Northcutt Life Update

Apologies for the radio silence the last few months. We’re back in the mountains and I have more time, mental space, and inspiration to write a bit. This year has been different than we originally planned, but it’s shaping up quite nicely. We were all over Texas and Oklahoma with family and friends for the first part of the year, but traveled to Boulder, CO on April 12th and stayed until May 14th.

We’re now back for our third summer in the Lake Tahoe area and are glad to be back here to a familiar house and some of Travis’ extended family. We have the pleasure of hanging out here until July 14th when we’ll start the trek back to the summer inferno of Texas and Oklahoma to visit friends and family for a month, before heading to the UK and Ireland mid-August through mid-November. Speaking of which, thank you for all the Europe suggestions! More on that in a bit.

There is still a ton of snow on the ground in our Tahoe Vista neighborhood and covering the mountain tops all around the lake. It’s surreal for us Texans for there to be snow piles taller than us and it’s JUNE! Many hiking and mountain biking trails are still inaccessible with a foot or two of snow blocking the way. Despite that, I’m in heaven with 60 degree and sunny weather, we’re soaking up our time with family, loving putting miles on our bikes (no ER visits so far, cross your fingers for us!), hiking (on dry-ish trails), reading in the hammock, going to some yoga classes, and having ready access to nature.

Unfortunately, many of the other less fun things about adulting followed us here: running our business, launching software, managing work hours with family + play hours, cooking, cleaning, and doing things like spending an 8 hour day in Reno gathering groceries and provisions for the summer. Oh, and the hot water heater was broken the entire first week of our stay in Tahoe. Not fun. We were thankful for the gas stove and ability to heat up pots of water to pour on each other for makeshift 1800s style showers.

Kyle has become a voracious reader this year. He’s all about The Boxcar Children, the Little House on the Prairie series, Magic Treehouse books, the Penderwicks, and more. There is a fabulous library system here and we’re taking full advantage of it! We’re making our way through a stack of books on castles, knights, England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland in preparation for our fall travels.

I’ll also embarrassingly admit that due to my sickness early on in Kyle’s life, then the unstable nature of our traveling lifestyle (even before we went full time), Kyle doesn’t know how to swim. So, I’ve made it my personal mission to get him to swimming proficiently this month. We purchased an indoor pool membership here and have been working on swimming about 5 days/week. He’s making great strides and I haven’t lost my mind yet, so we’ll call that a success!

I got an infection in Boulder that lasted several weeks and I’m still dealing with some repercussions from that. Not a fun way to start our mountain time, and obviously not the kind of health set back anyone wants, but I’m still making forward progress toward autoimmune remission and living an abundant life. I still have to stay on top of pretty radical self care to stay on the right track though. I’m still about 95% following the Autoimmune Protocol, practicing yoga every 48 hours to manage pain, exercising very regularly, fighting to keep stress down, meditating, journaling, taking supplements, making time for 8 hours of sleep each night, and having fun.

I realize now that I’ll never be able to stop doing yoga or go back to any semblance of a “normal” person diet. It’s a huge pain in the ass, but for me the alternative is going back to being doubled over on the couch in pain, insomnia, and a battery of other awful symptoms. I’m thankful to have found a healing protocol that works for me. Otherwise, Travis and I are enjoying working together again over the past 6 months and life is good.

Travis is finding his groove with work back on the road and sometimes spotty internet. We’re making it work with no major hiccups thus far. He’s spending a lot more time on hikes with Kyle and me and taking time out to mountain bike a few times a week as well. We are preparing to launch our first piece of software while managing client development work, consulting, and several retainers.

All in all, we are having a fabulous 2017 – a far cry from the difficulties of our first “homeless” year in 2016. We feel reinvigorated by our travels and inspired to keep going. Barring a major change or emergency, we’re going to keep this train going through 2018 with no plans to settle in the near future.