Bon Voyage Party= SUCCESS!

     Our Bon Voyage Party was a BLAST! Our friends, and Framily were there in force! It was an amazing reminder of just how fortunate we are to have a loving and supportive community to come home to next year. Everyone has been so supportive during the whole process, we are truly blessed. We put the big map up on the side of the rig and everyone circled all the places we should go.

   And then we left a book out for suggestions and addresses so we can start sending out postcards a couple times a month. People came out and walked through the "house" and it seemed to ease any fears anyone had about us living on top of each other, ultimately creating a situation in which one or all of us snap simultaneously! (There were lots of comments too about the brillance of my demands that we had a SOLID door between ourselves and the kids!)
     People brought foods from their native areas which was really fun, and educational! Our friend Amy and Ben brought Moose Drool and Keystone from Missoula! We are both from there and both ended up at Meadow View, small world! It was Fab!
   

     Nikki brought her New Orleans red beans and rice and King's Cake for us to make! Jane and Terry brought Mosticelli, Carol brought the fixings for Chicago style hot dogs and the Chavira clan introduced us to a new dinner I can see us eating on the road all the time, "Taco's in a bag!"

      There was tons more. Sadly, shortly after that, Andrea brought a few bottles of her homemade wine, which is to DIE FOR and I have forgotten the food beyond that! We are still translating the map and all the great ideas into our itinerary but I'll post the first four weeks here by the end of today. It was a wonderful send off, we truly felt loved. I know many of you drove a long way to see us, took time out of your busy lives just to pop by, it meant the world. I wish there had been five of me so that I could give everyone the time they deserved. And, to the person who left the lovely guardian angel pin for us by our bed, it is a reminder each morning when I open my eyes to be thankful for all we have and live in gratitude. Thank you, to all of you. We love you and feel so supported. Can't wait to come home to you all. 

               

I took advantage of my early rising today to come outside and update the blog. It is almost PAINFULLY beautiful out here at the ranch. There is a Western Meadow Lark singing to me from a fencepost, its song reminds me of my childhood in MT.  And its friend the hummingbird circles nearby too reminding me of the ranger talk we attended with friends in Estes last weekend.  (And that I STILL need to get a new hummingbird feeder!) But TOGETHER they remind me that today is all about the past and the present coming together to celebrate our future. Today is our big BON VOYAGE party! We are all so excited to show off our new digs and see our friends before we hit the road.  Yesterday we finished our room and the boys rooms, put some homey touches on the place and it really feels like home. Aiden is particularly fond of the new bunk curtain and the rule that you must know before he will answer. “Privacy please!” was his constant refrain yesterday!

      It’s easy on a morning like this, in a place like this to want to stay put. The horses are running, the sun is shining the birds are singing, it’s paradise. But as Molly reminds us, nothing is perfect, as she comes for some love and I can smell her breakfast snack of horse poop on her doggie breath.  Awesome. A friend recently said, “Change is always happening, you’re either running away from something or running toward it. I am so glad to be leaving the stage that feels like so much loss and begin the “running toward” stage. We love it here, love our family, our friends, our community. And it’s great to know they will be here when we return. There are more places to see, so lets get going!

