Two weeks in!

It's official!

We're officially full time RVers, or full-timers as they are called in the RVing world!  We got to the campground yesterday,  but we have been staying in the trailer at our old house since Thursday as the movers were packing up. So far, it's really been great!  I have mentioned to Tom a few times that I really don't feel like I'm missing out on anything as far as "stuff" goes. The only thing that's really been a bummer is the length of the bed. It would be great if it would be just 4 inches longer (TWSS-sorry). I'll adjust eventually.

We got the second piece of furniture we had built and  it's perfect.  It fits the rest of our clothes,  my babywearing wraps, and Will's cloth diapers fantastically. I really couldn't be happier with it!

Speaking of cloth diapers,  that was something I was really apprehensive about. I have to wash them every other day,  and I was not looking forward to the cost or time that I was going to have to spend at the laundromat.  So I started researching.  After many hours of research and reading reviews, I found a portable washing machine- and it was on sale! I have done several loads of laundry so far, and I'm really impressed with how it cleans, and how quiet it is. Yay! (I will have to link it later because I'm posting this mobile and it won't let me now even though I was able to link before.) It was on sale for $199, and I've done 8 loads of laundry (3 cycles of that was a load of cloth diapers). I figure I could do two of my loads of laundry in a real washer, except for the cloth, which will always be three cycles. At $1.25/load, I figured I have saved around $9 at the laundromat so far. I will spare myself from acknowledging how many loads I need to do to break even, but not having to go to the laundromat holds a lot of value for me.

Homeschooling has been going really well. Cameron is enjoying the lessons, and I have been enjoying teaching him so much! His reading skills are consistently advancing,  and he is spelling up a storm. 

We've all enjoyed spending more time outside and the profound peace and quiet here. Some non-crappy WiFi would be nice though...

**update on the bed issue** I was in bed almost asleep (usually when I have my brightest ideas), when it came to me- just slide the bed out! We don't sleep with our heads right at the top of the bed any way, and our pillows wouldn't be in danger of being lost to a crack only a couple of inches wide. Problem solved, and we slumbered in non-foot dangling peace. Huzzah! 

Moving in

Well we're 5 days out from our first night full-timing! We're slowly moving in, and I wanted to share some of the modifications that we've been working on. We still have one major one that will hopefully be done on Tuesday (a drawer unit for the kids' bedroom). We got the first piece that we had made, and I just love it.

We met the carpenter at our local farmer's market about a month ago, and he has been fantastic to work with! The piece we picked up today is a cabinet we'll be using as our entertainment center. The house for our game/Netflix systems, movies, accessories, and whatever else we can fit. Tom and I both think it makes Irv (what we've been calling our RV- creative, I know) look and feel much more homey.

I drew up the plans, and our carpenter, James executed them fantastically:

Note that my youngest child does actually wear clothes on occasion, despite most of the photo evidence suggesting otherwise.

We wanted the back to be open to save on weight, and allow for air circulation. There was also a heating vent in the wall that we needed to accommodate for, so we had James cut a hole in the bottom shelf, and we fed the vent through that and attached it to the bottom along with anchors to the walls.

Yay!

We also added hinges to all of the covers for the bench seating, as well as handles and slam guards for easier access, and finger protection.William likes to help- pants optional.

This is the bottom bunk in the boys' room. There will be a set of drawers there in the next couple of days, but to cover the plywood, I found a cute rug, and stapled it down, which will be great for twinkle toes hopping into the upper bunk.

Still so much more to do, but it's coming along!

We started homeschool this past week with Cam, who is in 1st grade this year. He loves math, but doesn't love writing, so I've been trying to sneak it in anywhere I can. He has actually enjoyed helping me write lists, which helps me, and he gets handwriting and spelling practice- win, win! We've been talking a ton about US geography and history, and planning our route west. I am so excited for all of the historical sites we're planning on seeing. We've also been doing a ton of reading, and talking about deadly sea animals in the waters off of Australia. Blue Ringed octopus is a favorite, with cone snail coming in second.


Someone bought our couch and dining room table, so we're happy to have two big things gone! Back to the sorting. I gave myself a big high five when I finished the junk drawer today. Next stop- linen closet!

Our carpenter, James said he is willing to ship pieces, and is open to all sorts of custom work. His contact info: James Godfrey, Simply Pine Furniture, jimswoodwork@vermontel.net . He really is a great guy, and was fun and easy to work with!

Tick tock, tick tock

We are down to 10 days until move in! These last few days have been spent sorting, making modifications (I promise pictures soon!), sorting, and more sorting. Our items are not selling as quickly as I would hope. Today we are planning on going to Once Upon A Child, a kid's consignment store, to hopefully take care of a lot of our kid's 'stuff'. Hopefully we'll have a yard sale next weekend and most of our things can find new homes.

