Visiting With Family in Clermont

It has been a weird crazy busy kind of week for the past two weeks and then I got sick.  So I'm glad we did still manage to fit in a visit to my aunt and uncle's house.  My Aunt Shirley and Uncle Bob are like my second parents to me.  They are what Austin calls "good people".  I love them dearly.  On top of that, my aunt is one of the best cooks I know and she always fixes a feast when we visit.  This trip was no exception.

I also got to catch up some with my cousins Stacy and Karen.  Stacy's daughter, Kayla has grown to the super beauty stage.  I think it's time to lock her up until she hits 30.  Not really, but she is a cute one and was a sweetie too.  We had a great visit!

This has been one of the neat benefits to travel.  We don't see the family we lived by as often as we'd like.  But we have seen extended family more in the past eighteen months.

Living the life with loving family in Florida!

Fort Wilderness Campground

We are lucky enough to still have other families around us, and we are trying to soak it up while we do.  It is still an adjustment to us after being used to not having it.  Today, we headed over to Fort Wilderness Campground to see Rich, Lisa, Luca and Akira.  They are one of the neatest families we have met since going out on the road.

Diana, Lauren and Josh met us there.  Becky and Nora are camping right behind us and they rode over with us.  I think I've already shared here that I adore Nora, and I really like her mom too so I was so happy they joined us.  We had a nice group by the time we all arrived.  The kids wanted to swim and after seeing the pool area, I can see why.

 

  

  

As we were driving home, Nora was telling us the states she has been to and what she remembered there.  She told us she liked Pennsylvania and that there is a chocolate factory there.  It is mind blowing to me that a four year old would be able to know the difference between the states and what she saw there.  She is one smart cookie and it is neat proof of how much they do absorb from traveling like we do.

 

Just a great day of fun with friends!  Living the life in sunny but still cool Florida!

Remnants of our Former Life

When we were still planning to go out on the road, I read all I could to help us prepare for it.  One piece of advice I remember reading was to not bother with a storage unit because it is not necessary and it will just depress you to have to go through the stuff later.

Last winter, I was so glad we had one though.  We still had not sold our bedroom set.  I was not ready to just give it away.  So we "needed" it.  Because we had the storage unit anyway, there were things we went ahead and kept and put in there.  Things that were sentimental to us or we thought we might want later.  This past weekend we sold the bedroom set.  We are now left with the reality of what to do about the rest of the things there.

Today we headed up to see what exactly was left in the storage unit.  I was really surprised how much we have changed in eighteen or so months.  When I looked around, all we saw was stuff that meant very little to us and things we never would want again.  Oh, and things we had purged from the RV and stuffed in the storage unit just because it was there.

I felt a bit of some depression settling in just in looking at it and talking about what to do with it.  I wished we had followed the advice to begin with and disposed of all of it, along with the rest of the household items we did get rid of.  We wouldn't even remember this stuff, just as we now don't recall anything from our old house that is gone from our life.

I saw that for the first time since I could remember, the stuff was really just "stuff" to me.  Boxes of books just seemed downright silly to me.  Boxes of clothing seemed even more ludicrous.  I see we are just in a different emotional place now.  We have changed.  Our needs have changed.  It's not that we are saying we will never return to that, it's more that we know for now it does not fit our life.  We are happy to live very lightly in order to have very little caretaking to do beyond caring for each other.  It's what I had hoped would happen so in spite of the temporary depression, it feels good.

Living the life in Florida!

Sea World Orlando

Today we had a great day at Seaworld with Diana, Lauren, Josh and Zoe.

 

 

 

 

 

Aquatica Water Park

Today we hit the water park.  This is the warmest day we've had in some time, so we took full advantage of it.

 

 

 

Happy 15th Birthday Austin!

One of the things we had to adjust to when first going out "on the road" was the fact that we could not count on people we knew being around.  It is a huge transition to never knowing exactly who will be around.  For the most part, you just learn to adjust and it's not a big deal in time.  Still, things like birthdays can feel kind of lonely.

This year, Austin's birthday turned out to be anything but lonely.  Because we are still camping with so many other Families on the Road people, we had lots of people around.  Early in the day, they decorated our RV:

 How cool is that?  On top of all of the friends here, our travel buddies arrived yesterday so he had family here too.  We had a big surprise party for him.  The Evans kept him contained inside until we were ready for him.  All the kids hid with silly string in hand:

Surprise, Austin!