Just in case we came off as all sunshine and roses- HA!
     We are currently camping in Hermit Park, just outside of Estes Park, Colorado. We have been coming up here for the last five years with an ever expanding group of friends. It is truly cherished time, we wait all year for. Some in our group even drive all the way up from Durango to be here for Memorial Day weekend!
     The hot water saga that has been playing out for some time now, (five weeks but whose counting...) finally came to a head. And, as I promised you the good bad and the ugly....
           (insert wavy lines here, it’s a flashback ya’ll!) If you’ll recall, the lack of hot water is the entire reason we ended up moving into my in-laws basement. I am sure when they offered the space they had no idea it would be a month before we moved out again! At that time, we took it in stride but deep down, I had this nagging feeling. A teeny, tiny, little voice whispering.... “you’ll never have any normalacy again!” Now, I am not entirely sure why this little voice decided to equate the shower as our newest symbol of normalacy. Maybe it’s because I am not a big fan of showering in public shower houses, or maybe it’s because this whole time I had worked up the courage to say to Alan, I am not a princess but this is the ONE home-like thing I really want. Either way this symbol of normalicy was about to become “the icing on my cake” as my friend Nicole would say.
    Last week, we gave up trying to fix the issue ourselves and took the rig in. The man wiggled some wires and, after being without all our worldly possessions for three days, we were assured it was fixed. Not so much! Another three days, I snapped, called the trailer guys again and forced poor Alan to take it in. 30 minutes later, hot water! Pretty darn exciting, however, no time to try it out, gotta hit the road! And we were off like a herd of turtles to Estes. That was yesterday, I am fine with camper hair, so no shower last night.
     Today, finally, at the close of a long day, all the kids had mercifully been taken by one of the parents to play baseball. The camp had cleared out, this was it! The big moment! My chance to take a long-ish HOT shower! All 6 gallons, mine, all mine! But, what’s this?? All the water is gone! Yes, after a million dishes and flushing, we had used all the water, GRRRR! I can feel my jaw flexing, and voice a saying “No biggie, we’ll work around this, gotta be jugs here somewhere, I’ll just find them....” 10 minutes later, jugs found, truck loaded.... No keys. The are, of course, with Alan, a quarter mile down the road with all the dogs and kids. So, as I sat in the car, I did my best not to burst into tears. Instead, I thought, I’ll go in, turn on a movie, kick back.... Ahh, but not enough power so the generator needs to be on. Do you think we had any fuel in the generator? Not a drop! Finally, Alan returns home, I am sitting, in the dark, playing  a game on my iphone, downtrodden to say the least.  relay the story to Alan who promptly borrows fuel, gathers water and has made a pretty good run for husband of the year at this point.  The magic moment arrives, and, well, of course, the faucet is broken. I end up ankle deep in lukewarm water which quickly turns opaque as I attempt to splash water upward and over. All the while shouting out at the boys, “don’t open that door, close it, dear god, do you HAVE to be in here now???” I dry off the tiny parts of my body that got moist, put on my jammies, sit down at the table, head on my arms and promptly begin to sob. And, my sweet man says, “This can’t be about a shower.” But it is, the shower I so wanted, the piece of normalacy I counted on being there, the unforseen straw that would break this camel’s back. No, it’s not a shower, it’s about accepting a nomadic lifestyle, it’s about leaving this community of friends we so love. It’s about hearing them say, we love you, we worry for you, we envy you... You’ll come back right? It’s just a shower, on the way home we’ll pick up a new faucet and all will be right as rain. And that little voice will have to find something else to pick upon. If I were the new brita water pitcher I’d watch my back....

The first night!

            Despite the fact that there is STILL no hot water, we have moved in and are ready to spend the first night in Wanda the Wildcat! It’s very exciting! The winds out here at the ranch are high so it feels rather like we are constantly being passed by a big rig, but all the more practice for sleeping in Walmart parking lots right? I am so tired it’s fine that we can’t sit down in the “living room” yet. I can sleep soundly, it will all still be piled there tomorrow. And, by the way, what IS this stuff? If continues to appear seemingly out of thin air, and then, as if that weren’t bad enough, it reproduces when I turn my back! I thought we SOLD all our stuff. And the clothes are the worst, what happened to the 12 outfit rule we established? Hmmm, something is amiss….

     I love the boys rooms, each with their own bunk. They snuggled down tonight, so excited to be in their new home.  Aiden and I laid down to read before bed. He kept commenting on what “a lovely” room I had. Such a nice sleeping nook, and these twisty lights, so "lovely"! He’s a crack up. I do love our room, its really just big enough for the bed; which slides under the half wall closet. It’s tiny compared to other models we saw but it has a “lovely” glass door, that CLOSES! So at this point, my ranting about how I needed a solid door between the kids and ourselves is really paying off! (The four of us and the three dogs have shared a room for just under a month!) We also have our own little half bath room. AND the biggest news, when I went to use the bathroom, it’s a FULL SIZE toilet! Listen here Jack, that’s a big deal in the camping world! And, while I’m on the topic of toilets, neither one has a t.p. holder. What did these people have against putting the toilet paper up on the wall????

     So, as I finish this and drift of to sleep, the rain has started to fall and I am hoping they fixed the two roof leaks a heck of a lot better than they fixed the water heater…we will see!

Stay dry friends!

L.

P.S.

Shall I take Picts?

