Getting a BIG family abroad for six months takes PLANNING

 

 

 

 

 

Our Dream

 

 

 

My husband and I came up with this crazy idea of moving our family abroad. We have thought long and hard about how the world has so many places to live and see. What if we lived in Spain, what would our lives and our children’s lives be like? Life is short, we are all healthy, now is the time to see new places and experience different cultures; now before we are unable to hike, walk, jump, bike and dance as we go.

 

When Should We Leave

 

 

 

Initially we were planning to leave in August, who wouldn’t want to see the rolling green hills of Northern England with the warm weather August brings? We started to plan, book rental homes and make lists of ways we could monetize the things we already owned or had. As we did this, my husband kept saying, “Something is going to happen to make this dream not work out.” If you ever talk to any of my nine kids, you will learn that my husband and I have lots of wild dreams of moving here or there or doing this or that. And sadly, most of the time we don’t do these things. So, when we started to talk about living abroad with our kids, they didn’t think too much of it. “Sure, it would be fun, but so were the other fifty cool ideas you have had,” they would say. Well, when we booked our airline tickets, they started thinking this one is really happening. I thought it was happening too. We had our flights to England, started booking our VRBO’s and we started planning what things we wanted to see during the days. Then our oldest daughter invited my husband and I to go to dinner with her and her new boyfriend. Wait a minute… do you hear wedding bells ringing? No, yes, ahhhh! Well, a few months later my daughter was engaged! They are a wonderful couple, and we love him so much, but with a wedding to plan and pay for, our August departure was now pushed back to November. In hindsight, it was all for the better, our boys and a daughter, got to play football with their high school team and little league teams, and all our kids were able to complete the first term at their schools before moving to online and homeschooling. And most importantly we got a wonderful son-in-law!

 

 

 

 

 

Financially Could We Do This?

 

 

 

 

 

We were not in the position to treat this living abroad experience like a vacation. We had to think of ways to monetize the assets we had. Our biggest asset being our house. We hired a family friend to come and build a wall in our basement sectioning off a part to make a rentable apartment. We figured that when people go on a vacation they pay for lodging and food (mainly eating out food) and then they still have their mortgages at home too. If we could rent out our home to cover its mortgage, we would only have the housing expenses of the abroad homes. Also, on a vacation most people try to get away from their day job and relax. Because we are living abroad and not just vacationing abroad, we site see and explore during the mornings and afternoons, then come back to our rental where my husband works remotely, and my kids do their schoolwork. We have planned that we eat breakfast at home, eat out for lunch 1-2 times a week (we love tasting food from other countries and cultures) and I make dinner each night. Back in the US we were constantly going places, to kid’s activities and friend’s homes and we weren’t able to eat together as a family very often, except on Sundays. While we live abroad, we have this opportunity to eat together, and we save money eating at home and eating what is made, trying our best not to waste. Previously, when we were going to stay abroad for nine months, we considered renting out our RV and renting our cars on Turo. However, because of the shortened time we chose to not do those this time.

 

 

 

Regulations For Foreigners Without VISA’s

 

 

 

Through some research we discovered that we could only stay in the EU (European Union) for three months. At which time we needed to leave for three months and then we could reenter. This information is why the first three months of our living abroad adventure we are in Italy, Switzerland, France and Spain and the last three months we are in Egypt, Jerusalem and England. Just as a side note, when we were going to live abroad for nine months we were planning to stay in the United Kingdom for the first three months, then to the EU and then back to the UK, Egypt, Jerusalem and Cypress.

 

 

 

What Do We Do About Schooling

 

 

 

I have six kids who are elementary through college age. I will briefly explain how we “do school” while living abroad. My two youngest children, first grade and fourth grade, I chose to homeschool. I have experience homeschooling, because I chose to homeschool each of my children when they are young and put them into public school around 2nd-5th grade. My degree is in Elementary Education, and I love to teach, I also love to stay home with my children, homeschooling for me, was the perfect scenario. My next two children are seventh and tenth grades. Our school district has an online free school that I was able to sign them up through. Our biggest challenge with this, was making sure their school computers would work in the countries we would be living in. I had no idea that logging into the kid’s Canvas (School Accounts) would be blocked if they were in various countries. The tech department of their online school, were able to adjust their school computers to allow them to access their Canvas accounts. My senior daughter was able to get permission from her high school to graduate and walk with her class (we plan to return from living abroad a few weeks before graduation). This was done through our awesome school counselor, who went to a few meetings and pled my daughter’s case to them. She, previous to living abroad, did her school on the “hybrid” schedule. Which means, she went to the first two classes at the school and took her core classes through Davis Connect (our districts online school). We just had to confirm she meet all the requirements to graduate with her online classes. My college age daughter is planning to enroll in online college classes next semester, which is relatively easy to do at the college level.

 

 

 

Making Lists

 

 

 

I absolutely love to write lists on my phone and check the box when I have accomplished the item, so making lists was and always has been fun for me. Some lists were titled, “Europe Ready”, “Rental Home” (things needing to be done to rent out our house), and “Sewing Projects” (I have a blanket making business-I listed all blankets needing to be sews prior to going abroad). In the evening before I went to sleep I would chose the items to accomplish the next day. Somedays I did wonderful, somedays I didn’t. That is life when you have a big family, sometimes things come up and I try to always put my family first.

