4 Days!!!

Time is ticking away.   Four days away from officially becoming full-timers.  We have been working for months for this day to come.  And yet, I don't feel ready. There is so much random stuff still laying around our house.  There are piles of stuff that I need to actually take the time to go through.  Ugh.  I'm so sick of going through stuff.  Our storage unit is full.  Well, we can fit a few more boxes and our vacuum cleaner in it.

And emotionally I don't feel ready.  ARE WE REALLY DOING THIS!?!  
To avoid the sadness that could swallow me whole, I just concentrate on our ever-long to-do list.

Scott has his 5-year check-up tomorrow.  Last round of donations will be picked up tomorrow as well.  Need to go to the laundry mat on Thursday.  Someone is picking up our king size mattresses on Thursday too.  Need to get Sage's haircut on Friday (this is actually a big deal.  He keeps his hair long, but is planning on getting a true 'summer cut').  Need to make it to the storage unit again on Friday.  Need to finish cleaning the house.  Need to finish moving everything into the RV.  Need to do some last minute visiting with friends.

I am taking pictures everyday of this process.  The thought of taking the time to upload pictures and putting them on the blog overwhelms me right now.  Eventually you will come visit my blog, and you will be overloaded with pictures.  Blogs are so boring without pictures.  So I'll stop for now.

8 Days!!!

Things are quiet here on the blog because I have been very busy preparing for the big 'take-off' date.  I can't put into words (because it would just take too much time!) how much work this is....this whole 'get rid of everything and move into an RV thing'.  I read on someone's blog that just recently took off on this same RV adventure that if they would have known how much work it would be to get to the 'take-off' date, they probably would not have chose to do it.  I'm agreeing at this point!!!!  There are sooooooo many factors involved....not just getting rid of everything you own, but things like 'how to install a sewer storage container on the under belly of the RV', to what kind of hotspot, router, booster does Henry need to be able to sufficiently work from a campground, to having to call utility companies, to having to find specific receipts to make copies to scan to email to Wage Works because they need proof we spent money on actual medical needs, to finding and returning ALL of our books checked out from the library, to staining our mailbox, to painting our laundry room, painting our master closet, to installing a desk in the RV, to mowing the grass and pulling weeds one more time, to making it to the laundry mat one more time before we leave, to celebrating our son's 5th birthday, to celebrating Henry's birthday, to shredding tons of documents, to getting our son's summer haircut, to finding someone to take all our food that we aren't taking ('cause I'm not throwing it away!), to changing our home owner's insurance to renter's dwelling insurance, to having to plan my 20th high school reunion!!!, to having to research campgrounds, to trying to plan a route of travel from Milwaukee to Florida, to having to go to the DMV, to having to clean the whole house from top to bottom (baseboards, windows, blinds, carpets/flooring, scrubbing bathrooms, wiping out all cabinets and drawers, light fixtures, to taking son to well-check up doctor appt., actually moving into the RV!, ...........all the while still trying to make 3 meals/day, doing dishes, grocery shopping, running normal every day errands.......all while Henry still works 12-13 hour days.......all while trying to visit with our friends before we take off.  (And this is stuff we just have to do the last week!!....not to mention everything else that we have done the last 4 months!)

I have never in my life been so sick of my house.  I can.not.wait.to.finally.be.done!
We leave in 8 DAYS!!!!!        June 21st

Closet Space

We do have a 'master closet' in the 'master bedroom'.  It's about a 1/4 of the size of the one we have in our sticks and bricks home.  We have down-sized tremendously.  TREMENDOUSLY!  And we STILL need to downsize some more.

I bought this hanging organizer for the closet.

The hanger to the left of it I already had.

There are 10 pairs of pants on this one hanger.

Definitely helps with the lack of space issue!

These hangers I already had too.

I hung my skirts and a dress on them.

Can fit about 20 items on just these

2 hangers.  

And here is the outside of the master closet.  

The doors to the right is where the washer/dryer would 

go if we chose to ever get a set.  

This is where the washer/dryer would go.

Instead, we would like to try and 

build a desk inside this closet

for Henry.  

This is the boy's little closet in their room.

I already had that hanging 

organizer too (from IKEA).  

This is Sage's bunk bed over top the closet and dressers.

(We gotta change that valance!)

