Monday, December 27, 2010

2010!

I glanced at the calendar and realized that this is our final week of 2010. Wow! Where has this year gone? How could this year be over already?

Every year seems to get shorter. It goes by so fast. Maybe it’s just me!

The year 2010 had some rough spots for us. But those rough spots have given us additional strength and we managed to pull ourselves right through it. This year has also been a productive year for us. We have come a long way in our preparations for fulltiming.

February; my mother finished her chemo treatments and in May she finished her radiation. It has all paid off because she is now CANCER FREE!

She is feeling great with the exception of dealing with occasional lymphedema symptoms. She walks a few miles a couple times of week and has started taking a pilates class.

March; Dawn celebrated fifty-two years. We had a great time celebrating her birthday. Our Jesse passed away. She was the oldest of our four legged kids. We miss her dearly.

April; I had a return of Bell’s palsy. It reoccurs every time I have a severe sinus infection. I took a week off to recover. This is like the fifth time I’ve had it.

May; Mom completed her radiation. We had a lot of garage sales and hauled a lot of STUFF off.

June; Dawn had another bout with cluster headaches. We are NOT falling apart. We are only suffering slight setbacks.

July; my only living uncle was diagnosed with cancer. He has since undergone chemo treatments and is now in REMISSION.

August; my oldest niece got married. It was a beautiful wedding. This newly- wed couple has already had an addition to their family. Yes, they are the proud parents of a new puppy.

September; our neighbor’s donkey, Blessing had a baby girl this summer. Her name is Pumpkin. She is the cutest little donkey kid on the block.

October; we suffered a huge lose that we shared with our blogging friends when Bruce and Margie’s lives were cut short. They were ran over and killed by a reckless driver while they were enjoying a daily walk. Margie was great about leaving helpful and funny comments on our post. They are missed by many.

November; I celebrated fifty years. It doesn’t seem possible that either of us could be in our fifties. Physically that might be so, but mentally we are somewhere in our thirties. Love the thirties, old enough to know better, but crazy enough to do it anyway!

December, Abbey visited the groomers. She wasn’t happy about going but she seems to feel better since she went.

Throughout the year we made a lot of progress such as; selling the hot tub, selling the piano and some odd and in furniture.

We cleaned out the RV garage. We’ve made many trips to the dumpster and got rid of six mattresses and box springs.

We bought a new sofa and electric heater. Installed bedside shelves and a new kitchen sink faucet. We’re now officially finished redecorating the interior of our fifth wheel.

Our truck got a new airflow tailgate and new tires.

This year also gave us the opportunity to reconnect with old friends and make some new friends.

Our spare time has been spent boxing up and throwing out.

We’re NOT going to make any New Year’s Resolutions!

2011 is going to be full of changes as it is. That’s right; there will be plenty of changes this year without the additional burden of making New Year’s resolutions.


Travel Safe Dawn and Denise

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Christmas Poem


Recipe for Christmas All Year Long

Take a heap of child-like wonder
 That opens up our eyes
To the unexpected gifts in life—
Each day a sweet surprise

Mix in fond appreciation
For the people whom we know;
Like festive Christmas candles,
Each one has a special glow.

Add some giggles and some laughter,
A dash of Christmas food
Amazing how a piece of pie
Improves our attitude!

Stir it all with human kindness;
Wrap it up in love and peace,
Decorate with optimism, and
Our joy will never cease.

If we use this healthy recipe,
We know we will remember
To be in the Christmas spirit,
Even when it's not December

~J Fuchs


Travel Safe Dawn and Denise

Monday, December 20, 2010

Merry Christmas & Happy Holiday

We just wanted to say "MERRY CHRISTMAS" to all our great blog friends.

We wish everyone a happy and safe holiday.

Travel Safe
Dawn and Denise

Thursday, December 16, 2010

We are Pumped!

The weather here has been cold and windy one day and warm and windy the next. Yesterday was a warm windy day. We seem to get more done on those days. Last night we made another dumpster visit with a truck load of trash. I never realized how trashy we were!

On the way home from our dumpster visit Dawn made the remark that no one seems to notice how much we’ve done around the house. A few people have made comments about how bare it’s looking but I don’t think it has really sunk in. We talked about the possibility that maybe no one believes that we’re really going to become fulltimers. My mother knows that we are serious but I think she is the only one. She is excited for us and looks forward to coming to visit us when we are staying in interesting places that she wants to visit.

