News to you...and news to us!

Hello everyone! Well, it's been awhile since I posted because things have been crazy busy! We have spent a lot of time purging "stuff" and donating, donating, donating. We have also been trying to sell some of our larger items that we don't intend to keep. It's been nice to get rid of a lot of things, we still have a ways to go though and more things that need to go. It is incredible how much stuff accumulates over 15 years! 

New news: We have received our probable next military orders. Probable meaning...we have them, its just not on paper yet. We won't be discussing those online, but I will say we certainly weren't expecting the orders that we got. News to you...and news to us! We aren't quite sure yet what the new orders will mean for our plans to move into our RV full-time. We do know we will still be in it at least temporarily but we aren't sure if we will be able to go ahead with plans to full-time right now. We will just have to go with the flow and see how things play out. I will update as I can and I will post about our move as much as I can without getting into too much detail. So, if you are family or close friends and you already know about our orders...please respect our privacy and don't post about them online <3 If you are family or close friends and you don't know and want to know...feel free to contact me. 

Chris and one of the girls went to get our RV and it is now here locally parked in an RV storage. I will post pictures of it soon and hopefully do a video tour! Stay tuned for that! 

We have been able to take the bus out for a couple of nights on weekends to try things out. The first night we took it out we decided to go to Galveston. We found a really nice RV park way out on the island that was nearly empty. That made it nice for first timers who needed a lot of space to figure things out! It was a fairly new park and it had really nice bathrooms and you could even see the ocean from the deck they had built. The only downfall was that the pool was supposed to be open until 9 so I took the kids to swim at about 7:45 and it was locked. Nothing worse than kids standing there in full swim gear and then you have to tell them we can't swim. Thankfully they handled it well though and we occupied ourselves otherwise. 

While we were there we needed to de-winterize our bus, as it had been stored in Kentucky and still had the anti-freeze in the water lines. Seems silly to de-winterize just before winter, but if we are going to stay in it at all, it had to be done. Unfortunately, that evening we got there too late and it got very dark so we decided to just wait until next time. So we just used the facilities at the RV park and made do. We had a nice time and the girls saw lightening bugs! For most of them it was the first time ever for them to see them and they were amazed! The only goofy first timer mishap we had was that when we were putting out the bedroom slide we kept hearing an awful noise and it was kind of stuck. We were so worried that something was wrong with the slide. Well it turned out that the door to the washer/dryer had come open a little bit and was catching on the slide. Whew! We were so glad that was all it was. The door will need to be fixed up a little, but that's no big deal. Nothing compared to a broken slide! Now we won't ever forget to triple check the doors before we pull out the slides! 

This past weekend we decided to take the bus out again. One of the kids had a softball tournament in the next town over so we decided we would find an RV park in between our house and the fields and stay a couple nights. That way we would be closer to the early morning games, but also have another chance to get the water going. We loaded up and got to the park and started getting things set up. We had our directions and we began the process of de-winterizing. We hooked up the water hose to the tank and when we turned on the water, it leaked horribly. Sad face. We fiddled with it for a good hour and it started getting dark again. I was super frustrated and ready to just give up on it and do without water again...except that the thought of that made me angry, lol. Poor Chris had to suffer listening to me whine about that. We needed to go eat anyway so we all hopped in the car and went to the nearby Home Depot and grabbed a new hose. Thankfully, when we got back we hooked up the new hose and no leak! Again, so relieved that it was just a simple fix! Once that was working properly it didn't take us long at all to have the water up and running. Everything went smoothly the rest of the stay and I even emptied the tanks successfully before we left by remembering things I had read online. See...it pays to stay up half the night researching on RV blogs and website, lol! It was a fairly nice park. All of the people were friendly and the restrooms were clean enough. They had a small pool that we did get to use this time but it was pretty dirty. The kids didn't care but it would have been nice for it to be kept up a bit more. We did have a small problem with the people in the RV next to us letting their dog roam unleashed and it wandered over into our site. I wouldn't ordinarily mind much, but I had Bundy out and he doesn't appreciate other dogs coming around his people much. He threw a big fit and ran after the other dog...of course I had Bundy on his leash so I was able to keep him back and the kids shoo-ed that other dog back to his campsite. I'm sure my screaming at the people to get their dog back may have encouraged them to call the dog back also, lol. Keep yo dogs on a leash people!!! Or otherwise don't be sad if my protective boy eats your chihuahua, lol. 

