The Sky is Falling!!!

You'll probably want to enlarge this. It's a Chinook line. You can see this in the sky when a Chinook is on it's way. It's caused by the air that ripples over the mountains. It's a straight line cut through the clouds and almost never produces snow or rain.

There is a phenomena in Alberta called a Chinook (the more technical term for it is Foehn Wind). This is when warm air from the west comes over the Rocky Mountains and blows into Alberta. It's usually welcomed with open arms here, because temperatures can rise 40+º in one day. In the morning, it can be -20ºC, you're bundled up and trying not to freeze your hand to the car door when you open it on the way to work, and by mid afternoon, you're  in a t-shirt and rubber boots because it's +20ºC and the foot of snow you got yesterday has completely melted. This is usually when you realize your windshield washer fluid is low or completely out. Something typically discovered as a large semi passes you and sprays your entire vehicle with brown slush.

Another thing that comes with these beautiful, and short lived, spring-like days is something called a Chinook wind. This can range from a warm breeze to hurricane force winds. If you doubt that statement as exaggeration...in southern Alberta in 1962, Chinook winds were recorded gusting at 171 km/hr...or 106mph.

On January 15th, I think we may have beat the wind record here in our little campground. Ok, perhaps that was an exaggeration, BUT...I was sincerely afraid for our safety and doubtful that we would see the morning unscathed. 

The chinook rolled in sometime during the evening of the 14th. When Allan and I went to bed, it was -15ºC. When we woke up at 7am on the morning of the 15th, it was +7ºC. That's a rise in temperature of 22ºC! It was breezy out, but nothing really disconcerting. Just another Chinook day in Alberta. So we thought.

By the afternoon, the winds were gusting. I was at DFI's office doing paper work, and had to return to the campground to pick Willy up for his swimming. When I got into the campground, there was a tree that had fallen across the road between me and our stall. Luckily, it was about 50ft long, but thin, and I was able to move it off the road and go to our stall. Branches were flying everywhere, leaves that hadn't fallen in the fall were filling the air. The trees were rubbing together and groaning and creaking. It was quite eerie. I loaded Willy into the truck and we headed back to town for his swimming and some forest wardens.

Returning home that evening, you could hear the branches of the trees snapping, and we could see a couple more trees that had fallen further down the road. Allan walked around the RV to make sure that we didn't have any trees on it, or any damage from flying branches. We didn't have anything on the RV, but smaller branches had been blown with enough force to pierce the skirting. With everything flying around, we went inside.

The rest of the evening was spent holding our breaths as we could hear trees snapping and falling all around us. I was convinced with every snap and crash that the next one was landing on the 5th wheel or on one of our trucks. God be praised, we made it through the night, and none of our property was damaged.

A small tree that had fallen between our RV (Back right) and our neighbor's (Left)

This stall was occupied up until New years. It's been vacant only for 2 weeks. He'd be happy he left if he saw this!

Another empty stall. That's our RV in the background.

This one snapped across the road. It's about 15ft from my dining room window. It fell parallel to the RV. 

I have many many more photos of many other trees that fell that night. I wouldn't be surprised if there are over 50 trees that came down that night. By the grace of God, no one was hurt. Only one of our neighbours, out of nine, was unfortunate enough to have a tree land on his RV. As far as I know, everyone is ok though.

This is the neighbor who's RV was damaged. You can see where the tree snapped and fell on his place. 

Our neighbour now has a lovely green tarp on his roof. My heart goes out to them. Like us...that was their home. If you look closely you can see that he even has a porch built onto his RV. He's been at this campground for 2 years now. You can also see the tree in the foreground that broke and is now leaning against other trees. Unfortunately, there are many of those around here right now. We are blessed in that we have no property damage, and there are no 'widow makers' (fallen, leaning trees) around our site. Some here didn't receive any damage, but they now have some widow makers hanging over them...literally. 

It was definitely a wake up call that night. Our little piece of heaven is also full of danger. Just when we started getting used to checking outside for bears, wolves, or cougars before letting the dogs out, I now have a new concern, falling trees. I learned the other day that in Canada, the biggest danger in the woods isn't the wildlife, but rather falling trees. When Allan and I buy some land, we will definitely be clearing any trees around the RV that could fall on us. The shade is nice in the summer, but I can live without a sunroof in the winter!