 

 

 

Service Opportunities

 

 

 

It was and is very important to do service and find ways to serve while living abroad. We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and through an online site called justserve.org anyone needing service can list opportunities, and others can read these needs and volunteer. Previous to going abroad I was able to check out which countries used this site and where we could serve. We also try to listen to the Holy Ghost and be God’s hands, weather it is to hold a door, help someone who has fallen, help push someone in a wheelchair or carry items for others. We are constantly looking for ways to serve and trying to help instill this characteristic into our children. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints we have a testimony of our Savior Jesus Christ, and we look for ways to share his teaching that are written in the Book of Mormon with others. We do this by finding others who would like a copy of the Book of Mormon and then read them a passage that we have marked about the Savior.

 

 

 

Helping Our Kids Own Their Education

 

 

 

My husband and I really wanted our kids to study and know about the places we were visiting. We decided to implement a plan where each day when we come home from our day’s adventures, we meet together for a devotional. This is a time to pray as a family and read our scriptures together. We also go over the things we will see and do the next day. Each of the kids and myself use our phones and computers to do a little research on the places we will visit. Then as we eat dinner each person tells a bit about what they have learned and what they hope to see or do the next day. Following dinner, the kids start their school, and my husband starts his “day job” each going to bed when they have completed their work. I also bought new journals for each of the kids and myself previous to leaving abroad. I printed several maps and put them inside their journals. Each day I encourage the kids to write their days events, things they saw and did and fun times they had. The maps have been fun to make things come alive more when identifying the place on a map before we arrive.

 

 

 

Flying Out Older Kids

 

 

 

If you have added up the kids I have talked about you probably already know that two of my kids are not with us for the majority of our living abroad, and one daughter won’t be with us at all. Let me explain, our fourth child Caroline, is presently serving a mission for our church in Brazil. We are so proud of her and her choice to go and share the gospel and her knowledge of the Lord and Savior with others. She teaches others about where they came from, why they are on Earth and where they will go after death. She is one of the reasons we will be going home in May, to get things ready for her return on July 4th. My oldest daughter, Madi owns her own dance studio. This along with her recent marriage makes it not practical for the her and her husband to be with us the entire time. The two of them will be coming out mid December for about four weeks. My oldest son, Isaiah, works in sales and his busy time of year is around Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year. Therefore, he will join us for two trips, where he will see Rome, London, Egypt and Jerusalem. We have been saving points on our JetBlue credit card for years (thanks to all those groceries we buy to feed our big family, we have acquired a lot of points) and have enough points to fly our family to England. Other flights that are done inside the continent of Europe we have discovered range from $16-$199 per person, depending on how big your suitcase is and what day of the week you fly.

 

 

 

Pet Care

 

 

 

My daughter, Brooklyn should really be writing this portion. She has a dog who we truly considered bringing with us. Our family has two dogs who our two oldest children, who are staying in the US are caring for. Brooklyn’s dog ultimately will be staying at home with the house sitter/renters we have living upstairs. We did learn that an amazing amount of VRBO and HomeAway houses allow pets. When flying pets each airline has requirements for pet vaccinations, crates to hold your pet and extra costs associated. We learned that Alaskan airlines are the only airline that flies in North America that still allows large dogs to fly as cargo (2022), small dogs are able to fly as long as they fit in a pet travel bag that is small enough to fit under the seat. Our daughter, decided it would be best to keep her dog at home. Her decision came from knowing of all the additional traveling we would be doing once abroad and having to kennel her dog during the day if where we were visiting that day didn’t permit dogs. It definitely would have been more doable if we were staying in the same home rental for long periods of time.

 

 

 

Car Rental/Leasing

 

 

 

So, a car rental was crazy expensive. My husband did extensive research and found that his best option was to lease a car while we are in the EU and when we leave the EU we will return it and end our leasing agreement. We wish the car we leased in the EU could also go into the United Kingdom, but this was against their policies. We also decided for the two weeks we will be in London we will use the Tube and in Egypt and Jerusalem a rental car is much more affordable; around $68 a day. The harder part is having to rent two smaller, cheaper cars for the size of our big family.

 

 

 

Booking Rental Homes

Booking rental homes, was exciting and exhausting. My husband was the one mainly in charge of this area, probably because back when we were living abroad for nine months, he had our England experience all book and planned out. What we did was use both VRBO and HomeAway to locate the homes we would be staying in. We always decided our budget ahead of time and used the filters on each site to only look at the places in our budget. Because we move around so often (usually every week) it was way too time consuming to look and dwell on homes out of our price range. We also noticed that in big cities like Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Venice and London, if we stayed outside the city, we could get more for our money. We had a car for our first three months so driving into the cities weren’t a problem. We filtered out places that didn’t have free cancelations, Wi-Fi, parking and heat, and we made sure to make a list writing down the last date for each home’s free cancelations, just in case. This was particularly helpful when we had to cancel the England homes because of my daughter’s wedding.

 

 

 

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