We started to head back to RV storage this morning after our stay was over and Chris said it was driving funny. It didn't feel right to him. I was a little worried but after a little bit of time messing with some things he was able to get things going and it seemed ok. He was able to get it safely to storage. It was a successful trip and now that we have all the systems taken care of, we hope to take it for a more fun trip next time! 

I will continue to post updates about our adventure. Even if we end up having to be just part-timers, we will still post our updates about our trips! With our crew, there are sure to be some interesting things to tell about! Although things may not be going exactly how we hoped, we will choose to remain positive and trust God and just enjoy the family time in our bus when we get it. 

Making a dent...

Hey everyone! Still lots of clearing out going on here! Selling lots of larger items that we won't be storing during our adventure. We took a whole trailer load to Goodwill over the weekend. It feels good to start simplifying...sooooo much still to do. 

All of the paperwork should be complete this week and Chris will be going to get our new home on wheels! He is getting the GoPro all set up so that he can start making videos for our new YouTube channel. Stay tuned for more info. about that. 

Donation Station!

We did a lot of closet clean out today! We still have a long way to go but we have at least made a dent now. Enjoy the goofy video below of our donation drop off. 

Shopping...

Here are some photos from some of our RV shopping adventures. 

Row and rows...here we go! (This was actually a second visit here for Chris and some of the kids, but my first visit.)

I believe this was inside the Thor. Nice! But not the one we chose.

Neyci tries out the shower.

Bear tested out the bunks for us. She gave her approval.

This is in the Berkshire 40bh. Neyci tested her running here...all was good! 

Another Berkshire

This is the 2016 Berkshire with the "J-sofa". We LOVED this...but not the one we will live in.

What we told the kids we were buying.

We ended up choosing a used (like new) Berkshire 390bh from RVtrader. I will post pictures as soon as it is officially ours! 

And in the beginning....

Greetings family, friends, curious onlookers... 

Welcome to our journey. As some of our friends and family already know, we have decided to try out a new way of life. We toyed with the idea when we downsized from our 3,000+ sqft. home into an apartment half that size. Now we are ready to downsize even more. From about 1,500sqft., to about 350sqft. We are moving into an RV! Yep! All seven of us (plus Bundy). We are stepping away from societal norms, ridding ourselves of some of the "stuff" in our lives, and partaking in an adventure. Not that living in an RV is some new thing we invented, lol...but lets face it, it isn't the everyday norm. The best part is that YOU are invited on our journey. You will get to follow us here and see what we are up to. I plan to share the AMAZING things about our RVing life, and the not so amazing. 

As anyone who knows us knows... we will not currently be able to travel full-time due to Chris' job. So, we will be stationary for some periods of time. This will allow opportunities for our kids to connect in their community and still do their dance and sports. We have a PCS move coming up and we plan to journey to our new location (wherever that may be), in our home on wheels. We are ALL very excited about this. There are some nerves involved...but we all agree that we can't know until we have tried it and if we hate it, we can just un-do it. So...here we go!!!! 

We spent countless hours online researching what type of RV would be best suited for our family. After looking at a hundred Youtube videos and at least a thousand different RV's online, we have decided to go with a Class A diesel pusher with bunks. It is really important to us that the older girls have their own space, even if it is a small space. We are working on the buying process now, and hope to have our new (to us) RV soon. We will still be in our apartment for a short time before we are able to completely move into our new home. 

Look forward to posts with photos and videos as we begin to downsize. Also, look forward to a video tour of our new home when it arrives in just a couple of weeks!!! 

Join us as we stretch. As we reach outside the box. Normal is boring and we plan to teach our children that they don't have to do things the way everyone else does. This is a beautiful country we live in. Lets go look at it!!! 

Leave it to us to be a little bit of crazy....this is how we roll!