New Hobbies

As I'm sure you saw in August,  with my Cowboys and Indians post, William has a bow and we like to shoot it now and then, or perhaps even go to the archery range where Allan and I will rent a bow and shoot with William. Things are a-changing now!

Allan has mentioned many times that he would like his own bow. So, for Christmas, that's exactly what he got! He was floored. He had no idea that he was getting one, and that's the best kind of present!

When you buy a compound bow (which is what Allan wanted) you have to know things like the person's draw length. A draw length is roughly the distance from the corner of your mouth, to your hand holding the bow, fully extended....or the distance from one hand to another when the bow is fully drawn (ready to shoot). The other thing you need to know for a compound is their draw weight. A compound is a marvelous hybrid of old and new technology. It is a bow (as old as time) with gears (new). These gears allow you to pull back a huge weight (resistance, if you will), but then the gears hit a magical point and all of a sudden, the weight or resistance has been reduced by up to 80%. This allows you to hold the bow fully drawn, comfortably for an extended amount of time, say, if you are waiting for that deer to turn just a hair more before you shoot.

I didn't know what any of these things were for Allan, so we went bow hunting (hunting for a bow...not with one, hehee) after Christmas. It turns out that Allan's draw length is 27" and his weight is 50lbs. Well, that's what he chose. He will probably increase it, but he wanted to start 'low' for now. I put low in quotes, because I can't draw 50lb *sigh*. Anyway, Allan found a bow he likes:

Redhead Toxik XT

Willy and Allan went to the archery range and had a great time with it. Allan came away with visions of bowhunting in his head. He was like a kid in a candy store. I must admit, the excitement was very catching, and I mentioned that perhaps one day I would also get a bow. No sooner had the words left my mouth when Allan was online researching good compounds for women. I had to smile. I am blessed to have a husband who's company I enjoy and who enjoys mine. We are always excited to do things together. It really makes me sad when I see couples who complain about having to spend time together. 

Long story short, I also have a 27" draw length, and a draw weight of 42lbs...currently. I've been told I need to be at least 45lbs by next fall so that I can go deer hunting. No one has really asked if I want to go hunting, it's more or less been assumed. Why else would I have a bow right?

My new bow:

Bear Siren

So, armed with new bows, Allan and I bought memberships to the local archery club and headed to the the outdoor range. In January. Yeah...in Canada. Sounds like fun doesn't it? There is an indoor range too, but it's currently off limits. Some major hunter guy passed away and his wife donated all of his 'stuffed' (I don't know the term) animals to the club. There are animals from around the world that are currently housed in the loft of the club. Apparently they are worth a LOT of money. One guy was telling us that the hunting tags for some of these animals are tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. A deer tag here is about $40, if that puts it into perspective. Anyway, they have all these animals, and are scared to hand out keys to the members, in case someone leaves the door unlocked by mistake. They don't want to lose their new trophies. So they have a wonderful indoor archery range and all the members are stuck shooting outside. Let's say that some people are not very happy, so they are working hard at a solution.

Now, with our new bows, I was feeling a little guilty. William has been shooting his long bow for a few years. He has been wanting a compound for a few years. Here we are with our new compounds, and Willy still has his long bow. Bless his heart, he didn't complain or even mention that he wanted a compound waaaaay before we ever did. So...off we go to buy Willy a compound. This is seriously getting VERY expensive. 

We wanted to buy Willy a bow that he could grow into. His draw length is 24.5" and he can draw 30lbs. As he grows though, he will get longer and stronger arms, which will change his draw length and weight. We found a bow that will grow with him, but it weighed 3.8 lbs. That's not that heavy really, but it was heavy enough that he couldn't hold it out at arms length. So, we had to go to a youth bow. It is maxed for draw length and weight for him, but we couldn't go any larger, because he couldn't hold it.

Willy's new bow:

Diamond Atomic

Now that we all have bows, we have been out shooting as a family. Each with our own bow. The nice thing is that it is a common interest and it gets us outside. That's pretty nice when you live in a 5th wheel, being outside. It's the roomiest space we have! My arms have been getting stronger, and it shouldn't be long before I change my weight to 45lbs. I still haven't decided if I want to hunt, but I have a lot of time for making those decisions.

