Vacations and County Roads

Last weekend was our 12 year wedding anniversary so we loaded up the dogs and headed to Corpus Christi Texas. Of course like everything that we have done since moving here it was full of adventure.  We rented a condo near the beach. The condo was beautiful, but you could tell that it had been damaged from previous hurricanes. We tried to overlook the rust in the tub and the ceiling that looked like it was ready to fall in. It really was a nice condo. We learned that with a beach pass for $12 you could drive on the beach and park and hang out.  Especially if you have met Sadie you know how much she loves water. We get down on the beach and have to have the dogs on a leash, Sadie gets a sniff of that fresh ocean breeze and is ready to run. I don’t know if you know this or not but dogs have better grip on wet sand than on any other material. Sadie was so strong I felt like I was holding a 500lb bull. Jeff takes her into the ocean and of course Sadie being Sadie she is drinking every ounce of slat water that she can! Drake on the other hand is not so sure about this salt water or sand. He ran for a bit but than was not interested in any of it at all!  So in the bed of the truck he went. We got Sadie out of the ocean for a bit because we knew it wasn’t good for her to drink all that water. After a while she was throwing up and other lovely things.  Soon we head back to th3e condo, the dogs are tired, and we are too especially after holding Sadie back from swimming. Of course, by the next day both dogs are itching and they still are after 2 flea baths. Im sure you’ve read by now about the sea lice in Destin, so not sure if they have fleas or lice!!!! Saturday nigh we order pizza and eat it on the beach when we finally go back to the condo the satellite is out ☹ I take a shower and get out & notice there is water all on the floor of the bathroom, I walk into a closet connected to the bathroom to see if there is water there. No, water until I step on it and then water starts seeping up the joints on the new hardwood floor!!!!!!  I immediately call the lady we rented it from and she was out of town. She later informed me that the tub had to be replaced!! WE leave out on Sunday am, about an hour from home I start itching really bad. By Monday at work I have hived everywhere! I leave work early and go to the DR who tells me I am having an allergic reaction to something. Shot of prednisone and I should be good. 3 days later and spots are coming and going so now I am on 10 days of Prednisone. So much fun down here in Texas!! I can only assume that I must have some big blessings coming being in Texas for all the crazy stuff that is happening!!!

On another note we have been looking for land to buy in Lampasas so we have been driving back roads and county roads to see what we can see. We have stumbled across some of the most unusual things on these county roads and then of course some of the most beautiful such as seeing a fawn that was probably 5 days old in a yard. There are so many windmills and cows and driveways that have these grand entrances.  Oh yeah and when you hear about Texas pride it is a real thing! These folks wave their American and Texas flags with pride!

Famliy

We’ve been in Texas now for about 3 months. I love it here. The scenery is beautiful and there is so much to do around us. However, it has gotten lonesome at times and that unwanted feeling of being home sick comes upon you easily. A couple weeks ago after a couple of difficult days at work I came home and could feel a lump forming in the back of my throat as tears began to well up in my eyes. Its one of those things that is hard to describe but the pain of it is so real. You miss the familiar, you miss your family, you miss cookouts with friends and family, you miss birthday parties, and Father’s Day celebrations. You miss it all.

However, thanks to technology you can still feel connected and can still see the ones you love daily if you want to. However, it still does not replace the hug from your mom or your sister. It doesn’t replace the desire to be close to those that you love. Distance does teach you the importance of those conversations and the desire to make sure that the people you love know that you love them.

Since we have been here I have learned the value in those daily or at least weekly phone calls with family to help ease the pain. My only hope is that when they do come down to visit that they fall in love and decide to move down here and become Texans!!

 So here's to Facebook, Instagram, phone calls and text messages to help me & my family stay in contact!! 

Our Friends RV Park

So the place that we found to keep the RV at is Our Friends Campground RV Park in Lampasas Texas. It is absolutely beautiful and the people here are so friendly. The town itself is like an old time town, with the town square that is still being used! When I was looking online for places to stay this place caught my eye several times however there were not many pictures which made me lean toward other parks However I kept coming back to it and they have an area for horses so I figured it had to at least be somewhat in the country and not the city. So we decided to come to this one and boy and I glad that we did!

