This heat is horrible!!!

This heat has been so horrible. It has been making it so hard to work on or even in the camper. We really haven't even tried today and today was actually cooler than the past week or so, with a whopping 98 and a heat index of 102!!!! It's another scorcher!!!!!!!!!!!

The weather has been "off" in many areas of the country, as I understand it. We are in Missouri and suffering this "heat wave". But I have friends in Arizona that have said that it has only been in the 90's there, actually some of the coolest weather the have seen for late July/early August!!! I mean, what is up with that???

We desperately need rain, the lawns, fields and gardens are just drying up like crazy. Most everyone I know gardens and this year has been terrible because of the heat and the lack of rain.

How has the weather been in your area, compared to last year and other years??? Let us know! We would love to hear from you all.

We must have a new radio!

Our pull behind camper has a radio, which is actually a regular car type radio, that is wired into each room throughout the camper. It functions quite well, but is just an older one with only a cassette player in it. Simone and I were quite happy with it. Cullen and Kenny on the other hand were not. They decided to go a bit more "modern" with our radio. They went and purchased a new one, it has a cd player (of course) but it also accepts several different sound cards and such from mp3 players. It also has the easy remove front to prevent thefts and such. It took the boys all day to rewire the thing in, but it is all done now. And to think, that wasn't even on my list!!!

I did order the Pod electric brake unit for the trailer brakes, Go me!!! Actually trying to get some of the items on the list done.

The actual construction has finished too. We actually have all of the paneling back up, the leaks fixed, curtains all up, bunkbeds all constructed, privacy curtains made and installed around Simones bed, shelf up by Simones bed for her books, floor fixed in back bedroom, foldable table moved and attached to the supposts, insulation covers made and up on all of the doors and vents in the ceiling, holding tanks cleaned out, front window protector scrubbed and cleaned, new door knobs and lock on outside doors, shelving installed in Simones closet, bars installed on cabinets where items may "fall" out, and extra secure latches on cabinets installed.

We have also removed all of the old curtains, and made new ones, recovered all of the seat cushions, added extra suppost for the full size bed, installed a tv, dvd, ps2 in the bedroom, organized the bathroom, hung up pictures, and decorated!

Not to mention that we have checked every outside running light, replaced umpteen bulbs, rewired some of them, cleaned all of them, caulked them back in, fixed the clock, updated the battery and fixed the holding tank indicator lights...

So far we are doing good! We will still be working on our list. It is more like "home" every day.

Time Flies!!

I can't believe it is already August already! We only have 153 days 'till out trip begins. Hopefull that will be enough time and we can actually get everything done.
shopping list of items to get done

1. get new trailer tires
2. reback barrings (learn how to do that ourself) dad is going to teach us that one!!
3. get new tires for the durango
4. get tune up on durango
5. have electric brakes (trailer brakes installed on durango)
6. have sway bar, installed and new ball mounted
7. finish packing trailer
8. finish inside of trailer
9. get new mattress for Simone
10. Plan menus for trip
11. buy new altas
12. take camper for a few "test runs" to work out any kinks.
13. organize fishing gear
14. organize cast iron cookwear
15 what have I forgot????
so much to do so little time!
oh yes
16. install smoke alarm in camper

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can...
I think I need a camping fairy!!

Back to School, Everywhere!

Everywhere we go, we see "BACK TO SCHOOL" stuff. Most of it seems to be a joke. We do not go to public school. Our children are homeschooled. This will be a great thing for them, when we are on the road in our RV. Homeschool allows our children the freedom to "explore" and "learn" in different ways then the traditional public schools do. First off, we are free to "learn" from any curriculum or reading that we choose and that is not so in public schools. I have found this to be such an important issue, because my children both have such different needs when it comes to learning styles.

Schooling while on the road should be an easy transition for us, since we already homeschool. We are already fimiliar with a routine and ways of learning that the idea of traveling while schooling doesn't upset us at all. In fact, we actually believe that it will open up a whole are of "new" learning for the kids and can't to get out there. But since we will not be on the road for a while yet, we will get started with our school work by the middle of August.

We have been looking for "reading" books for Simone at every used book store for 40 miles, on line at every used book store, Ebay and with friends and family in the area!!! So far so good. Simone read a lot...I choose to let her read what ever she wants...(almost, lol) She has to read one of my choice for every 3 books of hers. That may sound like a lot for her, but she read 2-4 300+ page books per week on most weeks. We are looking forward to "exploring" every used book store that we come across, during out travels.

I still have Kenny's curriculum from last year that we are "still" working on. We have also found some reading books for him too. We are really looking forward to the "traveling" issue with Kenny. He is a very hands on learner and likes to "see" things in action. For him, we will be frequenting different musuems, historic sites, and factory tours. He is going to love it.

Well, enough said about back to school.

Some things are hard to do!!!!!

These are some of the animals that we have had to "give up" to start our dream of a full time RV'ing family life!!! Some things are just plain ol' hard to do.

Making the RV a home!

We actually thought this would be the easy part, lol! But seriously, it wasn't...
After we got our new (used of course) 28 foot camper home, were happy with our purchase and had been "playing" around with it for a few days, we discovered some "issues". Yes, issues!!! We had been so stoked about this whole thing and all of a sudden, we just say a "problem" and wondered if we had made a "bad investment" or "choice" in this camper. This all happened when we were still playing around, talking about redecorating, this way and rearranging that way.

