Have Saddle, Will Travel

The Young Family is packing up and moving to the Southwest.

Breaking news: We’re moving!

Yeah, I know, that’s not really news, but the Young family is packing up once again and heading to the Southwest the for the foreseeable future. We have enough contracts to catch wild cows down there to keep my husband busy for the next couple years, and the kids and I decided we’re not letting him leave home without us anymore.

As a family who has lived in 10 houses in the last 10 years, some would say we’ve already been living like nomads, but I keep painting walls, hanging pictures and hoarding fabric scraps like a woman who plans on staying a while. This time, I’m committing to the suitcase and leaving my breakable items in a storage unit. Here’s my plan for our new nomadic lifestyle.

The Lifestyle

We’re leasing a place in southern Arizona so the kids and I can travel to Jim’s cow camps as often as possible. Actually, I will travel to an AirBnB near Jim’s cow camp as often as possible. I’ve dry camped with young children just enough to know it’s not as much fun as my husband wants me to think it will be. The children will camp with Jim as often as they want to, which will probably be quite a bit, because they’re not a housewife zooming toward middle age who really likes electricity and a bed with a frame.

The Jobs

Jim will continue catching cattle as a full-time occupation, and I will continue writing things part of the time. The other parts of my time will be filled with cleaning the floor, washing bed rolls, telling the kids to get along or else, and educating the children.

The Education

We’re homeschooling on purpose, which will hopefully be a much different experience than the Great American Homeschool Experiment of 2020. That go-round consisted mostly of riding our horses and making crafts out of paper plates rather than learning math and spelling principles. We also cried a lot.

This time, I ordered actual school books for each child and printed up a daily schedule. We’re also going to read Will James books as a family and calculate the fuel economy of Mom’s pickup as we drive from camp to camp. Hopefully there will be fewer tears.

The Hope

This will be a grand adventure the children will remember for the rest of their lives. They will thank their father and me for raising them to be such brave, confident individuals who are well equipped to take on life’s challenges when they become young adults and leave home.

The Fear

The kids will get sprayed by a skunk, run out of clean pants and feed all the snacks to a chipmunk before I even have the truck unpacked. They will get lost in a canyon, bitten by a rattlesnake or fall in a cactus patch. I could go on all day, but you get the idea.

Have you ever had a nomadic lifestyle with young kids? If so, I need your tips and tricks! Leave your advice in the comments. Thanks in advance because I need all the help I can get.