Pictures

Just a few of our neighbor friends that we are going to miss!

This picture is taken in the boy's new bedroom 

in the RV.  

Bunk bed over leather couch.

Scott graduated from preschool! 

Pizza night in the RV with friends!

Our RV came with bar stools for the kitchen counter.  

Scott approves!

Scott playing with one of his best buddies in his RV

bedroom floor.  

Look who came to visit us!

(My momma and step-dad!)

My step-dad helped Henry put on 

our new bike rack on the RV

My mom showing the boys pictures

on her phone.  (Oh...and her 2 dogs  :-)

Sage, who is allergic to dogs, LOVES dogs!

Scott, who is not allergic to dogs, is scared of dogs!

Us with my mom and step-dad.

This is only half of the shoes 

that need to go into the RV.

(And I have sold and donated

around 40 pairs already).

Henry's 39th Birthday was yesterday.

(June 2nd)  

We had dinner at Iron Chef (Japanese Steakhouse).

Cupcakes by 'Julia Makes Cakes'

Banana Cream

Lemon Thyme

I told him so!

We have renters for our house!!  

Henry was so worried that no one would rent our house.  From the very beginning (back in January), I kept telling him that everything will work out.  And it has!  Step by step, everything is falling into place for our move.  

We have a signed lease in hand from a couple with 3 kids (ages 15 b, 7 b, 4g) and a 7 lb Maltese.  They are moving in July 1st, and the lease is good for one year.

So when do WE leave??

I believe we are leaving Sunday, June 22nd.  We plan to head to Milwaukee first to visit with my mom, grandma, and step-dad.  Not sure how long we will stay there.  

We got our RV!

My birthday couldn't have been a better day.  Henry got up first at 4:00 am.  I got up around 4:20 am.  We got ready, packed up the truck, then woke the boys up at 4:55 am.  Thankfully, they wake up well when they know we are going on a road trip.  Scott ended up taking a 45 minute nap, but the big shocker was that Sage slept for over 2 hours (if not 3!) in the truck.  He never sleeps on road trips...just like me.

Birthday Sunrise

We got to the RV dealership at 10:15 am.  We unloaded all of our stuff into our RV's basement which was parked in the big garage.  (And yes, the under storage in RVs is called the 'basement').  We didn't even go inside it yet because they told us it still needed cleaned.

Henry took our truck to the 'hitch place' to have our Bed Rug and 5th wheel hitch installed.  This was going to be an all day job for them.  Our sales guy, Mike Wood, followed him and brought him back to the dealership.

By now, it's 11:30 am, and we are all starved.  As we were driving in that morning to the dealership, I noticed a Fazoli's restaurant right down the street.  We had ate at a Fazoli's years ago safely (Sage has severe peanut and tree nut allergy), so we decided to walked down to get some lunch.  I asked the girl taking our order if they had an 'Allergen List', and she didn't know so she asked the manager.  The manager came over to me and asked, "What is this that you speak of?"  I had to explain to her what an 'Allergen List' was, but as soon as I said, "You know, something that shows if there is eggs, dairy, peanuts, tree nuts, etc. in each dish" she understood, thankfully.  They do not have such list, but she went in the back to read labels for us.  They do have almonds in a salad there, but the spaghetti with meat sauce and meatball and breadsticks were safe for Sage to eat.  (And boy did he love those breadsticks!)

Birthday Lunch at Fazoli's.

My eyes were way bigger than my stomach.

Funny side story...before we walked down to Fazoli's, I asked one of the sales guys at the RV place if I could stick some of our stuff in an empty office so we wouldn't have to carry it all down the street.  He said 'No problem', but then he said, "You guys are going to WALK to Fazoli's??  You guys be careful!!  There is a lot of traffic out there!"  I laughed, and said, "You think this is a lot of traffic?"   He said, "Yeah, I'm from a really small town and this is a really busy place compared to where I'm from."   I grew up mostly in Chesapeake, OH.  This place....Elkhart, IN reminds me so much of Chesapeake.  Teeny tiny, although it is a little bigger and 'busier' I guess.  I just thought it was so funny that he thought Elkhart was such a big and scary place that we shouldn't walk 2 blocks down to Fazoli's.  After I told him that we live in Columbus, OH, he goes, "Oh yeah, you guys probably have a Wal-mart and everything."  Ha!  Yeah, like 20.  He was such a nice guy.  He even let me put my cupcakes in their staff fridge.