This is the sign & flags that greet you as you pull into the park. 

                    This peacock and other creatures also greet you as you pull in.

There is also a little sitting area with a pond and goldfish. Apparently they do not get enough rain here for real plants so they have a lot of beautiful metal ones. They are very pretty and of course do not require the care!

 Here is our home for the time being! We have a nice grassy area and look into an open area that deer sometimes come into. We actually saw 7 deer last night.

The owner has a horse that stays in this corral. He's beautiful and Drake likes to go see him!

                                        The cowboy and cowgirl who guard the bath house!!

So far everything has been really nice here. Jeff has his first week under his belt and I start my job on Monday. Looking forward to meeting and making new friends here!

Preparing to Travel!

Lots of preparation went into the move to Texas. I'm not sure if any of you have every pulled a 40ft camper with a pickup truck but it is an adventure in itself. So Jeff ordered sway bars which help to keep the camper from swaying side to side on the interstate possibly preventing it from flipping over on the highway. This is our home so most all of our belongings are in it. So we defiantly do not want it flipping over!! So he ordered these sway bars, a hitch for my SUV (to pull the boat) a huge surge protector for the RV, and some kind of block things that are supposed to support the RV while parked taking pressure off the tires. He did a lot of research on all of this stuff! So the sway bar comes in about 4 days before we are leaving out for Texas and it is missing half of the pieces. So he calls and they are going to ship him a brand new one. So we are waiting on this to come in before we can leave. The hitch comes in and he gets that put on my car fine no problems. The block things we get out of the box and they are heavy like 50lbs a piece and there are 4. Well they can only hold up to 5000 lbs. a set and our RV is like 14000 lbs. So there was no way they were going to work. He looked online for the weight maximum but could not find it. So these had to be sent back.  The surge protector also came in he hooked it up, and there was some kind of problem with the amps going into the RV something about it could fry our TV's and such. That's his area not mine. So he got that corrected. We have everything packed away, checked out the storage unit made sure there is nothing else that we need from there. We are ready to leave except we have to wait on the sway bar to come in. We hoped it would come in early Thursday morning, we spent the day with family visiting and such. Noon comes around and no sway bar. Finally about 5pm the sway bar comes in, and the box looks like it had been demolished. It was barely being held together. We held our breath as we unloaded the parts because without this it was going to be a very long trip to Texas! Luckily for us all the parts were there. So we went home got it put on with the help of family and neighbors, so we all went to dinner and relax before we headed out Friday morning. So here is where the fun comes in! We packed everything into the truck and car, have the dogs backseat area all ready. Almost done with everything, but we have to pull the slide outs in on the RV. Lessons learned!! Always make sure that your slide out is not near anything! Our was close to the meter box which was sticking out some because of the surge protector. So our slide out caught the box and almost took the back wall off the RV.  Luckily Jeff and his dad are a jack of all trades and they were able to fix it to were it was all back together. This still has to be fixed a little better though. So we can only laugh because there is no one to blame but ourselves. So we get on the road me in the SUV with a boat behind and 2 dogs in the backseat  and him in the truck with the 40ft camper. About 4 hours into the trip I noticed that there was a bubble on the roof of the RV that had not been there previously. I watch it and call to tell him, of course we have no ladder and no way to get up there, so we continue driving. We get a little further up the road and the bubble is now all the way across the roof, luckily it doesn't go back any further than the front. So we just watch it. So than later Jeff calls me and says ok add a new windshield to this trip, he gotten a rock peck that was already spreading. I talked to my mom not sure if this was God saying hey you were not supposed to go to Texas or the devil trying to keep us from God's will. However after discussion with mom God is not going to send bad things to us and all the doors and timing aligned up just right. So I can only assume its the devil attacking us. Oh yea and you cant get a 40ft RV into restaurant parking lots so pretty much we went all day on just breakfast (Jeff was thankful he wasn't in the car with me.) So its about 9pm now and we are close to our RV Park, GPS tells me turn in 0.5ft well the speed limit is 70MPH, I'm slowing down with the boat attached to me and the truck & RV behind me. Well we miss the turn and pull down some little bitty dirt road. I tell Jeff I'm sorry I think I really messed us up. He was such a trooper he got in my car and turned the care and boat around and than like an expert backed that RV up on a little dirt road, and than we finally turned into the right place. So we get here an have to hook up the electricity and that surge protector, along with all of our water hoses, put the RV up on blocks and get it level! We are exhausted!! So the next morning he had talked to an RV repair place who cant come to us so we have to take it to them which is about 45 minutes away! So we have to disconnect all the water hose, electricity, put our slides back in, raise the jacks and hook it back to the truck! We drive over and they tell us what the problem is and that it will take 3-4 day to fix it. Now remember we are in Texas with all of our stuff in the RV and no family here, so 3-4 days with no RV isn't really good. But later talking to neighbors we realized there are mobile people who will come out and do the repairs at your site so that is now the plan, I have a call into them and am waiting on a response. So once we get back from the repair place we have to redo the electricity, the water pipes, and put the slides out making sure they are clear of everything! So than we go to put our tv's back up, and realize that the smaller one that we bought specifically for the RV somehow got cracked! So we had to buy another TV!! So than last but not least of our adventures, I was out walking Drake, Jeff came outside and left Sadie inside, well she didn't like that and she hit the lock on the front door of the RV and locked us out!! Luckily Jeff's truck was unlocked and he had some tools to pry into the door and get in. But the first couple of days here were full of interesting things. Things seem to be calming down now! Well I just got a call from the mobile RV repair and he said since we already started a warranty claim with the RV place we probably really needed to let them handle it. :(