     

OMG We Got the KOA Worker Kamper Pins

              So we check the mail today an received a lapel pin from KOA for the work camper assignment that we have signed up for in Massachusetts. Some people are excited about the girly magazines they get in the mail and we get excited about KOA Camper work pin lapels. Camper is in the shop to get a couple leaks fixed and the hot water heater looked at since we were having issues during the big rain storms. We have also made a tentative plan as to when we head out and where to first. It looks like we are headed to Montana in mid June to see the in-laws and then back to Colorado for our Full time Families rally in Montrose. From there we are headed to Minnesota, Wisconsin, then on to Illinois and to Massachusetts. There will be other stops and there will be some boon-docking so we are excited to get started.

           

Deep Breath.......

AHHHHHHHHHH..........
     FINALLY, we have slowed down long enough to take a breath! Everything from April 15th to now has been moving at a MILLION miles an hour! We have been so blessed with friends who did everything from making meals, to packing boxes to selling stuff and cleaning up! The Colorado weather continues to be ridiculous vacillating between snow, rain and wind. Without hot water and a clear walkway, we have been continuing to live downstairs out at the Ranch in Franktown. Good thing too as just after the latest rain storm we came in to find a soaked mattress and two leaky skylights in the trailer. As our friends over at Fulltime Family say, things will break when you move, and when you don't! So we are getting used to the idea that fixing things will be a weekly occurrence! This weekend we hope to finish the kitchen and our bedroom areas and figure out what the gig is with the hot water heater. It's been a real blessing to be able to get all the kinks figured out while we still have an alternative place to live. Thank goodness for the in-laws! It's been great coming "home" to the ranch each night.
     The kids are adjusting well, I think we will all be happy to get into our own spaces, especially Jacob who runs deep. He has had a meltdown or too but usually a good night sleep helps him to bounce back.  Tonight we had a cub scout meeting in the park across from the house we used to live in. I was taken aback by the feeling of sadness at seeing someone elses patio furniture on "my deck". Right up until Alan reminded me that they are the ones that get to mow, weed and sweat out the summer without AC! At times it's been hard to let go but we always remind each other what we will be getting in return.
     This week's moment to remember.... Aiden got to try out the new ER when he walked into the brick wall and had to get stitches. While they were stitching him up, the Dr asked what he was going to do this summer. He said, "We'll be camping for the whole year!" As often happens, the Dr. and Nurse turned and gave us a quizzical look, to which we nodded yes. They asked where he wants to go the most and Aiden answered, "Tokyo." Looks like Geography is the first on the roadschool list!
     Grab your chopsticks, Tokyo here we come!
 
   

Phase one, nearly complete...

We are safe and sound, sprawled out on a massive King bed in my in-laws basement. Quite the opposite of the plan but the big picture idea here is clearly, “learn to roll with it”!

            I love that phrase, “hindsight is clearly 20/20”. In HINDSIGHT we should have parked the trailer in front of the house to load it, HOA be damned, instead of bringing 2000 loads back and forth. As it was I spent the weekend pitching things out the front door of the wildcat into bins to sell, donate and store.

            In HINDSIGHT we should have filled the water tanks and tried the shower, of course that would require no freak snowstorms which appears to be impossible in Colorado.

            In HINDSIGHT we should have gotten the storage space sooner rather than later.

Next time.

     It has been a really hard week. Physically as well as emotionally. It was a shock to finish our garage sale with way more than we wanted to have left over, and way less in cash than one would think possible after selling everything we’ve accumulated over the last 12 years together. We boxed up, bagged up and piled up what we tend to consider “precious” belongings, and thankfully had some wonderful friends haul it away, I couldn’t watch it go. And now less than a week later, I can’t tell you what was in half those bags. Our kids are LOVING being at the ranch but still adjusting as we knew they would. Being at the Ranch, with their grandparents, and familiar horses and the generally slower, more relaxed pace seems to make everything better.

       Right now, we are awaiting another freak snowstorm, which means we can’t plug the hose in and run water without risking damaging the plumbing, something we are a bit to nervous about trying. We also have to continue to go to work and school and hockey and Physical Therapy AND be out of the house entirely by tomorrow. Alan looks like the walking dead. He has done this almost entirely on his own between my knee brace and getting sick. He and our friends have rallied and made this possible. As I write this, Jenny E. is vacuuming my house and finding all the precious things I have dropped, lost and forgotten.

 Jenny says it’s like a pregnancy condensed into two months. It really is, growing pains, things changing quickly, not sure what is coming down the pike and not feeling quite right anywhere yet. But, I know, just as with our boys, we have a bright future on the horizon, new wonderful things to experience, and after all, the journey is an adventure!