SO....after lunch, we walked back to the RV dealership and sat in their lounge area that has 2 recliners, a couch, and a TV with cable.  So the boys enjoyed watching cartoons while Henry and I read and rested.  Then around 1:30, we were told that we could finally go in our RV (our new home!).  It was still parked in their garage.

We met Josh who was the guy who walked us around and taught us everything about the RV.  He asked us, "Have you all ever owned an RV?" (assuming to get a gauge on how much he had to actually teach us).  We said, "Nope, this is our first one."  Ha!  He said, "Wow...well, go big or go home, right?"  We did both.

Josh was a hilarious character.  Like stand-up comedic hilarious, but better because he wasn't trying to be funny for a paycheck.  You could just tell that was his normal personality and that he loves life.  We videoed bits and pieces of our walk-through with him so that we can refer back to it if need to.

After the walk-through, we then sat in our new RV and ate my birthday cupcakes which were delicious.  Then I called my momma.

They filled the RV up with water for us so that we could flush toilets!  (Yay...I was so worried about that!)  I bought some needed supplies from their little store like a sewer hose, water filtration gauge, RV toilet paper, water hose, and electric converter.  They then pulled our RV out of their garage and parked it alongside the building so that we could stay all night in it.

Our first night in the RV went smoothly.  We had lights because we also have batteries in it....just like a car battery.  We only ran our generator when we went to sleep so that Henry could use his c-pap machine (he has sleep apnea).  (Oh, I forgot...we did run the generator when we watched some TV too).  We took showers, used the toilets, and washed hands.  It was so weird to be able to do all this just sitting in a parking lot, not hooked up to anything.  The boys both fell asleep just fine.  In fact, Scott fell asleep around 5:30-6:00 pm and slept until 10:00 pm...got up, took a few bites of dinner, then went right back to sleep.  Getting up at 5:00 am wore him out!  As for dinner, Henry went and picked up KFC.

It's beginning to look like home. 

Books and Light Sabers.

 Testing out Scott's new bunk bed.  

We were just pretending to sleep.  

Playing with Henry's new i-phone.

Henry reading one of the MANY manuals 

on our new RV.  Sage eating

popcorn while watching TV.

Scott took a 3 hour nap, got up, took a

few bites of dinner, then went right

back to sleep.  

We woke up the next morning FREEZING!  It was sooooo cold in the RV!  We should have tested out the heat, but we didn't.  Around 9:30 am, Dave from Dan's Hitch came to teach us how to connect the RV and unhook the RV to the truck.  Henry can not say enough good things about Ryan and Dave at Dan's Hitch.  They were so extremely knowledgeable and just NICE people.  While we were learning about the hitch, the boys made themselves a picnic breakfast of chips, popcorn, cereal, and juice.

Getting ready to take off.  

As you can tell, Scott LOVES it!

We finally pulled out of the RV dealership around 10:45 am for first time ever with OUR RV attached to our truck.  Such a crazy thing!

We headed first to the Moose Lodge because they have a big parking lot that Henry could practice backing up in and circling around to see exactly how the RV turned when we turned the truck.  He did a FABulous job backing up!  He tried it 3 times, and all 3 times he did great.  He credits all of the youtube videos he watched on 'backing up your 5th wheel'.

We were all starving at this point and decided

 to stop at Bob Evan's for brunch.  

On the way home, we had to go through 4 toll booths which are so narrow, BUT our truck and RV fit (ever so tightly, but they fit!).

Here she is!  Look how little the boys look 

compared to it.  (I say it's a 'she'...we need to

come up with a name for her).  

I'll post more pictures especially of the inside in another blog post.  This one is getting too long and taking too long to do!  (Oh, and I still need to figure how to make the videos work on the blog).

Crickets

Sorry for the delay in posting pictures of our new RV!  I promise I am working on it!  We do have it, and we made it back home safely with it on Saturday.  We had to spend yesterday grocery shopping, mowing grass, doing laundry at the laundry mat, and washing the truck and RV.  Today, we are clearing out our master closet (which is a JOB).  Hopefully, later today or tomorrow the blog post will be up all about our experience of getting our new home.