The other thing that I have started doing is making bow slings. I saw some for sale in the store, made from what looked like paracord. I thought...I can make that! So I have been! I'm going to be posting them on my Etsy page once I source out a place to get rubber or leather for attaching them to the bows. I'll try to remember to post when I have them on.

Happy New Year!

Here we are in 2013! Seems a little unreal still, and yes, I am still putting 2012 on everything I date....but alas, I will soon be caught up with everyone else. I'm just a little slow. I think it's allowed. *teehee*

So now is the time to reflect on the past year and make plans for the new year. What a year I had in 2012! Full of ups and downs, and some very major changes. Walk with me as I reflect on the year God gave me...

January:

Took this picture near our old house.

I don't remember a whole lot of excitement for this month, but it was the second month that Allan had been at his new (current) manager-ship. We were still getting used to living 300km apart, but we were very excited and hopeful still about all the new possibilities. Allan was actually home every other weekend and it was something that I could rely on! That was a first for us.

February:

Again, I took this near our old house. An abandoned farm house.

The original plan was to stay in our house until Sam (our oldest) was done high school. At this point she only had the remainder of the current year and one more year of school left. We felt it was unfair of us to pull her out and drag her up north without any friends to finish school.

The plan is starting to crack and fade. There are major holes in it. Yes, we were seeing Allan more regularly than before, but he was now on call 24/7. He was before...but not tied to a phone. Now he was. We felt like we never saw him, even when he was home. After several family meetings...it was decided. We would move north come summer. Sam would stay with my mom to finish high school, and we would sell the house. Ugh. I wasn't happy about leaving my baby girl behind...but I needed my husband, Willy needed his father, and Sam was almost an adult...*sigh*

We started to clean out the house and yard and get it ready to put on the market.

March:

Peyton

Oh what a month March was. One that no one in our family will forget. We had the house ready to list near the middle of the month. The realtor was coming on a Thursday to go over everything with us, photos paperwork, etc...

On the Wednesday before the realtor was to show, I got one of the worst phone calls I have ever received. My mother-in-law, Jane, called to say that Peyton, my 5 month old niece, was on her way in an ambulance to the hospital. She wasn't breathing...they think it's SIDS.

It was SIDS. That beautiful little angel passed away while having her afternoon nap. I still have a hard time with it and try not to think too much about that day. I've had people I love pass away before, they were all hard in their own way, but this was the first time I had to deal with the death of a little one. One who should have outlived me. It's not easy for me as an aunt....I can't imagine what my brother and sister-in-law went through and are still going through. As far as I know, there is nothing worse that someone can deal with on earth, than the loss of a child.

Needless to say, between losing Peyton, her funeral, and everything tied with it...we didn't list the house. The realtor was put on the back burner.

April:

First week of April, the realtor came and went over everything with us. Took photos of the house and the yard, and basically told us that we would have no problems selling. The price was right, the time was right, the house was great, perfect!

A week later...with no viewings, the realtor was back-peddling. The market was slow...the price is a little high, maybe drop it a bit? Fine...we dropped the price.

Another week later...perhaps drop the price some more? The market is still slow...but it will pick up soon! Yeah... uh huh....we dropped again.

May:

The house has been on the market for 30 days...we dropped the price twice, and have had 2 viewings. That's it. Time to start having open houses. This isn't good, as statistics show that less than 2% of houses are sold through open houses....I guess we are getting desperate.

We find a beautiful acreage up north that is everything we want. We put an offer pending sale of our house on it (I mean...we're doing open houses, it should sell soon, right?), and the owners accepted our offer! Oh we were so excited! Things are moving now, if only we can sell our house, all will be well in the world!

The owners got another offer and accepted it, unless we could meet our requirements within the deadline, which was selling our house, and obtaining financing. We had financial approval! We had 3 days to sell our house, which we didn't, so...we lost the acreage. As my son would say....sad panda :(

June:

June, the month of Father's day, Willy's birthday, and when the kids finish school. We are supposed to be moving soon (that's the plan, right?), but we still haven't sold the house. We have, however, found another piece of land that we love! This one doesn't have a house, but it's beautiful. We put an offer up pending the sale of our house, and the owners accept. Our house has been on the market for nearly 60 days now...it should sell any minute....right? Wrong. Two weeks later the owners accepted another offer and we lost the land. Sad panda :(.