RV living.

So I guess we should really start from the beginning of where our current adventure began! My husband, myself and our 2 dogs Drake and Sadie lived in the same home for 11 years. It had been on the market for sale several different times with no interest whatsoever. However late 2017 we had an offer to buy it. We just had to wait for tax time to come around for closing. So we prepared for our home to sale. As the time neared we were unsure what we were going to do. We wanted land, to hunt, homestead and to eventually build our forever home on. So unsure what we were going to do we knew that we would have a hard time getting into an apartment, or rental home, due to having 2 large dogs. So we decided that buying an RV was the best thing for us. We figured we could live in it for awhile, buy our land, build our home and than have the RV somewhere else on the property for friends  and family to come stay in.  However the old saying came to mind if you want to hear God laugh tell him your plans. We fell in love with a couple pieces of property that we could see our future on like building our home, fishing the pond, homesteading, and hunting the whitetail deer that left their mark by the big trails they left behind. However once we secured the money and put offers in they never seemed to work out. They either already had a contract on them or had a verbal contract that the real estate agent knew nothing about. We felt defeated and like maybe our dreams just were not going to happen. I was hoping and praying for land to raise chickens and cows to homestead, and those dreams just seemed to get farther and farther away.  The beginning of March we started to live in our RV full time, and realized there were some major adjustments to be made. For example, timing your shower just right so you would have enough hot water, emptying the black water (its what you probably imagine it is), making sure your propane didn't run out, having 2 dogs on a leash all the time, small space with 2 large dogs who are not sure what in the world is going on, and just general decluttering because it was such a smaller space than our home.  After much frustration with work changes for my husband and I, we decided we needed a change. We no longer had that house tying us down or a lease so we were free to go wherever we wanted. So we started looking into options. We looked into travel nursing with 13 weeks assignments. We actually were thinking of going to Velphoro GA. The application was in and we honestly were just praying and deciding if this was the right thing for us. In the meantime Jeff updated his resume online and got a call from a recruiter about a job in Killeen Texas. Initially he said no that's to permanent and to far from our family.  A few days later the owner of that company called and said I've seen your resume I think you will be a great asset to our company. This interested Jeff that the owner called. I had already found a clinic with the same company I worked for and knew I would have a job. So we came down to Texas on a Monday and did interviews on Tuesday.  By that following Monday we had our 2 week notices in and were preparing to move to Texas. Also in this time frame of preparing to move Sadie had ruptured her cruciate in her knee which required surgery. So she actually got her stitches out the day before we were leaving for Texas, If we would have leased a house or an apartment or bought a house we would not have been able to make the move so quickly. All of this would not have been possible if the timing had not been made right by the man upstairs. He knew what we needed we just had to wait for his plan to show itself.