Early Christmas Gifts

We have already received two of our Christmas gifts early.  One was from my MIL, and we have really enjoyed this one.  It is a kitchen island that we bought while in Virginia.  We took out our dining room table and chairs and this sits in that space now.

We love this thing!  We still have some eating space there so we didn't really give that up.  We gained tons of storage space and counter top space with it. 

The other things is a microwave and convection oven combo.  I have wanted this since we bought the RV and am thrilled with it.  I have used it tons since we have put it in, mostly for baking bread, cookies and muffins.

I'm glad that I did get them both early, since they will help me with my Christmas baking!  I think we enjoy both things for a long time.

Weekend Project

We have not really changed anything in our RV since we bought it.  We have more than made up for that now though.  When we bought the RV, we bought it to accommodate five of us.  Now there are three of us.  Soon there will be two of us.

Our needs have changed, so we have tossed around the idea of getting a different RV when Austin left home.  I would like a smaller RV.  Nathan would like a less expensive RV.  But we also love the RV we have.

Jack and Ruth that we became friends with this summer inspired us to think outside the box and make our current RV something we'd love.  So we decided instead of having three bedrooms and one and a half baths that we would now have two big bedrooms and one bathroom.  When Austin leaves home, we can use his bedroom for Nathan's office.

It was a lot of hard work on the guy's part this weekend, helping to make these changes.  I caught a few shots in the midst of the tearing the walls down.  Nathan, who hates all kinds of physical labor, so give him a big hand:

And the room with the walls tore out and the bathroom almost "gone".

Whew!  What a mess!  I spent today cleaning up and sorting through stuff, which led to many bags of goodies to be donated.  It's funny, we think we live so light now given all we own fits in our RV.  But each time I go through our things we find more and more that we don't really need.  The longer we live this way, the lighter we want to live.  But we also accumulate gadgets and gizmos along the way so we are far from cured when it comes to consumerism.

I will try to remember to snap some pictures when we have the room finished and decorated the way Austin wants to.

Home Sweet Winter Home

When we first started full-timing, we didn't understand the annual sites that people stayed on.  I mean, we understood what they were but we didn't understand the why.  Our thinking at the time was if you have a house that has wheels, it should move around.  Otherwise what's the point.

Like so often in life, we now do understand it since we are now in the position we are doing it ourselves.  Why?  For many different reasons; but in general because our needs have changed since then.  So for this season at least, we secured a site that would allow us to stay put in one spot.  I have no idea if this will be something we will continue to do and I don't need to know that.  I only need to know what works best for us today.

The cons to staying put are we don't get to see new things and new people as often.  The plusses are we get the spot we want for a longer period of time, we hopefully get to know the people that are staying put here with us a bit better, joining a CSA and we have internet.  High speed internet!!!!!!  Which we had long forgotten about.  Which means Nathan can work much faster and more effectively and so can I.  I can blog much faster which means I may return to more regular blogging.

Oh and we had to find a spot that was big enough for us to play cornhole on.

We really love our new spot.  It's Home, Sweet Home, for now.

Fall and the Flu

Fall was always my favorite season when I lived here, and I am remembering why.  The weather is gorgeous, the landscape is gorgeous and there just seems to be a reminder that outdoor fun needs to be soaked up while you can.  Unfortunately, I have caught some nasty flu bug so I am not enjoying much of anything.

Meanwhile, the guys are enjoying the weather and family time!

Oregon House CA to Glendale OR

Today we said goodbye to California and headed to Oregon. We have two long driving days back to back, which we normally never do. We were hoping for smooth travel days since it is hard to travel like that even under the best of circumstances.

We loved the scenery along the way. We were thrilled to have internet while driving since we've been without it for a few weeks now. I even got to talk to Diana, which was especially nice after no phone service for two weeks.

We loved seeing this:And then 28 miles from our destination, this happened:
Which meant we spent over an hour doing this:
Did I mention that it is really, really hot here right now? That didn't help matters. We are back in business though, ready for another long day tomorrow!

Living the life in gorgeous Oregon!

Taking Care of Business~Flat Tire

I'm a little thrown off balance this week because we have no cell or internet service so my daily routine and ways of interacting with others has been compromised.

On top of that, we realized the day after landing here, that we had a flat tire. We are not 100% sure when it happened and it's a bit scary for us to think that we drove through the terrain we did to get here on it-for no matter what length of time that was. We made it safely though so we are trying not to dwell on the what ifs.

What we've been doing instead, is spending two days driving around trying to find a replacement tire. I have not enjoyed the running around because to be frank, I hate that kind of thing. The upside has been that it has allowed us to explore in a different way than we generally do. It has been fun.

Here is the tire:
Yikes, huh? Given we are coming up on our one year anniversary and this is the first true issue we've had with the RV, we are pretty pleased with its record so far.

Living the life in sunny California!

It's the Little Things in Life

Sometimes it is the smallest things in life that can drastically alter your life. And while this is probably not going to drastically alter my life, I have no doubt it will make a sizable change.

Every year for Christmas, Nathan's mom gives us cash so we can buy what we want for our Christmas gift from her. We went back and forth this year about what to get. Practical or fun? I wanted practical, but also felt as if fun might be more fitting for Christmas. So we went with fun and bought a family gift.

The reason that I really wanted a practical gift was because I wanted a washing machine. It is one appliance I thought would make a big difference not just in our work load but also in our monthly budget. In some ways I didn't mind laundry duty because if I went once a week it meant I had a few hours alone which meant I could read and all of my laundry for the week was completely caught up. Where it was a pain is if I had to do loads in between and drag it down to the laundry room at the resort. That and we don't really have a lot of space to store a week's worth of dirty laundry.