It's now getting close to the point where we need to decide, and quickly, what's happening. We have two months until the kids are back in school. We haven't sold the house, and the only offer we got was $30,000 below our asking price. We were at the point where we probably would have accepted it, had we not hit bottom already with our asking price. We couldn't go down any further, not from greed...we had to pay lawyers, pay off our mortgage, and real estate agent...and then we might have a downpayment left for the new house...maybe. Drop it 30K and we would have to pay out of our pocket...which was empty anyway...not an option.

So...we start looking into other ideas.

July:

Our house hits 60 days on the market. Time to remove it, or renew it. We removed it. We are off the market, but we have a plan. Oh yeah, and what a plan it is!!

We have decided to buy a 5th wheel and live in a campground while renting out our house!! It's genius! Perhaps a little strange, definitely unorthodox, but it's a solution. So, we go 5th wheel shopping, and find us a 2013 Avalanche. It's beautiful! I didn't know you could buy holiday trailers with ceiling fans and dvd players, and surround sound! Oh how little I knew then. *heehee*

August:

Our old holiday trailer and our new home.

Basically from here on out, everything has been covered in the rest of the blog, so I will leave it at that. What an adventure this year has been. The only real difference that arose in our plans was that our house hasn't been rented. That's right...we are still paying for the house. The nice thing though is that Allan's company is paying our lot rent right now until we can everything figured out financially. They are truly a good company to work for.

Current Plans:

(Some old MLS photo I got from google ;P)

As last year shows, the best laid plans don't always work out, but it's still good to make them. God decides in the end what will and won't happen anyway, but we can always try.

For now...our current plans are to sell the house, we will put it on the market again soon, and to buy some land. We will then put the 5th wheel on the land, run utilities to it, and live in the 5th wheel on our own land, not in a campground. That's the plan anyway....we'll see what happens ;)

Wordless Wednesday

Not forgotten...

Spruce covered in moss outside our door.

As the title of the blog says, everyone hasn't been forgotten. I've been very busy, but the blog has always been in the back of my mind. As I've said in the past, I would like to write more, but it hasn't happened yet. It's not for a lack of things to write about, but rather, an overwhelming amount to write about. I think about sitting down to write, but I know that I don't have time for all the things I want to say.

Yesterday I was reading the blog of a wonderful and crafty woman here who lives in the woods and does crafts from things that she gathers there. She even gathers plants and mushrooms to dye wool with. This lady writes every day, monday to friday. Not a lot, but something, every day. Every Wednesday she has a 'Wordless Wednesday' where she posts a photo she took of something in the woods around her. I found this inspiring. I really like blogging, and this might be the answer I'm looking for.

So...a summary of the chaos:

William has been swimming still twice a week and in JFW (junior forest wardens) every Tuesday. JFW had a skills meeting near Edmonton where we learned all sorts of interesting survival skills. The kids amazed me with their knowledge. It's not often these days that you can see a 12 year old kid erect a shelter and start a fire in 5 min flat. These kids could. 

William also just finished a swimming competition in Grande Cache a few days ago. He did really well and we are very proud of him. His team took home five golds and the overall title too. Also, I have to add that the boys were very blessed on their drive to Grande Cache. They hit a moose! Blessed? You may ask...Yes! They weren't hurt and the vehicle received minimal damage. Here's a photo I found here to put things in perspective:

William and Allan were in a truck and not a car, but a collision with a moose on the highway is usually the equivalent of hitting a parked semi. Very rarely are the results ok. That is why they are so blessed and I am so grateful.

In other news, winter hit us with a vengeance. In the course of a week we received over a foot of snow. The roads were horrible and William and I stayed home most of the time. If I had to go into town, Allan drove me while I looked at my iPhone (I can't stand to look at the roads when they are that bad). The weather also turned cold and we received our first -25ºC weather. Were we warm? Yes. Were quite comfortable, but we learned a few things.

Allan's shaving cream froze in the medicine cabinet. It's not a heated cabinet, so if we had opened it a crack, the warmth from inside the trailer would have heated the cabinet. We didn't think of that, so it froze. We also learned that shaving cream doesn't recover from being frozen, and Allan had to buy more. 

