,000 mile, 42 state itinerary, prepared our home-schooling syllabus for our three oldest children, prepared ourselves physically with dental, orthodontic and doctor appointments, and checked off what seems like a thousand other tasks from our daily To-Do-Lists. I don’t think we had any idea in the beginning that it would take this much work to get going. Now that we are only a week away from departure it still feels like we have a mountain to climb. The good news, however, is that our excitement for this trip has taken our energy levels to an all-time high, and even though some days we feel like we haven’t accomplished anything, we still wake up the next morning with a renewed sense of urgency to tackle to tasks of the day.

LAUNCH DATE – REALITY SETS IN…

Preparing the motorhome for this trip has taken more time than any of us expected. As a result, our launch date has been bumped a number of times, but this week we finally feel like we have a solid date that everyone feels good about. So, without further delay, the day of Friday, November 2nd looks like it will be the big day we pull up anchor here in Orem, Utah and start putting some serious miles under our feet. It really feels good to have a firm date to work towards. Our sense of urgency to get everything ready has really kicked in now and it is starting to feel very real. Even with all of the fun and excitement going on, we are starting to feel the sadness that comes when you leave great friends and neighbors, the people we have shared our lives with for the past 10 1/2 years. We keep inviting everyone to come with us in hopes that someone will take us up on the offer so we don’t have to go cold-turkey but no one has taken us seriously.

FAMILY HISTORY?

We knew we had American roots but we had no idea how deep they really were until after we made the decision to go on this trip. Since early August we have discovered that we have many ancestors who immigrated to america in the early and mid 1600′s including Peter Browne, a direct ancestor who came over in 1620 on the Mayflower. We have learned about Kathy’s connection to Pocahontas and Daniel Boone. We have discovered documents that prove interesting facts about the times and places where our ancestors lived. We feel that we have only scratched the surface of what we are going to discover and we are ready for the adventure of our lives. We are particularly interested in our ancestors who first came to America. We want to know what they left behind, why they came here, what conditions were like when they arrived, and whether or not they found what they were looking for here in America. We are excited to teach our kids about the characteristics and attributes of these amazing people.

By Rob Brown

Follow the Brown family on their adventures at http://www.ancestry.com/adventure