Happy Thanksgiving to all!!

WOW ! Where has the time gone?? This year is really flying by for Trish and I. We are still working on the old farmhouse and things are coming along everyday now. We decided to cook Thanksgiving dinner today in a temporary makeshift kitchen in the house. I hooked up the stove last night and set up a couple of the cabinets with plywood countertops and cut a 4 foot square piece of plywood for a table top. This should be an adventure! You know one thing I am most thankful for is Trish's ability to make lemonade from a lemon... She always makes things work out.

We are waiting on Lowes to deliver the rest of the appliances today so we will have a fridge to store all the food she and Christi are cooking today. It is a very special treat to have Christi and JJ here for the holidays. It's so much fun to have them here and a real adventure through the eyes of a 4 year old. I stay tired but am happy! Jeremy is still in Bagdad until February so we prey for his safety everyday and look forward to his return, even though it will be to Japan. Christi is due to leave here on January 9th and I know she can hardly wait to see Jeremy. JJ talks about "his Daddy" all the time and so I know this is so hard on him as he really misses him.

I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving and stay safe. We are looking forward to some quality family time. We sure wish Jimmy could be here but he has started a new Job so he has to work. He is trying to work it out to come down for Christmas so maybe we can all be together which would be great. It has been quite a few years since we have all been together for Christmas, which would be spectacular.

We sure miss everybody, it is just about time for a family reunion. Hope to see you all soon in 2010!

Remodeling The old Farmhouse Inside

Well now that the new metal roof, windows and siding are finished it's time to work on the inside. During the demolition work of the inside we decided to remove all but one ceiling and all the interior walls except the bathroom. We changed the arrangement of the kitchen/dining and also we turned two small bedrooms into one large master bedroom. So when we finish it will be a two bedroom, living room, kitchen dining area, one bathroom and a laundry room. 1100 square feet in total. Should be just right for the two of us... They delivered the drywall a couple weeks ago so as soon as I finish the electrical rough in the drywall crew will be scheduled and we can begin to paint, install floors and move our stuff into the house. I hope to spend the winter finishing up the clearing of brush on all property lines. Our one site RV park should be open for a visitor by January of 2010... I will add a few pictures of the interior as soon as the drywall begins to take shape. More later!

A new Chapter Begins...

Well alot has happened since my last post!  We left Phoenix and made our trip to Florida for Trish's doctor appointment.  The trip was great  with the only problem being an air bag on the truck failed however we made it to Panama City Beach with ease.  Fuel mileage for the truck was 12.8 average.  Not too bad...

After Trish's doctor appointment we decided we would look for a piece of property to put up a building to store our stuff that we are paying $300+ per month on.  We stayed at Southern Trail RV park in Vernon, FL for the months of March and April while we searched for the right property to buy.  After two months we found a foreclosed property in Alford, Florida (50 miles north of Panama City) with about 2 acres, an old farm house, 3 out buildings, two septic tanks and two wells.  Man what a find!!!  Perfect for fulltime RVers!  We decided to renovate the house, move our furniture in and then head back down the road!  COOL piece of property!

Well... Not so quick...  The transaction to purchase the property was a very long and complicated ordeal...  I won't bore you with all the details but I think I know why the banks and government are going broke...  This was the most complicated purchase of real property I have ever made in my entire life.  Enough of that...  So we decided to completely gut the house and renovate it, put in a garden and plant a fruit tree orchard.  This will be our home base.  We started by building a full hook up site for the 5th wheel and then started on the house, garden and orchard.

I'll update the pictures to give you an idea of what we are working on...

More later... I'll try not to let so much time go by for the next update.  The last 3 months have been a complete BLURRRRR...

JC

Washer Dryer Project is FINISHED !

Well we worked on the dryer until 10:00PM last night and finished it finally! The dryer came in 2 days early so we made the final trip to Best Buy and picked up the final piece to the puzzle. This dryer has a unique mounting system as it "hangs on the wall" as opposed to sitting on top of the washer. At 91 pounds you can believe it was a challenge to get it up and hang it on the mounting system. Trish and I used the top of the washer and a home made fulcrum system and after much wrestling managed to get it into place. The 240 volt circuit I installed with the separate 30 amp breaker panel worked perfect. The only thing left to do is reinstall the trim at the bottom of the laundry closet and the doors... DONE!!

This won't save money for a long time but it sure is going to make our life on the road easier and give us more time to do the things we want to do. The weather here in Phoenix has been really nice. Different from Florida as it is cool in the evening and warm in the day. We are really having a good time! More later... Jim

Rig Projects...Like peeling an onion!

Have you ever noticed how a simple project on your Rig has a way of tuning into anything but simple??? Our rig came from the factory, " Washer Dryer Ready" so you would think... Go buy and washer and dryer and set it in place and hook it up... Right??? Well not exactly... Not even close... This has turned into a four week project, (so far) and the last dryer I ordered will not be here until February 2. This set makes the 3rd set I have ordered and received. The first two just would not fit exactly right. So I have had to reconfigure the washer hookups, and relocate them 2 inches toward the rear of the laundry closet and move the water hook ups from the right hand side to the rear of the closet. So far I have moved the washer into and out of the closet 7 times to get the perfect location, allowing the doors to be reinstalled on the closet. We washed 4 loads of laundry last night and everything worked flawlessly!! The dryer is the next part of the project... This dryer will actually "hang" on the wall! This is a very interesting design. I still don't know if I am strong enough to lift and set it into the mounting system... I have started taking extra vitamins and am in a rigorous training program to get into better shape for this project... Hope it works!!

More later and will post some photos of the project...

Jim

What a Holiday!!

Well, the holidays for 2008 are in the history book and it's time to look forward to 2009! Trish and I spent Christmas in Williams, AZ this year ... Just the two of us. We had planned to spend it at the Grand Canyon but got snowed in about 50 miles south in the small town of Williams. However, we did have a lot of fun! We have not seen snow like that in 35 years! It was a good thing we left the rig in Phoenix and took the Jeep with 4WD, it sure came in handy not to mention fun! After two day in Williams the storm blew through and they did a good job of clearing the roads so we spent a full day up at the canyon. We viewed it from about ten different locations and then headed to Flagstaff to spend the night..

Trish took lots of pictures, you can see some of them by viewing the "current sites" at the upper left side of this page. I'll leave those pictures up until we take another day trip. Speaking of day trip... we were really blown away to discover Sedona, AZ on our way back to Phoenix. We decided to make Sedona our next day trip. Of course it's time to go back to work for a while to refill the coffers.

Our first few weeks here have been fun but not much success with selling photos... We are hoping that the future will be better now that the holidays are over. I think things would be better if people did not watch the NEWS... Doom & Gloom! It is time for people to go back to living their life and quit acting like sheep and buying into "how bad things are" Oh well don't get me started on that... All I have to say is we are looking forward to 2009... Sales, travel, experiences... After all, that is why we became fulltimers... FULLTIME living our dream, and smelling the flowers along the way!

More later... HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Jim & Trish