We call ourselves "The Chaos Nest". It's insanely appropriate - life is chaos, ENJOY the journey!

For the past couple of years we've been hit HARD. We have 4 boys, all 4 of them adopted, and 2 are special needs. Mental special needs. You'd never know it by looking at or engaging with them. When a special needs child is obvious, people think they understand. When they can't see it for themselves, they have no clue (but they still think they understand).

In a nutshell, our family has been abused. Tremendously abused. We are shell shocked. PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is a common theme in this house. We need healing.

Our journey is about healing. Healing as individuals. Healing as a family. Discovering ourselves, discovering each other. It's an attempt to make us utterly dependent upon God and each other, eliminating the rush of external noise and distractions. It's about building deeper relationships. Creating a bond of healing that will take us through our lives. We've drawn in on ourselves so much, we needed an outlet, a release. We needed something different.

Over Memorial Day weekend 2012, we, on a whim, went and looked at a used motorhome. We looked at it 4 times and finally made an offer on it on Memorial Day. By the time we brought it home 10 days later, we had already started packing things up, selling things, getting ready to full time.

Crazy.

We are REALTORS with a real estate team. For the year prior to launch, while we were going through our season of utter chaos, we had transitioned our business to almost totally mobile. Now we realize it was excellent preparation for "on the road". Now, we are exploring a new financial journey. We are in a pre-launch phase of our new business. Life is getting even...

Even Crazier.

We put our house up for rent, sold just about everything, put our most important items in storage, and went out for our "shake down cruise" July 1st for 2 weeks. We came back and "moved into" a local RV park intending to leave at the end of September. A brother announced he was getting married, so we moved up our launch by 45 days. We also completely changed our journey direction. Now, a year later, we just went into escrow to sell our personal residence.

More Crazy??

We left our home base, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho on August 20th, 2012. We've traveled almost 11,000 miles so far. We've spent a winter in the southeast and a summer in the northwest. We are headed into the southwest for winter 2013. After that? Who knows where we are heading!!

So, we are "on the road". We don't know how long, we don't know why, we just know we are doing what we need to be doing. We want to explore the entire North American Continent, and then Central America, and then South America and then??? We explore some things, skip others, don't have a specific agenda, yes we are using the typical "sticker map" full-timers use, no we don't have a goal to hit every national park, yes we maintain a 'normal' household routine, no we don't get to live like every day is vacation, yes we are having fun, yes it gets chaotic, no we don't think it takes special courage to do this, no we didn't save up for months or years to do this, no we aren't rich, yes we are winging it . . .

We are The Ethridge Family. We are not "PC", we are "CP" aka crazy people. We travel in a 28' Motorhome with 2 parents, 4 boys (3 teenagers), 2 cats, 1 dog. Want more? Dare to want more? You might be offended, dismayed, laugh, cry, go insane, who knows. You can follow along with us at www.TheChaosNest.com