A few short years ago, we lived the typical life.

We were working parents, shuffling our two kids from school to sports, while squeezing in homework.  Weekends, we slogged through birthday parties, trips to Target and class projects.

We lived on microwavable meals and pizza delivery and barely had time to sit down and eat, much less talk.  Life was typical, but it was going by in a blur. We weren’t living our lives, as much as getting through the mundane, waiting for our “real lives” to begin.

So, we made a drastic change.

As I write this, I’m sitting in our new home, just steps from the Atlantic Ocean. There are no carpools here — there aren’t even cars. Cell phone service is spotty and the nearest Target requires an hour-long commute, first by boat, then by car.

We live on a 5-mile speck of sand off the coast of North Carolina and our life is far from typical. But, we love it.

Here’s the story of how we got here.

In 2008, we bought a house on Bald Head Island, N.C. We figured we’d retire there someday and visit for vacations in the meantime.

Bald Head is a place of forced relaxation. The only way to get here is by passenger ferry and transportation on the island is limited to golf carts and rusty bicycles. Each visit, we looked forward to parking our car on the mainland and saying goodbye to civilization.

Our vacations, never more than a week or two at a time, were the highlight of our busy life. We were away from the hustle and bustle of the suburbs, away from the to-do lists and the phone that never stopped ringing. We slept late, played on pristine beaches, splashed in oceanfront swimming pools and spent evenings playing old fashioned board games with the kids. It was the life we wanted to live, but could never find time for. We longed for more of it.

Not long after purchasing our Bald Head house, we sold our home in Maryland. The plan was to move from our 1860’s farmhouse to a house in the area that required less maintenance. But, the more we looked, the more we found it hard to commit to buying. After one particularly frustrating weekend of house hunting, my husband threw an idea at me.

Why wait until retirement? How crazy would it be to move to Bald Head now?

Turns out, everyone else found the idea crazier than we did. My boys, then in fourth and first grades at Glenelg Country School, didn’t want to leave their friends. One of my closest friends, knowing I had never lived away from my family, predicted I’d last a month. Our families either envied us or thought we had completely lost our minds.

“Who raises their kids on an island?” they asked.

After all, moving to the island required more than just a change of address. It would, quite simply, turn our lives upside down.

It meant we would live in a house roughly a third the size of our old one.  My husband, who would continue to work in Baltimore, would have to commute seven hours on Thursday evenings and turn around and make the long trek back on Sunday afternoons. Every week. And since there is no school on the island, we would have to homeschool — a foreign concept for me and the kids.

Moving to the island, at this point, even seemed crazy to us. But we forged ahead. We had nothing to lose. Everyone agreed to give the plan one year. If anyone was unhappy, we could always move back.

So when school let out in June, we made the big move. At first, it felt like an extended vacation. We kept thinking our time would soon be up, and we’d be heading back to the real world. But as the weeks turned to months and the summer residents and tourists left the island, reality sank in. We were really here to stay.

We gave ourselves time to adjust to homeschooling, which my boys have come to embrace wholeheartedly. Instead of logging seven-hour days in a classroom, we now work until lunchtime, Monday through Thursday. Afternoons are spent swimming and playing and Fridays we take off so the kids can spend time with Dad.

We took time to reconnect as a family and slowly, we got to know the island’s other permanent residents, all 220 of them. While most are retired, we were lucky to find three other young families (and six other children!) living on the island year round. The children range in age from 3 to 11, most of them are boys and all but one are homeschooled.

We get together several times a week. During the day, our children study science alongside biologists at the island’s turtle sanctuary and take golf and tennis lessons from the country club pros for gym. At night, we have potluck dinners and bonfires on the beach. Bound by our shared adventure, these other families have become our best friends. Our stories are varied — one family came to the island for work, the others, like us, are living in what was once their vacation home. All of us agree that if we hadn’t tried island living, we would have forever been plagued by “what ifs.”

Our life on the island is not conventional and it certainly is not for everyone. Our house lacks storage space, but it sits majestically on a bluff, where huge ships glide past. Each day, after our schoolwork is complete, we spend the afternoon poolside, biking down narrow roads draped with Spanish moss or playing in the surf.  Winters are typically mild, allowing us to be outside nearly year round.  We no longer feel like novices — we have watched baby turtles hatch, tried our hand at kayaking and sailing and survived close calls from Tropical Storm Earl and Hurricane Irene.

Once every two weeks or so, we take the ferry to the mainland, where we buy groceries, run errands and enjoy the everyday conveniences that used to be right around the corner.

Sometimes, however, even living in paradise is hard. We miss our family and friends and the three-day weekends with my husband always go way too fast. I miss Starbucks, pizza delivery and the mall. I have yet to find a good hairdresser or pediatrician. In the summer, our island is overrun with tourists and in January and February, it can be cold, rainy and empty.

I try to visit Maryland as often as I can, where we dine at the Cheesecake Factory, scour the sale racks in Nordstrom, and take the kids bowling, skating and to the movies. And as much as I love getting my fix of these things, when I’m gone, I long for the peace and quiet of the island.

Today, we live in the moment as much as possible, still taking things year by year. My children’s friends come to visit and my husband declares that, despite his commute, each weekend feels like a vacation. I hope that by living an unconventional life, my children learn to follow their dreams, to never be afraid of the road less traveled, to forge their own path.

The real world may be more exciting, but life on an island suits us just fine.

Photos: Top, the Riegert family; Sandi, Drew, 11, Blake, 8, and John. Middle: The Riegert boys explore the island in the afternoons after a morning of home school. Bottom: the family on the beach.

Photos courtesy of Sandi Riegert.