Sunday Summary #135

2024 Wrapped - sharing the behind the scenes to a challenging year

Hi there,

Welcome to Scho & Jo’s 135th Sunday Summary. This edition of the Sunday Summary was written in the Florida Panhandle.

Last Year.

Writing our 2024 wrapped two weeks into 2025 tells the story of 2024 in and of itself… It seems like 2024 was a few years in one. Here are the highlights and lowlights:

We focused on healthy habits:

• Elliot ran his first organized Marathon and Ultra Marathon

• Before the van build consumed our lives, we had 90 days of consistent 3-mile dog walks and strength training.

We wrapped up our Great Loop Adventure:

If you remember, back to our Sunday Summaries in 2023, we had over 120 videos in our backlog to edit and release when we moved off Pivot.

• We released our final 37 daily videos of our time on Pivot around the Great Loop.

• We published our Great Loop Documentary, which currently has 340k views. Thank you to EVERYONE who watched our journey!

We built our NEW HOME:

• 7 months after beginning our van build, from July until just before New Year’s, we officially left the driveway for good.

• Our Sprinter Van was an empty shell, and now it has all the creature comforts of home - and it will be our full-time home for the next two or so years!

There’s a saying, “The days are short but the years are long” but that didn’t feel accurate to this year. With so many early morning till late night van build days, we felt our days were short and the year was short. With no experience in construction or building, we fell quickly into the deep end. Fortunately, we had a few key friends who taught us the basics of woodworking and building while lending their time to help build our home. I can say with 100% certainty that the van would have been worse without their help!

We struggled with burnout and overwhelm at almost a daily rate. It was a combination of the difficulty of learning and failing, the financial challenges of building out a van, and the fact that we did not do any traveling in 2024. For Jen and I, who started Scho and Jo to make a business around traveling, we completely missed out in 2024. This was tough mentally and one of the most significant changes we look forward to in 2025.

This all being said, we are in high spirits and excited for 2025 for quite a few reasons:

1. Jennifer and her Mom had a mother-daughter trip to visit Christmas Markets in Germany and France. This was the perfect way to refill her empty cup at the end of December.

2. We FINISHED the van build.

3. We had our 2nd Annual Mastermind Meet Up for New Year in the North Georgia Mountains. Chad and Claire hosted, and we were joined by Nate and Alicia from The Passport Couple and Adam and Kathryn from The Adventures of A+K. The week was filled with community, which is hard to find in this industry, games, fantastic food, cold plunges, gua-sha, puzzles, pickle ball, and just general happiness.

4. We are currently in a Beach House with Nate and Alicia, planning out and prepping for 2025. Almost all last year was spent chasing the next project and challenge, so planning for 2025 nourishes the soul.

Big Announcement.

We are happy to announce that we are a new partner with Waterway Guide! 🎉 If you aren’t familiar, Waterway Guide is the go-to resource for boating guides and cruising on our waterways. We cruised with a few different guides on our Loop and always checked https://www.waterwayguide.com/ for current fuel prices or notices to mariners. As a result of this partnership, we’ll be posting some content on Waterway Guide, and you’ll notice that we’ll be featuring Waterway Guide information more and more on schoandjo.com .

Come Meet Us.

Next week we’ll be attending the Florida RV Supershow and at the Battleborn Battery booth at 3:30 pm on Wednesday, January 15th! If you’re coming to the event, let us know by replying, and we’ll look out!

On January 29th we’ll lead a roundtable discussion on Budgeting at the AGLCA Looperpalooza in Punta Gorda. We hope to see some of you there!

What’s Next

Stay tuned for our next Sunday Summary and we’ll go over our huge plans for 2025! It’s going to be a great year!

Videos.

 From the Eyes of Ollie. 

I made sure my parents built the best most comfortable-est spots in my new home. I’m still trying to figure out where to sit… the front seat has a really good view though. I had a talk with my new friend Geppetto and he said we need more treats.

 Gratitudes.

2024 taught us how to be patient with a van build that took four months longer than planned, how to persevere through failures and difficulties outside our comfort zone, to support each other every day, and that we can do hard things.

Thank you to everyone who reads this newsletter, no matter how in-frequent we posted last year, here’s to the end of 2024 🍻 and a healthy new year.

Peace and love,

Jen + Elliot

 P.S.

If you are new to our Sunday Summary, you can take a look at previous issues here.