Mrs. Dream and Mr. Reality seem at odds

2018. When Enzo was born (2017) and Tao joined us (2018), everything was ready for take-off. We still needed a few months to leave our current life, prepare the itinerary, complete several administrative steps and adjust Tao's interior from 4 to 6 beds. In June, Petr and Tao went to a friend's garage who offered his workshop, grandma and grandpa were with us to help Denisa pack... All the elements were in place for a quick start.

2019. What we thought would be "minor adjustments" turned out to be a complete reconstruction of the whole interior. Just as we were about to start the final interior fittings, we discovered that the whole floor was rotten and gradually, as we removed layer after layer, we found that the whole structure was beginning to corrode. We were devastated. For a month we talked to every specialist we could find for advice, and everyone had a different opinion. In the end, we made two big decisions: to save Tao for the future and therefore redo the whole interior from scratch, and to follow our intuition on how to rebuild it. It took a lot of time and even more energy to remodel Tao's interior in our image. Everyone participated and each child had the opportunity to invent their own personal space. Instead of 4 months, the reconstruction would take two years. But we never regretted it and every day when I wake up and look around I love every bit of it.

Still some time later... one reality
During this period we were put to the test: never before had we experienced so many uncertainties, doubts, setbacks, disappointments... Our biggest shock was to realise that life was not going to be all laughter and gratitude, just because we had decided to follow our dream and be together. We had the joy of making conscious choices that made sense to us and that expressed our care for the future of our planet, living more humbly and closer to nature... but that didn't guarantee our daily happiness. We did not measure the weight of uncertainty, the loss of basic securities (a fixed income, a house, a private life, friends and a social network, mutual support...). Nor did we imagine that time would pass so quickly!  We had "only" given ourselves a limited space of time (3 years) and resources to make our dream come true. And on top of that, there were the negative, fear-based judgements from family and society, sometimes very strong and intrusive. We gradually became exhausted and sometimes even our natural warmth was out of reach. Of course, not always, but more often than we would like.

So it was a negative experience? No, we don't want to see it that way! Looking back on this period, we had so many happy moments, we learned and discovered so many things, we made new friends...
The children went to their first scouting camp. We spent a lot of time with our Czech and Dutch families and during these stays the children experienced life in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. Cailin learned to read and write in Czech and Dutch and Naomi and Cailin even tested the Czech school for a while. Arthur became a wood-chopping hero and Enzo tested everything he could get his hands on. Sometimes, if you are too fixated on one expectation, it prevents you from noticing how lucky you already are. Fortunately, we have our photos. When we look at them now, we realise how rich this time was and we feel deeply grateful. Thank you, life.

Autumn 2020. We had spent so much time wandering around Europe and visiting our families, that Naomi had forgotten to speak French and Enzo (who was 9 months old when we left La Gaude) had never learned it well. Not practical for French children. So we decided to send them to school in France for a few months. Then we would continue our journey to Africa. Initially, this decision made us feel sad, because the last thing we had planned was to put down roots anywhere, let alone in France. We wanted to explore the unknown, not Europe! Arthur dreamed of observing wild animals, and in the meantime he saw sheep and cows. That's not what he dreamed of. Cailin was totally opposed to the idea of school, but she couldn't be spared, because if she didn't go, Naomi wouldn't want to either, and Enzo would do the same as the girls. Everyone had to make an effort, to accept to take a step aside in order to be able to move on afterwards.

Our move to Saint-Michel l'Observatoire has made us grow again. The children had their first experience of French public school. Naomi is chattering away like an avalanche of words again, and Enzo has also started talking in French. Denisa was thrilled, as she was able to evolve on her path of Non-Violent Communication. We loved the human dynamics of the surrounding villages, Tao was installed in a friends' garden, then on a town hall plot and later at a hill owned by a Dutch couple in the middle of nowhere, yet at walking distance to school. We discovered a new region and made many new deep friendships. Each stage of our trip is like a whole life lived in a condensed form.