I think part of the problem is that other people can’t phantom the idea of living in an RV and staying wherever you want. They can’t wrap their heads around the notion of NOT being tied down to a job, house and other obligations.

Let’s face it, most people live in a mental rut of how life should be lived and can’t think outside the box. We’re conditioned as children that we must reside in a stationary house and working long hours at an understaffed company in order to earn a good living. Because of that mind set we spend our earnings on a lot of material things that are suppose to make us happy. The more money we make the more money we spend. It is a crazy!

We then become so attached to our material possessions that we feel we can’t live without them or feel trapped because we have invested so much just acquiring them. It is an endless cycle.

Dawn and I are fortunate enough that we are both on the same page and agreed that we can do without all the material possessions. We want to get out there and live our lives.

There is so much we want to do and see. We’re not going to let any material possessions keep us from moving forward and doing what we both enjoy doing. EXPLORING.

We’re looking forward to visiting all the interesting places our fellow RV friends have visited. We want to visit the east and the west coasts. We want to live along the oceans. We want to eat fresh seafood and relax on the beach. We also want to see everything that lays between those oceans.

We’re pumped!

We could be packed up and out of here tomorrow with little effort. We just need to sell the house.

Travel Safe
Dawn and Denise

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Christmas Shopping

We've been busy getting things done around the house. Saturday I took full advantage of the warm weather and worked in the yard. Our flower beds are in desperate need of some serious care. I spent about five hours removing some dead plants and thinning out some others. I reduced the size of a couple of the beds. It was a lot of hard work but it sure looks better. I now have to wait for another warm day so I can get back out there and see how much more I can get done.

One thing for sure, I'm sore from all that yard work.

We spent Sunday running some errands and doing a little Christmas shopping. Dawn loves Hickory Farms smoked cheese and we had to go to the local mall to get it. OMG! What a MAD house that was. We had to walk half way around the mall before we found the Hickory Farms kiosk.

They were giving out samples and that is where the danger is. They offer you a sample. One bite and you’re instantly hooked. We bought several of the smoked cheese, a jar of Hot & Sweet mustard, a couple of cheese balls and one ham sausage. They hooked us and reeled us in before we knew what hit us!

It’s all good! Dawn is now a happy girl.

We've been buying each other practical gifts for Christmas this year. One example is a hand mixer. Ours went out on us a couple of months ago and we just haven’t gotten around to getting a new one until now. We found a good deal on one at Target. It was $19.99.


Dawn found a Corelle dish pattern she really liked on sale at Kroger. This pattern is called Pewter. We needed a few more plates and bowls anyway. We bought a 16 piece box set at Kroger.

I needed a new pair of house shoes and we found some at JC Penny’s. The really great thing about these house shoes is the fact they were on sale and Dawn had a coupon for ten dollars off. I believe this is the cheapest pair of house shoes I have ever had. The grand total was $3.45. WOW! What a deal!



We’re boxing up things every few days and we had added more to our garage sale garage.

Travel Safe
Dawn and Denise

Thursday, December 9, 2010

What's This World Coming To?

OMG, Is it just me or is everyone else as upset over all the news about these poor children that are being abused and or even killed by their own parents. It’s just insane.

A brother and sister ages 3 and 4 year old that were killed by their father in Mississippi and buried alongside the road.

The three little brother ages 5, 7 and 9 years old are missing in Michigan.

What about the little 10 year old girl from North Carolina that survived cancer only to be killed and cut into pieces by her stepmother and or father.

Everyday there is a new story in the news regarding children that are abused or killed by their own family members.

What on earth is wrong with these people? I’m truly disturbed by all the violence towards children. There should be a special place for these people that abuse, molest and kill children.

What could a child possibly do that would warrant such drastic measures. Were these monsters never children themselves? What could possibly be going on in their lives that would make them snap and do such terrible things?

There are thousands of caring and loving people in this world that would gladly open their hearts and their homes to these children whose parents evidently don’t care to love and protect.

It is a long drawn out ordeal to adopt a child. It takes money, attorneys and patients. You have to be interviewed and your home inspected, your income checked out and your background investigated. It’s almost as difficult to adopt a pet. Yet, anyone can have a child with no questions asked. There are no interviews, no income requirements and no background checks. Some of these people wouldn’t even make decent pet owners.