We had a soft start of our official homeschooling year yesterday. My goal is to be more relaxed about checking off all of the boxes, and let go of what school SHOULD look like. That's a bit difficult for a type A-er like myself. Cameron (6yrs, and 1st grade) practiced his writing (generally his least favorite subject) by writing out our grocery list, which he actually enjoyed. He really likes being in charge of things, and proudly wrote out each item, and checked them off as we read them to us and we added it to the cart- reading practice! We covered math by looking at the prices on the grocery items, and talking about adding. We also talked about nutrition during an intense stand off about him finishing his lunch.

I'm really looking forward to our drive cross-country, and all of the teaching opportunities there will be at all of the places we stop at. For now I am going with the flow and creating curriculum on the fly, but the plan is to enroll him in a charter school when we get to CA, where they will help with curriculum, and help oversee that he is learning what he needs to. I think having some guidance for a while will help me to get my homeschooling feet under me, and help build confidence as his instructor. We're also planning on signing him up for classes through a group who meets at Disneyland for classes a couple of times a month. I mean, how freaking cool is that?!

Here are some pictures of our RV before we started making any modifications to it. It's a 2013 North Trail 33TBUD by Heartland, and a video walk through with some snazzy music courtesy of RV world and a YouTube search:

 Kitchen/dining area. I like the flow that the island offers, as well as the additional counter space.

 Living room area. We're having a cabinet built to go under the TV that will store movies, video game systems, and whatever else will fit in there.

 Bathroom. I *think* we're planning on installing a shelf above the toilet for towel storage. We're still working on that.

 Part of the master bedroom. We've put laundry baskets in the space between this wall and bed.

 Master continued.

 Kid's room. We removed the upper bunk, as we won't need it, and it blocks the light from the window when it's flipped up to be able to use the table. This will be our homeschooling hub!

 Kid's bedroom cont.

 Storage! I'm planning on using that bottom cabinet for all of my craftery. My goal is to fit my sewing machine, crochet accessories, Cricut, and whatever else I can squeeze in there. Fingers crossed!

Not a great picture, but this is where Cam will sleep. He'll be on the upper bunk, and we're having a drawer unit made to replace the lower bunk for more clothes storage for Tom and me, as well as the kids, and I'm even getting cubbies to store my babywearing gear!

My plan is to post pictures after we're done with all of the modifications in one big post. Back to sorting!

Did that really just happen?

I figured that I would start this bad boy off by explaining how we got to our decision to live in an RV full time.

First I'll begin by saying, I expect the readership of this blog to be approximately 4, and I created it with the intent of making a virtual scrap book for our family to be able to look back on our latest adventure (potential disaster?).

We are currently stationed in the beautiful state of Vermont finishing up Tom's tour on recruiting duty. He recently got orders to return to Camp Pendleton in Southern California, and we have been excitedly discussing our trip across the country. We quickly decided that we wanted to take our time driving, to be able to see as much of the US as possible, with plans on visiting the Marine Corps Museum in Virginia, Yellowstone National Park, Reno/Lake Tahoe, and wherever else we can get to along that route.

The following shows the progression of summed up conversations that happened over a couple month period on how an extended cross-country move ended up with us deciding to live in an RV full time:

1. "Hey, we should rent an RV and just tow our car behind for the trip- I bet that would be way cheaper than hotel rooms, and way more fun!"
2. "Crap on a cracker! Renting an RV is crazy expensive for that long. Scratch that idea."
3. "...well if it's that much to rent, maybe we could think about buying a little bitty travel trailer- that would be rad!"
4. "It's not really smart of us to buy a travel trailer that will just sit in our driveway for the most part after we get there, and have another payment we have to deal with." (<---Tom as the voice of reason.)
5. Housing on Camp Pendleton tells us there is a 6-8 month wait for the housing area we want to be in.
6. "What if we went totally rogue and bought a big RV and lived in it for a while? It would be perfect for our move, plus we could save sooooo much money every month! We could work on paying off debt, we could live on the beach, spend more good quality time together, live simply."
7. "Are you crazy?! Nerp, no thank you, I don't think so." (<----Tom as the voice of reason. Are you sensing the theme?)
8. Christine goes into research mode. It's how I process things. I have been reading as much as I can get my hands on about living in an RV full time. I researched RV companies, floor plans, what would work with our truck, costs, considerations, read as many blogs as I could find. I'll spare you the full extent of my research, but it was an exhaustive effort. We went to RV dealerships in any of the few moments Tom had off of work, we talked, we discussed, we considered.
9. "Let's do this!"
10. "Heck no we aren't doing this, we're freaking nuts for even considering this!" (collective)
11. We're on board!
12. We're not.
13. We are!
14. We're not.
15. "This could really work, but we'd have to be committed to living in this for at least 6 months." We decide to take the plunge and now have a 38 foot travel trailer sitting in our driveway waiting for us to move in!

We move into our travel trailer in exactly 15 days. 15. Did I mention that neither Tom or I have any experience with RV's whatsoever? Hence the Crappy Campers. This should be quite the adventure, but we know there will be bumps and a lot of learning on the way, and we're looking forward to it!

Here it is, along with our youngest, William: 

We've been working on making some modifications to our RV to better suit us, but I'll save that for another post...