Welcome To Our Adventures With Sheepums!
When we decided to sell our home of eighteen years in Massachusetts, we knew we weren’t sure what we wanted to do next. We had sold our house in three days, with a thirty day close, which didn’t give us long to figure out our next move! We had no idea it would lead to a grand adventure in the UK!
We thought we might buy a small home in MA … or FL or HI to hold us over till we decided what we wanted to do next. After all, we would need somewhere to move all of our furniture. We didn’t know what we could afford till we sold the house, so we pushed off that decision till it was sold. At the same time, we didn’t really want to jump back into a very hot housing market when we were so unsure about where we wanted to live. While we’d love to move to Hawaii, we don’t want to buy there unless we have lived there for a few months and feel sure about that decision.
We chatted it over and thought we could maybe find an investment home in Orlando as a base. But as we looked at the housing market, it became clear it’s too much of a seller’s market.
I wondered if maybe we could go to the UK/EU for a few weeks, see friends and family. It didn’t take us long to decide this was a great opportunity to travel for the first time in three years. I booked flights to depart the day after our home sale was due to close. We were committed to going to the UK! (Although in the back of my mind I knew the flights could be rescheduled up to few days before departure). Our return flights were booked for four months after our outbound. Would we be able to fill up our time?
We immediately began looking for stays with friends to match our dates.
At the same time, we started selling our collected “stuff” that we had accumulated over the years. As we’d need to pay for storage for anything we didn’t sell, we had a financial incentive to de-clutter our lives.
Within thirty days, we had sold off most of our furniture and even stuff I thought we’d need to pay to get rid of. We also managed to arrange six stays spanning three months! And that’s the subject of this blog – our Adventures With Sheepums!
Meet Sheepums
We “rescued” Sheepums from a store shelf in Cork, Ireland, while visiting on a transatlantic cruise. (We had to pay a rescue fee to the store owners of course). As a rescue sheep, he’s very insecure and likes to come everywhere with us. He’s been autocrossing and hiking. He’s toured the Vatican, the Colosseum and the Acropolis. No doubt, Sheepums will be posting his perspectives.