The Countdown is On… Baby Stock ETA: 2-3 weeks!!

In typical fashion, we wrapped up our last contract in Tacoma, Washington on Friday July 28^th at 2:30pm and by 6pm we were out of our apartment and on the road!

To say we were ready to head home is an understatement – for as much fun as we had in the Pacific Northwest, the tug of the desert and our Southwest Mountain town home has a strong pull! We spent the next 4 days completing an epic 1,400 mile road trip with Steve’s parents (you can read about it HERE) through Montana, Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park and finally made our way back to our home base: Durango, CO.

The road trip was a great way to kick off the next 9 week break from travel contract work, that we have been planning and saving for over the last 9 months… Now we just get to enjoy some time together as we wait for Baby Girl Stockhausen to make her arrival in the next 2-3 weeks!!

Looking back

The opportunity that travel therapy has provided us during this monumental time in our lives is pretty astounding when we look back on how it has played out over the last few years. 

When we got engaged 5 years ago, we started with a small house mortgage worth in combined student loans and felt like we would never be able to afford a home or kids. 

Now we have paid down all our grad school loans, saved a full down-payment for whenever we decide to purchase a home, and have self-financed a 9 week maternity/paternity leave – not to mention retirement savings on the books and a whole heck of a lot of travel adventures and fun in between!

We feel extremely thankful for the decision we made to get out of our comfort zone and get the travel ball rolling just 4 years ago!

Current Plans

Life doesn’t get better than spending 6-7 weeks off work in your favorite mountain town, and we plan to live it up! *

First Things First

We purposely didn’t register for or purchase any baby gear while we were in Tacoma – the headache of storing it and then transporting it was more than we thought would be enjoyable.

So now we are busy prepping for and purchasing the bare minimum of baby equipment to get us started with a newborn!  Thank goodness for tons of experienced friends and family offering advice and support at this time. It’s saved me the headache of reading stacks of baby books!

Our motto of “fast and light” applies with baby gear as well as adventure gear, and we plan to stick to only the bare essentials for clothes, gear, and necessities. Be sure to check back as we will be updating our readers on what made the cut for “bare essentials” for baby Stock. And thank goodness for Amazon Prime for anything that we miss!

Reunite with Friends

There’s no question, we have been blessed with some of the greatest friends on earth – both on the road, and an amazing community here in Durango.  We feel spoiled that we can come back into town and immediately be able to pick up friendships with some true quality friends who are all here raising kids and open with advice and an outpouring of love and support for Steve and I and baby Stock. We’ve already been able to connect with a few and look forward to spending more time here with each of them!

Summertime in the Mountains

Living in Tacoma, a trip to the mountains was at least a full day event – plan for a 1-2 hr drive each way, just to find elbow space on the crowded PNW trails – and don’t even try to let your dog off leash without a scowl from the owner of a leash aggressive dog that our girls are trying to befriend.  Needless to say, it’s been great to be back home where a plethora of empty trails are waiting for the pups to freely enjoy! While trail running is currently no longer a possibility for me, luckily we can all still hike and Steve will get to enjoy some epic mountain biking and trail running with the dogs! We’ve already been able to hike our favorite trail in Horse Gulch – the trailhead is only 5 blocks from our house, we’re in heaven!

Top it off with the chance to join our friends for a camping trip this weekend in the mountains? It’s a double win that we can’t pass up on ☺ 

Maximize Opportunity

On top of the fact that we have a hard time saying “no”, we have also learned to always take advantage of opportunities that present. Ever since we lived and worked here permanently, we have both been on call for a staffing agency that staffs a local group of Skilled Nursing Facilities in Durango and 3 of the nearest towns. 

With 7 weeks here and little more to do than play and wait for the baby, we thought it would be a good idea for Steve to jump on this opportunity to gain some experience in a SNF – We’ve been in town for 2 days and he’s already worked his first shift!

Ultimately, this will broaden Steve’s PT experience and open up more opportunities in the future.  Resume builder – check!

Here’s to the Future!

I don’t think either of us can keep track of how many times we’ve heard phrases like “Oh, it’s so great you travel now while you don’t have kids, or “Get it out of your system now while you can”, and the most recent “Where are you going to settle down now that you have a kid on the way?”

Well, sorry to disappoint, but we plan to KEEP TRAVELING! **

It could just be that our list of pros outweighs the cons, or maybe that we thrive on going against the flow – our love for defying expectations, but we can’t think of a better way to raise our kid than to have her join us in this adventurous traveling lifestyle!

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime”

– Mark Twain

Kids only know what is “normal” because we teach it to them. We’re excited to share the world with this little girl when she makes her arrival. Hopefully she is ready to hit the ground running with wide eyes, lots of patience, and a load of curiosity!

The unknown always leads to more adventure than the known, and we can’t wait to figure it out! 

*For those doing the math, our last 2-3 weeks will be spent checking out ZDogg MD at  Trav Con in Vegas and prepping for our first assignment post-baby.

**Special shout out to my rockstar Aunt Nadine and Uncle Jay Magee who have always encouraged us to keep traveling once we decided to have kids!

 

Written by: Ellen Stockhausen