Winter 2020. We are fed up! At the beginning, we were having fun during the confinement, we stopped running around, we did a lot of board games and nature walks, we were able to advance our website. But now we were thoroughly rested and the lockdown was never ending! So we decided to go to the Netherlands. This may sound strange to you, because it seems to take us away from our destination. But while in France, we were not allowed to go out more than 15 minutes from home with a certificate and fear of a fine, in the Netherlands, life went on almost normally, even the gymnastics classes where grandma was the instructor continued! The girls were motivated, they went to do acrobatics with the Dutch children and grandma! But ironically, in a few days, just the time we were travelling to the Netherlands, they put a very strict lockdown in place. All classes cancelled. :-( What a disappointment! Fortunately, the Dutch don't have the same mentality as the French. No fines, but advice and a call to conscience. Instead of closing the shops, they invented an ingenious system of "shopping by appointment" with a maximum of people per 10min, and a reception point at each shop to pick up shopping bought on the internet, without going in, at the shop door. Cailin devoured books in Dutch and every week we ordered our books from the library and went to the reception point in the hall to collect them. And to top it all off, we had plenty of time for grandparenting love!

2021. We are finally starting to travel. It's still not the real dream, because the pandemic makes us turn in Europe and we wanted to see the other continents, so different and new for us. But for lack of a better word, we're going to make the best of what is, and at the moment, that's France, Spain and Portugal.

Since we stopped in France, a weight has been lifted: the children are up to date with the French language and school again. And this is important, because Denisa and Petr are very serious about giving them the best in terms of education. It is an activity that comes up every day and that has the aspiration of giving them the best possible future, so the stakes are high! With this concern out of the way, another one took its place: our deep desire to launch our association "7x7" and to start contributing to a better world. As if our lives lacked meaning or purpose until we could share our achievements with the world. We parents have this strong inner voice that says that all the energy we put into it, all the heart we put into it, can never be just for our own good, it MUST be for others too. We absolutely want our lives to be at the service of this world. But as long as no one knows that we exist or what we can bring to them, it is a bit of a waste. The first concrete objective on our way is therefore to create an active website and to communicate about our actions. Unfortunately, this is such a new area for us (social networks, blog...) that we are often undecided. We try a lot of new things, put a lot of time into it, and then hesitate to talk about it. We also have more and more doubts. Are we really so exceptional that others would want to follow our adventure? Can we really inspire if our daily lives are often so hopelessly far from our ideal? But to counterbalance these doubts, there are the encounters and each time, people are enthusiastic, amazed, admiring... and they encourage us to hold on, to share our adventure!

2022. We're almost there. Another year full of unexpected events and longer than expected stops. This seems to be our fate over the last few years: nothing is bad in itself, it's just often too long, or maybe we just don't learn to plan realistic schedules, adapted to our strengths? The first project is the replacement of our old solar panels with new, more powerful ones. Petr and Arthur did it all themselves and it's amazing how much Arthur learned by designing and tinkering with the panels. Then we went back to France to get back into good standing with the French school, that was early February. What followed, you will find in great detail in the blog about our 7 attempts to go to Africa. Seen step by step, it all seems logical, but summed up in one sentence, it's "How could we stay in the Alpes Maritimes without exploring new countries for 8 months! When you put it like that, you feel desperate. But no, we should not reduce our actions to a sentence, too reductive. At every moment, we did what we thought was best for the health and future of our children and grandparents. We were present and attentive to all the people we met. Then, all the things we experienced during this period: we planted vines, bottled wine, went to school with friends, explored the Mercantour, built a hunting lodge, learned to massage... and so much more. Countless little exploits that will become cherished memories.

Autumn 2022. As I write these words, it is the 8th of October, Enzo's 5th birthday. In a few days we will be on the boat to Nador, Morocco. We can't wait!  The last few days we have been working like crazy to feed the website in French and Czech, and to launch the website in English. There is still a lot to do, we have so many pictures of our daily life to make photostories, we have tons of MB videos... we could make a lot of thematic mini-reports: on water, energy, daily life... Ah! Where to take the time to do everything? Because family life in a truck is intense. Four children who depend on us for everything: learning, health, development, sport, leisure, listening when things go wrong... Sometimes we are desperate. Not dissatisfied with what we give our energy to, but rather helpless in the face of the scale of the task. What can we do? Listen to the immediate needs of children, listen to our hearts to work for a better future? Family first, world later... or the other way round? Often we lose hope, we give up with the heavy feeling that we don't have enough energy. We will never succeed in doing everything our heart calls us to do. But it passes, and again and again we pick up the thread of our journey. The journey that is life. A life that will have served to contribute, to spread kindness, to live the love for humans and this world. We do not know what we will achieve. Nor do we know how special it will be. Unique, no doubt, because every being is unique. But when we are old and grey (or even before ;-), we will be able to say that we tried everything, that we dared, that we believed in it and gave our heart and soul. And that's not nothing. That's all there is to it.