The worst thing that happened was that our fridge quit. We had read that there is stuff flowing through the fridge that can gel at cold temperatures and we should take precaution. We didn't take it seriously enough though...it gelled, the fridge quit, and that was last week. We have since had warm weather and we still can't get the fridge working, so we will have the service guys come out and look at it. We are blessed enough that there are guys in town that will come to the RV instead of insisting that we bring it to them. That just wouldn't work right now.

Well, so much for a quick post, but if I post again tomorrow and the next day and the next...I should be able to keep them brief and keep everyone up to date. I may steal the 'Wordless Wednesday' idea though...so tomorrow may be only a photo. We will see.

Old Man Winter...

My car at the first snow of the year.

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I last wrote. We've been very busy around here, but I didn't think it had been that long. I will definitely do my best to be better at posting!

Lots has changed around here, but the biggest change would have to be the season. It's no longer fall here. Winter has come and brought freezing temperatures, snow and ice. We have had cold feet, frozen water, chilly bums, and ice cold beds. It's definitely been interesting adjusting, but it's all good too.

So, the first thing is we have had to winterize the trailer, but not in your typical way. Most RVs, you drain all of the lines and then replace the water with antifreeze for the winter. Because we are staying in ours, and would like to have some water, we can't do this. We have to find a way to keep our water from freezing while not using antifreeze.

What we did was take our water line, that's hooked up to the campground water, and we wrapped it in tinfoil. Yes, the entire 30' hose is wrapped in tinfoil. We then taped heat tape to the hose. If you don't know what heat tape is...it's not tape. It looks like a long electrical cord which has a sensor on it, and when the temperature gets close to freezing, the cord warms up. This keeps pipes (or in our case, hoses) from freezing. The reason we wrapped it in tinfoil first, is that tinfoil conducts heat far better than plastic, making sure we aren't only warming one side of the hose.

Our water compartment. It's inside the 'basement' door. The white hose is our water, and it's connected directly to the campground water. The black cord is the 'heat tape' and you can see the orange sensor on it. This is before we had everything attached. Yes...there is a plug-in in our water compartment.

Water hose wrapped in tinfoil with the heat tape attached with tape.

We then wrapped the whole thing with pipe insulation tubes. They look like pool noodles.

Once everything was wrapped in the pool noodles, or pipe insulation tubes, or whatever they are called, we had a nice warm home for our water hose. It worked great! The only problem was, where the campground water comes out of the ground, in the metal pipe, it kept freezing. Our hose didn't freeze, but that doesn't help when no water gets to the hose in the first place. We learned to keep our holding tank full of fresh water, just in case. Usually by the afternoon, everything had defrosted and we could use the campground water, but there were quite a few mornings without water.

Then..yes, there's so much more...the campground shut the water off. For the winter. For real. I guess their pipes are too close to the surface and they freeze quite regularly. The owners have taken to shutting the water off for the winter and blowing out the lines, saving them the cost of repairing burst water lines. They then haul water and use a pump to fill the RVs here twice a week. They come every Monday and Thursday. Our holding tank is large enough to provide us with plenty of water...as long as we don't shower. 

Luckily, a short walk away is a shower house. In fact there are two shower houses. One where the laundry is, and one by the fish pond.  The showers are free, and in some ways, better than showering in the RV. I don't have to worry about using all the hot water, or using all the water period. I can have it as hot and as long as I would like. The problem though, we have to walk to the shower house. I also learned that if you shower on the weekend, you may...or may not...have hot water. I must share this story. Haha.

The outside of the shower house by the fish pond. Left is women's, right is men's.

Inside the women's side of the shower house. There's two toilets, two sinks, two showers, and plug ins if you need to use a blow dryer.

The shower stall.

One fine Saturday morning, I wandered over to the shower house by the fish pond, images of hot water dancing through my head. Upon arriving, I undressed, started the shower, and hopped in. Less than 30 seconds later...the water was ice cold. I jumped out as fast as I could. Shivering, I contemplated this. It happened so fast, my hair was still dry. I could just towel off and head back to the RV. Obviously all the hot water had been used up before I got there. Just as I decided to come back later, the water turned steamy again. Strange. 