 

He had a great time!

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday, dude!  Rock on!  You have made the last 15 years so interesting, so here's to many more fun years to you!

Living the life surrounded by love in Florida!

Last day of the rally

Today was the last day of the rally.  We all ate breakfast together, which was really neat.  There is something about sharing meals with people that it very bonding to me.  We left right after breakfast so we could get over to Clermont as soon as possible.  We enjoyed meeting so many new and very interesting people and we are excited that many of them will be with us this next week too!

On top of that, we have Austin's birthday coming up and our travel buddies are heading down to Florida.  It is looking like it will be a great week for us!  

Living the life in Florida!

More FOTR Rally

We are still enjoying the interaction with our fellow road warriors.  We have plenty of planned activities to participate in and much down time to get to know each other better.

 

One of the families brought a big huge screen which made movies and Guitar Hero even more fun.  We enjoyed watching a movie that the Evan's family made of all of our families.  So far so good!  The only thing I managed to snap pictures of was when we went to the beach to do relay races.  And someone else graciously snapped these for me so I could play.  I'm glad I at least remembered the camera here.

 

We also figured out how to get brownies today.  It seems if you are simply willing to answer a few simple questions about what life on the road is about and let them look inside your house (RV), you can reap the benefits of a plate full of brownies.  Who knew?!? And I don't mean brownies like Nathan made which didn't look so good, but really yummy brownies.  Thank you to our future FOTR couple that gave us the treat.  I won't identify you here unless you give me permission, but we really enjoyed our time with you and we have already polished off the brownies.

Oh, and if the relay race looks like fun, it is.  However, finding it hard to catch your breath after your turn-not so fun.  If you want to know how out of shape you are, running on the beach is a great test!

FOTR Rally

  

Jetty Park

Today is the first day of the rally but we arrived a day early, so we had a bit of time to explore before the official start of the rally.  We explored the pier and the beach and both were really nice.

There were so many dead fish floating in the water, which felt very sad to us.  It was similar to seeing so many trees on the ground after the hurricanes.

 There were still plenty of people out, despite the cold weather and dead fish.

Beautiful, isn't it?

Living the life in beautiful Florida!

Wauchula FL to Cape Canaveral FL

We are attending a rally with other FOTR (Families on the Road) so we drove over to Cape Canaveral where it will be at.  We are staying at Jetty Park which is right on the beach.

We arrived much later than we'd planned so we haven't done much beyond a short walk to the beach, getting set up and having dinner.  It is still sooooo cold here.

  I'm hoping it warms up so we can enjoy the rest of our time here with weather that is more favorable.  The campground is nice and you really can't beat the location so we only need the weather to make it fabulous!

Do you Digi Scrap?

Today I am trying to do some more digital scrapbooking pages while we are traveling.  I am making some basic templates to use later.  It reminded me of my friend Eileen who is also learning digital scrapbooking.  I thought I'd share one just in case she or someone else out there does digital scrapbooking and loves freebie templates.  It is a layered template made in photoshop (PSD).
You can grab it here: Freebie Template

Here is the preview of it:

Thomas Edison and Henry Ford Winter Estates

We missed another get together with good food and good people in order to get out and do some sight seeing yesterday.  It was the warmest day for some days to come, and I was getting very stir crazy! 

We headed down to a neat place south of us.  Thomas Edison and Henry Ford had winter estates in Ft Myers, Florida.  Their homes were on the same piece of land and Edison had a lab there also.  We've been here a few times before, but we had not seen all of the museum yet.  It had the usual cool Edison inventions that I enjoyed seeing.  I think the first two pictures were my favorite things to see this visit:

and a picture of Helen Keller and her autograph which reads: To Mr. Edison  Not loudness but Love sounds in your ear my friend.  Helen Keller

For those that don't know, he was almost completely deaf.

Some of his inventions:

 

I love all of the cars on display there:

My very favorite thing here by far though is the Banyan tree.  All of this is the same tree, and I didn't begin to capture all of it because it was raining by the time I took these shots:

 

Living the life in chilly Florida!