False Starts
What a week last week was. Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday were all days we were to get our bus. Tuesday came and went. Wednesday came and went. But Saturday was to be our day – 9am.
Here’s what I wrote on Friday.
Friday 2nd October
We’re getting our bus fully completed for REAL tomorrow (Saturday 3rd October).
No more false starts. No more heartbreak at a date being missed. It’s all confirmed – 9am tomorrow we’re picking up the keys to our bus come home, office, school for our kids and mobile billboard for our mission to Transform Children’s Health in Australia. (If you’re new to this blog, you may want to go back to when we bought our bus and read about everything we have been through to get this far).
When I started writing this post, we were on a 3.5 hour train to Wyee to stay at the Big 4 Lake Macquarie at Mannering Park, because it’s nice and close to where our bus has been getting converted. Tonight is our last night before we get our keys – tomorrow the next stage of our life for our family starts. It’s exciting and scary all at once.
Both of Israel and I had moments this morning. The moment where individually, we thought, wow this is really happening. It’s no longer an idea, it’s a reality.
For Israel this came as he was fitting a new shelf into our trailer which will store our bikes underneath, and our roof box and camping gear above it.
For me, it came as I closed the gates on my mum’s place as we left this morning to go to the train station. As I pulled the gate shut behind me, I thought I won’t be doing this much longer. It’s kind of bittersweet. I have grown very fond of being able to kiss my mum goodnight every night, of being able to cook her dinner and some mornings make her breakfast. This home, which was my home when I grew up, has become my family’s home for the last 6 months. It’s like leaving home all over again. Yes, I have tears as I am writing this, so you can imagine what the goodbye is going to be like.
Tonight our daughter is so excited. It’s taken her a long while to get to sleep. She said she feels as though it’s Christmas Eve. For Israel and I, it’s an odd feeling. It’s kind of like we are still in disbelief that it’s really happening. We’re excited but apprehensive because we’ve had completion dates before that have been missed.
Do you know I first became brave enough to talk about our mission and share it in public on this blog back on 23rd May 2014? That’s nearly 17 months ago. And I had conceived the mission and convinced Israel about it back in Feb 2014. I’d be totally lying if I said there weren’t times when we wanted to throw the towel in on this whole mission. The emotional and financial toll has risen way beyond what we ever planned. But every time we found ourselves at the cross-roads, we looked at what’s the cost of turning our back on it. We’d look at our kids and realise what our mission meant to their generation, and then what it would mean to our grand children one day. So we pushed on.
And tomorrow, an idea becomes a reality. It’s kind of hard to explain the mixed emotions. But there is one thing we know for certain, we are grateful for all your encouragement and support.
Saturday 3rd October
We all woke super early. It really was like Christmas. Israel was picked up about 7.30am to go over for a walk through of the bus without the kids and I, otherwise there would be too much of a commotion and he wouldn’t hear anything.
By 8am, I was sitting in our cabin crying with our almost 5yo son with his head in his hands, and our 9yo daughter with an expression of utter devastation on her face. You see I had just received a phone call from Israel saying the bus was in fact not finished and it wasn’t anywhere near ready for us to take her.
I find it really hard to explain how empty I was feeling. All I knew was I had to try and pull myself together for the sake of our kids. We had come up by train, had no car and were due to check out of the cabin by 10am. It’s a long weekend and there was no accommodation to be found in the area. Fortunately the staff at Big 4 Lake Macquarie were amazing and allowed us to hang about and use the facilities even though we had to check out. I hired the kids a buggy and off they happily went riding around the camp ground with all the other kids. In the meantime, Israel and I bounced around ideas and came to a decision.
The facts were this:
- the dining tables (come office and school desks) still had to be built
- there are 2 overhead cupboards to built
- cupboard handles to be put on
- cupboard locks to be put on
- shelves to be installed in the cupboards
- silicone around all the edges inside to finish it off
- clean up of all trade dust etc
- we’ve got a launch party on Saturday 10th October in Sydney – 1 weeks time
- we start our Australian Tour on 12th October in Newcastle
- in before the launch, we have to pack our lives into it and make it a home
The decision:
- we need to bring this baby home with us today – even if it means we’re driving at midnight!
We decided to get the guys at R&R Bus and Leisure Hire to focus on what we can’t do – building stuff, and we would install the handles, locks, shelves and silicone. We left the guys to work on that and said we’d be back late afternoon to take her home.
Thanks to the amazing service at Big 4 Lake Macquarie, the kids had a ball on the jumping pillow and spent about 3 hours in the pool. R&R lent us a car for the day and so we took the kids to see a movie. We saw Pixels – a must see for anyone who played arcade games in the 80’s and for an 80’s music nut like me it was heaven. We all left there with huge smiles and started the drive back to the workshop. We talked about the movie and the olden days from whence Israel and I came from – lol!
As we approached the workshop, the feeling of apprehension took hold. What we were going to find? It didn’t really matter, we knew what had to be done. We had to get our girl home to my mums and take control because we have 1 week left til our launch and the start of our tour.
Our Idea is now Reality
So at 8.30pm Saturday 3rd October we left the workshop with our kids strapped in (way past their bed time) and we drove our baby girl home. We arrived at my mum’s safe n sound, no break downs. She drove like a dream, and as our gorgeous 9yo girl said, “she purrs like a pussy cat”.
When we decided in the morning that we will be driving her home even at midnight, little did we realise it would be reality. Israel reversed parked her (like a boss I might add) outside my mums house at 1.30am Sunday 4th October.
Our idea is now reality. The next week is going to be HUGE but we’ll make it. We look forward to sharing more of our home later this week.
Talking about our idea becoming reality, we have been overwhelmed by the amazing response we’ve received to our Australian Tour. To everyone who has emailed about us coming to your town, we promise we will get back to you. It’s been a crazy last few days. We have updated our tour locations to show the states we hadn’t included last week, so be sure to check those out if your state wasn’t on their last week.
Be sure to let us know how best we can serve your town or area by telling us how you’d like us to help you.
Remember for those who can make it, we’re having a big launch party at Chifley Public School on Saturday 10th October 10am to 1pm. Click here for more details. Please RSVP by 8th October.