The bigger factor again was the expense of doing laundry this way. When we first went full time we were spending over $100 a month on laundry. For the past month, Nathan and I have made some pretty big changes to help with this and to be more "green". We were still spending over $50 a month though.

Soooooo when I saw an ad in Craigslist (we love CL's) for a washer for $50, I was just about giddy. The one I had been looking at was over $200 new. We called. It was gone. Drat. The very next day I see an ad for another kind for $49. I called and it was still available. I was giddy this time. I wasn't sure it would fit in the closet that is the laundry closet meaning it is already plumbed for a laundry center. After the guy sort of measures it (it's two pieces of paper wide), we decide to take a chance.

This was our reason for our trip to Tampa yesterday:

As you can see, it fits! It is actually quite a bit bigger than the one I was looking at so double score! I can wash real loads in it. I can wash my sheets in it. I washed a full load of towels and it didn't even blink an eye at the size or weight of them.

Best of all, it will pay for itself in a month. I love it.

We were able to do the practical and the fun thanks to Mom and Craigslist. Thanks Mom!

Hershey PA to Gloucester VA

The rest of our trip happened today, we went from PA to VA. And if you are local to either, you know that is pronounced P-A to Virginia. No, I don't know why it is pronounced P-A when the rest of our country uses that as an abbreviation for the state name and therefore says the state name instead of the actual letters. Ask someone from P-A to explain it because I still haven't figured it out. It's like the state itself, just quirky and unique enough to make it even more endearing.

The drive was lovely, with the leaves just beginning to turn colors here. I am a bit sad that every place we have stayed the past month or so, the leaves are just beginning to come into their full peak of fall colors just as we are leaving. It also is causing it to feel as if we are not actually moving forward in time in some odd way. We stopped at a Chili's to eat lunch on the way. After finishing her meal, without even thinking, Auburn says she is heading home to check on Ace. "Home" being our RV which is parked in the lot so literally outside within a few feet. We jokingly told Austin he can't threaten to run away from home so he will now have to joke about running away to a "home". When we got outside, they were playing in our yard.We also saw something wonderful-the SUN. The sun has been hiding from us for over a week so I am giddy over its appearance.

Our Home

People seem to be most fascinated by how we live in such a small space. I think globally that this topic would not be as fascinating, given much of the world does live in smaller spaces, but in the good ole' US of A, we like more. Our homes, like our meals, seem to have become super sized over the past few decades. I have never personally been fond of this trend, because more square footage equals more cleaning.

Our house we sold before beginning this journey was quite large to me with five bedrooms and three bathrooms. We had five children when we bought it though. By the time we sold it, we were down to three children living at home with two on their way out the door in the next few years. It was extreme overkill to me to have a house that big.

I found we were there less and less over the past few years, due to our newly found freedom of the homeschooling life. I began to feel as if I were there only to serve the house when necessary. We'd be away, having fun and loving life, and I'd say to myself, ok...time to go "home" to take care of business. To clean it, repair it, tend to it and pay for it. We began to joke that we worked for the house, not the other way around. We knew it was no longer meeting our needs. I wish I had realized that I'd feel that way before spending two years of my life gutting and remodeling it, but that's life.

So, has it been difficult going from 3,000 square feet down to an RV? Surprisingly to me, nope, not at all. And it's not just that cleaning is soooooooo much easier, although that is in my top three list of things I love. It is that we have found we have all we want and need here. And that is enough.


Some shots of our house, since some of you have asked. The living room/dining room/kitchen looking down from the main bathroom.



At the end of this space are the kid's bedrooms. One through each door, with double bunks on the walls and a half bath in between.

There is a main bathroom and our bedroom also. I'd take a picture of our backyard but it's ever changing. Wait, I do take pictures of our backyard. That, after all, is what this blog is about.

My house now works for me and the rare times when I have to tend to it are so minimal that it is barely a thought in my mind. It's a wonderful thing for me to be out enjoying life with nothing on my to do list weighing on my mind. Not that I still don't have things to "do", I am just able to toss out the whole house list now.

Lynchburg, VA

We left our traveling buddies and North Carolina bright and early this morning. We headed up to the Thousand Trails campground near Lynchburg, Virginia. It was a short three hour drive, which we decided was a fabulous distance to travel in one day. After unhooking and leveling, we went to taste some local food and upon the recommendation of a local we tried Napoli's restaurant. Great Italian food with good prices! Then we headed back to the resort for some fun. This is only our second Thousand Trails experience and we've been pleased so far. This is a really nice place to spend a few days. There is a lake with boats and sand volleyball. We played mini golf, fooz ball and ping pong ball for most of the afternoon. The staff seems so nice and helpful. We will go out and do some sight seeing tomorrow and hopefully find a new cat/kitten.

Our first destination

A picture of our new house and the "men" at a rest stop in South Carolina.

We finally headed out-"on the road". We left yesterday afternoon and made it to Brunswick, Georgia. We stayed at a nice campground with even nicer people. We got up early this morning and drove to Four Oaks, North Carolina where we met up with our favorite traveling buddies. They are the icing on the top of this fabulous gift. And speaking of icing and gifts, they even remembered my birthday had just passed and bought me a birthday cake. Ok, they did dinner and the cake for us! So we drove in, they helped us hook up and we got to put our feet up and relax. How awesome is that? The drive to get here was smooth and the scenery was gorgeous. We are at another nice campground and the weather is wonderful. Life is good. We were just discussing whether it has truly hit us now that we've driven to another state. We decided that yes, the fact we are now going to see the US has hit us, but the fact that we no longer have a house to go back home to is still a foreign concept. I wonder how long it will be before that seems normal to us? Or will it always seem odd to us? It will be interesting to see.