I have come to believe that some people think their children are like property and they can treat them anyway that want.

If these people find their children difficult to handle or realize they’re just not cut out for the parenting job, why don’t they find someone who is?

I am so sorry about the rant, it’s just upsetting how often we are hearing this sort of thing on the news recently.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

New Christmas Tree

I’m still trying to get use to these short days. I’m able to stay awake until about eight-thirty now! I’m trying to stay busy when I get home in the afternoons. That means we have packing up more boxes. It’s really starting to look pretty bare around the house.

A few comments were made regarding the new table we have. We are down-sizing but we aren’t getting rid of everything. We’re planning on storing a few pieces of furniture that we just can’t part with right now. The table will be one of those pieces. We are very serious about getting rid of a lot of our things. If you could have seen all that we HAD compared to what we have now, you would see just serious we are.

We want to hang on to some of the things that are really special to us so if and when we find someplace we want to settle into permanently we will have our special things to use again.

We are now using one small corner of our large RV garage to store the things we want to keep. It is so nice to have that building almost completely cleaned out. Wow, that is one major feat!! We will never again accumulate that much JUNK.

We went all out and bought a new Christmas tree. Kohl’s was having a sale last weekend. They had a cute little four foot pre-lit tree for $39.99. Wait, It was on sale for $15.99. Wait we had a $10.00 off coupon. That made it $5.99. Wait, we also had a 15% off and that took care of the tax. We ended up paying $5.49 for our new RV Christmas tree!!! What a deal!



This little tree is small enough to fit nicely into our fifth wheel.  It's four feet tall and about two foot around at the bottom.

Monday, December 6, 2010

From Trash to Treasure

Dawn and I both love old well worn things. We have an old buffet hutch in our kitchen that was inches away from being sent to the garbage. It is an old piece of furnture with the paint peeling off but we love it. We love things with character.

Dawn's father made a wooden tool box when he was young. It measures some where around two foot wide by one foot deep by two feet tall. We brought it in and cleaned it up. We painted the box black and left the drawers the natural wood color. It has many small drawers on it.

We bought four table legs to mount to the bottum and it is now our mail organizer table.
 
 
 
We recently saved some old sewing machine legs from a trip to the dump. A friend of ours had put them out for the garbage man to collect. We threw them in the back of the truck and took them home. 

We need some one to weld a support to the legs in order to hold a piece of wood, so we could make a table out of it. I took them to work and asked about getting them welded up. The welder told me they were cast iron and it would cause them to become brittle if they were welded. Too bad.

A good friend that is a plumber said he could fix it right up for us. He asked what our plans for the legs were. I explained that we thought it would make a nice table or desk. That we were going to paint the legs black and put a piece of wood on the top. He told us we would need to take it home and work on it for a few days.

A few days later he bought the legs back and this is what it looks like now.


He not only added a support for the two legs but he also painted it and added a beautiful piece of wood to the top. We just love it.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Abbey's New Look

Well, This is it! Abbey before and after groomers.

They did a great job! Abbey was absolutely terrified. It was something that had to be done.

She is one of the sweetest little dogs I have ever met. Why she took up with me, I don't know but I feel so fortunate to have her in my life.

She can sure give the boys a run for their money. When they run and play, she is right in the middle of it. They pull her off the sofa by her ears and they wrestle with her just like they do each other. She is one tough little cookie.



The boys like to lay on the back of the sofa in front of the window. She has laso learned how to get up there too. Here she is with Willy .

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Abbey Goes to Groomers

Our little girl Abby goes to the groomers for the first time today since she has come to live with us. We have been doing our best to clip her at home. She is a Shih Tzu. To me Shih Tuz means lots of hair! We have had her since last July and haven't taken her to a groomer because we wanted her to trust us first. She was abandon and we don't know her history. She gets nervous and we didn't want to scare her to badly.

She didn't need a groomer when we first got her because she didn't have much hair. She was so infested with fleas that most of her hair was gone. She now has a beautiful coat of hair and it needs to be groomed by a professional.

This picture was taken after she had been treated for the fleas and her coat was growing back in.


We will post pictures later of the results of her day at the groomers.