Deciding someone had perhaps flushed a toilet, or ran a tap, or something in the men's side, I got back in the shower. Got my hair wet, and FREEZING WATER. Crap! Hop out again. Now my hair is wet, I'm freezing, and nothing is clean yet. Covered in goosebumps, shivering, I contemplate again. I really want a shower. It's been at least 30 seconds since I jumped out...maybe I should go home. 30 seconds is a long time when you're wet, cold and standing next to a shower. Hot steam comes from the shower. Ok, lets try this again. Hop back in the shower, warm up, put shampoo in my hair, get it nicely lathered, and FREEZING WATER. This has to be some sick joke. Now my hair is full of soap. I can't just leave. I have to rinse my hair out. Do I do it in the freezing water? This water is ice cold. It's not like it just cooled off and is merely warm. This stuff is being pumped straight from a glacier somewhere, I swear!

The goosebumps on me look like small mountains. I'm seriously debating running back to the RV with the soap in my hair and rinsing it off there. I think it's been a full minute. Yes, that's what I'll do. The hot isn't coming back this time, I can tell. I look at my towel....and heat comes from the shower. Really? I sigh, and hop in the shower. 

My hair rinsed, the water goes ice cold again. I jump out. I'm getting a little mad now. I'm plotting all of the things I will say to the campground owners about their defective shower and my horrible experience. The shower goes hot. Ok, that time it was only for a second or two. That's not bad. I'll see if I can wash before it goes cold again. Yes. I managed to finish my shower in blessed heat. Moral of the story, don't shower on Saturday. So far. I haven't had a problem during the week. We'll see if that changes.

We also discovered that the slides are about 5º cooler than the rest of the trailer. You know...the place where our beds are, and our living room couch, and our dining room table. Yeah. They are cooler. Our feet get cold on the floor. We have since skirted the trailer, and that has greatly improved the warmth of the floor, but you can still feel the cold through the walls of the slides. It's only -15ºC here. We aren't freezing by any means. I have to admit though, I'm a little concerned what the slides will feel like at -40ºC though. 

The RV with it's tinfoil, bubble wrap skirting on (I think it's called Flex Foil Insulation). The large propane tank is a new addition as well. A company comes out and fills it for us, all 380lbs. We just have to call them when it hits 30%. It's way more convenient and much cheaper than the smaller 30lb bottles.

In the meantime, we are wearing slippers, and we discovered an amazing invention. A mattress heater. No more getting into an icy cold bed. No, no! We turn the warmer on about an hour before we go to bed, and we crawl into a heated bliss. Oh my. It's heaven. The dogs love it too. Gunner never used to sleep on the bed, but he's finding his way on our bed more and more. Manny sleeps on top of the blankets now, he usually sleeps under them. I think it's too hot under them with the heater on. 

Lap blankets are our friend now too. Don't get me wrong...we aren't cold. It's just...cool, sort of. Like a slight draft, almost. It's hard to explain. We could probably turn the heat up and be just fine, but that would mean our furnace would be running more and our propane would be disappearing faster. We don't want that, so we use slippers, blankets, a space heater, and mattress warmers. With those things, we are toasty warm. The space heater is also to keep the furnace from running as often. Power is free here...propane isn't. 

So far, so good on the winter RV front. I will keep things updated more often, as we also have internet. Did I mention that? We have satellite internet now, and with being fairly careful, we can avoid going over our allotted 30 gigs a month. It may seem like a lot, but not if you consider that one HD movie from iTunes uses 4.5gigs. Or...a 5 minute youtube video can use 100mb. Thats roughly 1/10 of a gig. So 10 videos that are only 5 min long, and I've used a gig in less than an hour. We are downloading seasons of tv shows and movies once a week while I clean the apartment, and we are avoiding using the internet for things like, netflix, youtube, and facetime. We are, however, playing online games, specifically, Guild Wars 2. Before you panic...an hour of online gaming..on a pc...uses about 24 mb. I would have to play for 4 hours to use up what one 5 min video on youtube is using. BUT, it would be totally different if I was using a PS3 or an Xbox 360 to game online. The graphics are much higher, and can use as much as 100-200mb an hour.

I digress, all is well here. Until next time, take care =)

Our first visitors!