I am jumping way ahead, here, let me tell you about the layout of this camper, so you can actually follow along. Our new rolling home, has a bedroom to the rear of the unit. This bedroom has a full bed, lots of storage, and a closet, and dresser with a closing door...yea ha!!! We decided this would be our room (some privacy will be much appreciated when we are actually out on the road)... The middle of the RV has storage on one side and the bathroom on the other, leaving a hallway though the middle. Then comes the Galley area, with seating on one side and the sink, frig on the other and still the "hall type" through the middle. The front of the RV is the "living area". It has a couch and an table top, and such. This area is really not in the best of shape, the couch, drapes, carpet and such are ugly and dated and smell like smoke (we are non-smokers). This leaves the only other areas for sleeping....Which are the dining table that drops down into a bed and the couch that makes a bed.

Now, lets go back to the redecoration and such. We have decided to take out the ugly, usless couch and replace it with bunk beds for the kids. This way, they will actually have a real mattress and some area to call their own, not to mention, that a real mattress will be very important on the road, in our new moving home!!! This decision was not hard to come to, we had been told that the couch was not attached, because they (the original owners) had already moved it once and had never reattached it to the floor. So, being curious and all, I decided to move out the couch and "see" what is behind it. As I reach down to "pull" the couch up, my hand almost goes through the wall at the front of the camper. Needless to say, I was surprised! I called hubby in to look at it and so after we removed the couch completely, we discover that this camper has been leaking for a long time in that front area. We decide to "start" ripping our the paneling and see just how bad the damage is. It was a lot of damage, but not hard to fix. Cullen got started right away, he cut out all of the rotten wood and replaced it with new 2 by 4. He has to "reset" the window and build it up better. After we got that all finished, we decided to go ahead and build the bunk beds for the kids, because it would be easier to see the "supports" and the placement would be easier. And so that is what we did, we build in the bunks and they looked great. Cullen then cleaned all of the roof area and re-sealed the roof. After that, he cleaned all of the connecting corners and scrapped old caulking off and re-caulked them. We should have bought stock in a caulking company, because we used a lot, lol!! He re-caulked the windows, the corners, the outside light fixtures, and everywhere there was a screw. This only took about 2 weeks, but we finally have the front end totally sealed. The next project is to add in the new paneling to coverup the repair job on the inside of the RV. Meanwhile, back in the house, I was sewing...up a storm, I might add, lol! I recovered all the seat cushions, seat and back cushions. I made new curtains for ALL THE WINDOWS. I washed the inside of all the windows and hung up the curtains. For the kitchen and living areas, we went with some neutrals...A nice beige solid, with accents in a cream with beige, brown and blue stripes and denim accents too! It all ties in really well together. Everything is light enough to "keep it bright" but dark enough to keep out prying eyes or harsh light. I have to say, that I did a really bang up job with the curtains and was really proud of myself. But I was even more proud of my hubby who worked and worked at fixing the leaks in out soon to be rolling home. It was a real pain at times.

So, we are going right along with the RV. We have also been making "changes" in our lifestyle, so that we can get ready to "be on the road". Some of the things we have been doing are small, but others have been proven to be harder. The one thing that we all "have been working on" that has been the hardest, has been to get rid of all of our animals. This was quite a task too, because we are true animal lovers and we had tons of them. We started out with some of the smaller items, and we decided to sell them on some of our areas local "classified" board online. We sold our golden pheasants, our Frizzles (chickens), our silkies (chickens), ducks, quail, and most of our egg laying hens. This was a bit hard, but we decided to "pool the money" and keep it for "things we needed for the camper", which made it a bit easier for the kids, because they got to watch the money "grow". Next came the goats and 1 of the dogs. This was a major challenge for my daughter, Simone, because these were her animals. She loved them so. She was very committed to them, in fact she has milked her goat for 2 years, twice per day and never missed any time, what a girl. She really handled it like a trooper! We really liked the "homes" we choose for all of our animals and this really helped. We have also gotten rid of 2 of our "inside" dogs and lots of our rabbits. The tally shows that we have 5 hens, 4 roosters, 15 rabbits and 2 dogs to go. We have realy taken our time with this, because we have been looking for good home and places where they were willing to "keep in touch" with us for a while to make sure the animals were happy. This has worked out well!

With all of this work, we still have tons to do to make this 28 foot RV our rolling home, so stay tuned here and see what we are up to next. And please, feel free to leave us any comments you like, we would love to hear from others, who travel, have ever thought of traveling, or just like reading about our family and life.

And so the story continues!

Well, We did sell out little 17 ft shasta, pull behind camper...(pictured in the photo to the left). It was really hard to do, because we loved it so. It was a super camper. It had overhead bunks for the kids that worked really well. The real major problems with this camper were the things it lacked, that you really needed for long term full time rv'ing, like a bathroom, flush toilet and shower/tub...holding tanks, and this type of thing...but even though this little camper didnt have that, it was hard to get rid of it.

Now that everyone knows why we got rid of our little, loved 17 foot camper...lets get to the "new" (used of course) 28 foot camper. It is awesome! It has all the things that the 17 footer lacked. So, here it is...(pictured in the photo to the right). We are happy so far. Now we just have to "get 'er ready"!!!!!!!!!!