A lot has happened since I wrote last, so I hope you have your cup of coffee and are good and comfy!

As you can see from the title – we are finally full-timers in our RV!  We have been living in our coach since Aug 9, but I didn’t consider us full-timers until we didn’t have our house anymore.  We closed this past Friday, Aug 29 at 11am.  The week before was completely crazy,

deciding where last minute things would go; either to the container, to the coach, to one of my kids, Goodwill, sell it, whatever.  We got it done, and were completely out of the house by the night before.

The buyers came and did their walk-through on Wednesday evening.  I decided I didn’t want to be there for it, as I had been pretty emotional that day.  I went to drop things off at Goodwill and get gas in my car.  When I got back, they were still there so I went in and said hello.  Bill was there also, he had wanted to explain a few things to the new guy.  They were so excited – which really helped me a lot.  They had no complaints, even though I didn’t fix the paint in the family room.

It hit me as the house got more and more empty, this will be the last place I will live with my kids as a family.  I just couldn’t shake it, but it did alternate with the extreme excitement of finally being free from the grass cutting, the school and property taxes, the huge electric bills, etc.  Those things are small compared to the freedom from being in the same place all the time, and moving as we want to and seeing all the things we want to see in this awesome country of ours!

I believe it is important to honor the melancholy, don’t you?  I mean, it is part of it. There is a difference between honoring it and dwelling on it. I am not dwelling on it,but just recognizing this is the changing of an era, our focus will be more on us, and less on the kids now.  I think I’ve said it before, I spent most of my adult like raising my kids, it isn’t easy switching gears like this.  It helps that they are both ok with us doing this; their comments amounting to something like “Can’t believe it took you this long to do it”, stuff like that.  But the reality is the house we just sold is where my kids will call “home” as they did most of their growing up there.  We moved to this house when they were 11 and 12, so all their teenage years and on into college and all the boyfriend, girlfriend stuff.  Where I had band parent meetings and helped my son ready for his Boy Scout trips and do Michelle’s hair and help her dress for her prom.  After living in KY for 6 years (away from our families) and traveling for holidays, we were very happy to finally host holidays again at this house in PA, as we had in NJ.  There were times I would have 20 people staying over!  We were always willing to make room for anyone who wanted to come!

Bill and I spent Saturday getting the coach organized a bit more than it was.  For several days before closing, I would bring something here and just leave it, not knowing where to put it.  There was stuff that needed to go in the basement area, so Bill had everything out and put it back away in a more organized way.  We had gotten weighed on the way back from East Stroudtsburg and we are pretty close on weight, so we might have to do a bit more “purging” as time goes by.  I have heard from others that it is an ongoing process.  Our son and his fiance came and had lunch with us Saturday also, and took the last of their items back to their place.  They will be moving into a larger place this month – which they are very excited about and which made it nice b/c they could take some stuff from us, like a couch and big screen TV, that they wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.

Saturday night we had friends, Matt and Lisa visit us here.  We had a pork tenderloin for dinner, which Bill cooked on the grill – YUM!  Lisa brought Caesar salad and corn on the cob – two of my favorites!  They have been very good friends to us during our time here in PA, and I am sure we will see them when we visit this area again. Our kids were in Marching Band together and we car-pooled quite a bit, and also went on some of the trips together, like to Winchester, VA for the Apple Blossom Festival and Disney World, where they marched on Main St. USA.  Many happy memories!

Sunday, we slept in pretty late (for us) not even starting coffee til almost 9am!  We went in the later afternoon and visited friends, Cori and Greg at their campsite at Brandywine Creek Campground.  They got us a great card, perfect sentiment for the occasion “The World is Full of Dreamers…   but only some of them have what it takes to actually go after what they want”  How perfect is that?  Made me smile again to re-read it just now!   They also had a bottle of Korbel Champagne for us!  That was so unexpected and such a thoughtful thing!  They have really been great friends!

Monday we went to NJ to see Bill’s brother and bring a thing or two to the container, stuff we had hoped to keep in the coach, but nope – no room.  It’s all good.  It (the 40′ x 8′ container) is pretty full – and I am terrible about marking things, so Bill gets annoyed at me b/c he sees a box and says “what’s in this box – it isn’t marked” and I say “I have no idea”.  Then we exchange a few more words that I don’t need to share and then we get over it.  Such is life, right?

Today I did laundry at the campground laundromat for the first time.  WOW!  expensive!  $2.50 per load for washer (I had 3 loads) and $2.50 per load for 50 minutes on the dryer.  What happened to like $.10 per 10 minutes for a dryer?  At least it was clean – otherwise I would have had to go out and find a different facility.  Since I hang dry quite a bit of things, I was able to only need 2 dryers, so $12.50 – not horrible.  That was about 2 weeks worth, maybe a day or two more.  I figured I would do laundry twice per month.

We have made some decisions about where we are going when.  We will be leaving here Friday and heading to Pittsburgh , staying at Mountain Top CG in Tarentum, to visit our daughter for a week!  After that we will come back to this area, where we got a site at the same CG Cori and Greg are at!  We will be there for 2 weeks, then off to IN for coach repairs then back to Brandywine Creek CG for 2 more weeks.  Bill wants to get the solar, auxiliary fuel tank, tool box, mount the generators, etc. all taken care of before we “take off”.  I am fine with that!  I have reservations for Atlanta area, Stone Mountain Park CG, arriving Nov 10 and leaving Nov 18.  Then we have a few days to make our way to Clearwater, FL where we will stay for the holidays.  Since Bill is working those extra 2 weeks, we decided to splurge and we are going to the Keys for 2 weeks, we are reserved for site #191 at Sunshine Key RV Resort on Big Pine Key, MM 38.  We are so excited!  We will have a few weeks before the RV Dreams Boondocking Rally Feb 8 through 15th.  After that, who knows?  I am going to add a page with CG reviews.

I know I haven’t posted any new “pages” with new recipes or to finish my “about” section recently, but I promise I will have more time now that I don’t have a house to empty.

Thanks again for following along!  Should start getting good now!