It's been two weeks since I last wrote, and it wasn't for lack of inspiration. Plenty has happened around our little abode, one of the things being that we ran out of data for our internet. We can buy more at any time, but we talked to a certain company and they assured us that they could provide us with internet, satellite internet and high speed!  Sound too good to be true? Yes, it was. We phoned them back a week later to arrange the hookup, drop off, meeting...whatever it is they had to do, and the person who answered said, "Oh, we have satellite television, but we don't have satellite internet. Besides...you're out of our internet coverage area." This may seem ridiculous, but it's about par with everything else we've experienced. We had one lady (different company) tell us that they had satellite internet, but we couldn't move the RV for 2 years because they had to hardwire it in, and only did a free move every 2 years. Huh? That makes no sense, but we couldn't convince her otherwise. So, we are continuing the search, and in the meantime, I may purchase more archaic internet from the campground. I say archaic because it's so slow it takes hours to do one blog upload.

So, what's new? Well, we spent a week back at the old house trying to get it cleaned out. We couldn't bring the RV because the transmission is gone in the truck, and as I write, we are still waiting for it to be fixed. Instead, we stayed with my Mom and had a wonderful time. The dogs love my mom. It's like they know that she's special because she's Grandma. They are as bad as the kids...Manny cries when he sees her house, he's so excited! Of course, we are excited too! She spoiled us, fed us like royalty, and wouldn't let us do a thing! I finally told her pay back was coming when she came to visit us. She wouldn't be allowed to do anything but relax.

Manny in the arms of his Na-Na....I wasn't sure he was coming home with us!

When we went home, my in-laws came out to visit us! Our very first visitors. I was a little nervous, I really wanted them to see the charm of what we were doing, and why we loved our new, strange life so  much. It's one thing to do something that you love, it's another to show it to someone else.  They brought their RV, a 33 ft bumper pull, and we managed to get them a spot in the campground. That's one thing that has amazed me, the campground is still full and it's nearly October. I'm sure in some places that might be normal, but here, it's dropping down to freezing temperatures at night, and there are still people pulling into the campground.

While the in-laws were here we did a lot of fishing, Heather (my sister in law) and Jack (my father in law) joined us on our morning walks and brought their two dogs, Scruffy (a Shit-tzu) and Darby (a Cocker Spaniel). It was nice walking with them in the mornings, all the dogs running around having a great time.

Heather and Jack ahead of us with the dogs.

Jack, Allan, and the dogs.

Jane (my mother-in law), William, Heather and I did a little shopping in town and I showed Jane some of the stores our small town boasts. While we were in town, Allan and Jack took off fishing. We all met up that night and went to the little pond that is in the campground so that the kids could go fishing. The campground owners stock the pond with rainbow trout. Although it's a small pond, it boasts some large fish. The lighting was wonderful that evening, so I took a few pictures <giggle>.

A huge trout Jack caught. He said it was the biggest he's ever brought into shore.

Allan teaching Heather to fly fish.

Pretty.

Jack, looking to hook that big rainbow again.

Jack furthering Heather's fly fishing instruction.

William watching his Daddy fish, net in hand.

A smaller trout that Allan caught. William's ready with the net.

We had a great time with the in-laws here. We were all sad to say goodbye. I hope that means that they will be visiting us again soon. 

There are a few other things on the list of happenings lately. My mom and Sam are coming up to see us this weekend. We're all very excited about that! We are in the process of getting the RV ready for the winter as well. I think I will devote a blog entry to that and all that we have done, including what Allan has done to organize the basement. I may also make a separate blog about how I've managed to fit everything into our RV and still have room to breath, haha. I may take some videos of everything too. I've also been hired (officially now) by Allan's company to clean their office and the crew house. The crew house will sleep up to 5 guys at a time. I have to wash the bedding and clean everything. That's where I am as I write this...they have internet! The crew house is clean right now and I'm just waiting on bedding that's in the wash. It gives me a chance to blog. Until I get internet at the RV, this may be the only time I have to post. William's plugging away at his schooling and doing well, I'm still making survival bracelets to sell to send Sam to Nicaragua with H.A.N.D.S (Helping Another Nation Develop Schools) at Easter next year. I've also been knitting dish cloths. I love knitted dishcloths! They just work so well!

I'm sure there's more that I could say, but that's probably enough for one day. I wish that I could write more, but internet is such an issue. Soon enough I will be able to write more often. There's so much more that I would like to share with everyone. I find that my thoughts get jumbled if I wait too long. Everything wants to come out at once, and it doesn't all fit <gig>. I'll post again as soon as I can.