What.A.Day.

What.A.Day.

First, I woke up at 3:45 am.

Nothing new.

BUT...

I stayed awake for 2 hours.

Finally fell back asleep

to only wake back up at 

6:00, 6:15, 6:45....

So, I just went ahead and got up.  

Got ready quickly.

Got the boys up and dressed.

Then, we all left at 7:37 am

(only 7 minutes past our desired departure time)

to drive to Sanford

to pick up our RV!

We were so happy to pull in the parking lot

to see it already sitting there waiting for us.  

We did a walk-through with our technician, 

Nathan Dudley.

Everything seemed to be working in satisfactory order.

I asked him what had to be done to the roof

because Henry had said that he told him yesterday

that they found 'something on the roof and patched it up'.

Nathan said, "Oh, we just cleaned it 

and put UV protection coating on it'.

I thought to myself, "Humph...that's weird 

that that is part of the 30-point inspection'.

So we go inside to go over the paperwork, 

to be told that our bill was $700!

Wait.

WHAT?!?!

All the warranty work was...well, covered under the warranty.

No cost to us.

We knew that the 30-point inspection was $300.

Where in the world did another $400 come from?

Nathan said, "From the roof cleaning and UV protection, 

that you asked for."

Ummmmmm........

No, we never asked for such a thing.

Didn't even know that existed until 

you said you did it to our RV.

He very kindly and quickly said that he would take care of it

and that we didn't have to pay for it.

Hope he doesn't get in trouble for providing a service 

and not getting paid for it, 

BUT.....

we never asked for that service.

I do want to say that we had a great experience 

at La Mesa in Sanford, FL. 

We had heard so many horror stories 

about having RVs repaired there, 

but so far....

all is good.  

So...we were on a very tight schedule this morning.

Once we picked up the RV, 

we had to drive back to Port Orange 

to drop it off at a campground.

Henry had to go back to his parent's house

so that he could put in a full work day.

Only...we had a problem.

Kinda a major problem.

Our electric landing legs were dead.  

As in...D.E.A.D.

This is a major problem because we can't unhitch the truck

until we put the landing gear down on the RV.

BUT...we NEEDED to unhitch the truck so Henry

could get to work asap.

Why was it not working?

We had never had this problem?

The button was dead.

The pins were completely stuck in them

so we couldn't manually pull them down.

We figured out what happen.

When Henry was inside the office at 

La Mesa, he had asked me to go 

out and put up the landing gear.

Sure, no problem.

I walk out to do it, only to realize 

I didn't know how to do it.

I always put the back landing legs down.

I had never put the front ones down.

I didn't want to assume it was done the same way.

So I went back inside to ask Henry how to do it.

He said, "Just push the Retract button to bring them up some, 

then pull out the pin so you can manually push them up, then 

push the retract button to bring them up the rest of the way".

Got it.

By now, little Scott wanted to help me do it.

Pushing the button is 'fun' to a 5-year-old so I let him.

Well....

he pushed it, and pushed it, and pushed it...

too far.  

We didn't realize it until we got to the campground that

something went wrong when he kept the button pushed down for too long.

So here we are....at the campground....

trying not to lose it because 

we only have 653 things that have to line up 

just right so that we can leave Florida tomorrow.

I jump on my phone to ask a 5th wheel RV Facebook group

I'm apart of how to fix our problem.  

In the meantime, I walk up to the campground office 

to ask if there is a RV mobile tech person

who lives at the campground.

No, there wasn't, but she gave me the names of 3 local RV mobile techs that we could try calling. 

While Henry calls them, I have lots of responses on my Facebook post on what other RVers think our problem could be....

number one response was that it was probably a blown fuse.  

And that is what a RV tech tells Henry over the phone too.

He tells Henry where to find the fuse so that he can replace it.

In the midst of all this craziness, 

something awesome happens.

As I was walking back from the office, 

I see this kid on a bike, 

and he sees me at the same time.

We were both like, 

"Hey!  I know you!"

It was Jake!

We met Jake and his family at the first campground we stayed at in Florida down in Melbourne back in July!

We lost contact with them once we moved up to New Smyrna, but here he was.

The boys were so excited to see him!

As it turns out, 

Jake was exactly who we needed to find at that moment of 

our struggles. 

Because you see....this fuse for our landing gear was in a spot

that no adult could have reached.

When we had our generator installed, 

I guess they never thought about not blocking access to the fuse.

Sage had tried climbing up and over the generator to change

the fuse, but he couldn't figure out how to get the old one out

because it required a screwdriver to get to it.

Jake was the perfect size and knew exactly how to replace it!

Jake to the rescue!

So while this whole 'changing out a fuse' was going on, 

I was trying to get our appointment with Safelite changed.

See...we had an appointment with them to have our 

windshield replaced due to a rock cracking it on Monday.

The appointment time was between 12-5.

I was trying to get them to come to the campground instead of Henry's parent's house (which is only 2.1 miles away).

Thankfully, they agreed even though it was 'against 

company policy to change the location address if it was in a different zip code'.  

So...the new fuse fixed the landing gear, 

we quickly hitched up, rushed back to Henry's parent's house, 

FINALLY ate for the first time that day (it was around 11:30 at this time), and I loaded up our truck by myself completely full of our stuff....then rushed back to the campground to unload the truck by myself...while Henry worked and the boys played. 

I HAD to take a break.

It was HOT.

My 2 words for the day were 

'Holy Hotness!' 

AND can I just give a shout out to Daytona Beach KOA!?

They also went against 'company policy' to allow us 

to arrive at the campground 3 hours before normal arrival time so that we could drop off our RV so that Henry could get to work.  We had lots of obstacles today, but everyone was so gracious and helped us out tremendously.  

This is our spot for the night.

This picture might show you how SNUG we are!

Around 2:30 pm, 

Chris with Safelite gave me a call to let me know that 

he was '30 minutes out' per my request.  

He arrived promptly 30 minutes later and began replacing 

our windshield right away.

I moved our truck up to the office parking lot so that he would have more room (because there was NO room for him to park at our campsite).  I did ask the office staff permission to park there and have our windshield replaced there and again...

they were so helpful and said 'Absolutely, no problem.'

While our windshield was being replaced, 

I unpacked tons of stuff, 

cleaned both bathrooms, 

and called my mom.  

We received excellent service from Chris and Safelite, and I highly recommend them!  

He even vacuumed our floor mats and cleaned our exterior windows!  

And he did it all in about 35 minutes!

So, that was checked off our list.

Now I had to wait an hour before I could drive.

Once that hour was up, 

off I went to return the last of our library books, 

filled up on diesel, 

got a bunch of snacks at Publix for the long drive to New Orleans, 

and McD's for dinner.

Back to Henry's parent's house to cram food in our mouths, 

fold clothes (oh yeah, did I mention I did 3 loads of laundry somehow today), unload the dishwasher, load the dishwasher, pack up more stuff, load up the truck, and 

then all 4 of us went back to the campground to unload another 

truck load of stuff.

Henry loaded up our bikes on the bike rack.

The boys played with Jake.

I unpacked kitchen stuff and more clothes.  

Once we were done, we came back to Henry's parent's house to actually stay all night here one last night.

We'll be getting up early, (well, early for us!), 

8:00 am....so that we can hitched up and leave the campground by 11:00 am.  

I'm beyond exhausted, but it's a good exhausted!

Pray for safe travels for us!

(I might be a little nervous!)