Day one - it's a doozy! (Tuesday, October 13)

Wow!  Who’d have thought?  We had a banner day.  And maybe not the banners that we had hoped for, but they were still waving.

Our goal was to leave our stationary home around 9:00 a.m. and we pulled out at quarter after.  That is impressive, my friends.  With a prayer and a silent cheer, we were off.

The first event was crossing the border.  Not that it was a challenge, but they do like to be stern.  Their biggest concern seemed to be what we were doing with the kids out of school.  Perhaps they haven’t encountered many homeschoolers?

  The second event was at the Target parking lot in Fargo.  The RV was making a noise that can only be described as a ridiculously loud wobble.  We stopped, prayed and Eric did something something and then it was fine.

 The third event.  Still in Fargo.  Oh the third.  It was the sign of greater things to come.  We went to the gas station to get some drinks and when we came back to the recreational vehicle, the battery was dead.  As a door nail (or snorkel, or any other inanimate objects, since a door nail doesn’t seem to be anymore dead than any of those other things).  We prayed while Eric as thankfully able to buy a pair of cables at the gas station store (only marked up a few hundred percentages from other stores), and had a lovely young “Hot Rod” type guy give us a boost with his sweet ride.  Although clearly he was jealous of ours…..

 The fourth and final - the killer.  Heading east on I94, we started getting some weird clonking and bonking noises.  We pulled over to see what was the matter (by we, I mean Eric) but nothing seemed amiss.  The nasty noises continued, however, and as soon as we came to an exit, we took the ramp to pull into a gas station.  Only we didn’t get that far.  We early made it to the top of the exit ramp, dying a slow death.  We prayed again while Eric tried to flag down help. Thankfully some nice woman stopped to try to help us out.  We tried a boost but there was not even a hint of life.  Then a nice man stopped.  He couldn’t do much other than give us numbers to a towing/repair place.

 We magically appeared several yards down the road in the parking lot of said gas station (a Tesoro, in case you are wondering…. on the corner of interstate 94 and highway 59) and the men set to work….. to accomplish….. nothing.  In the meantime, we did some frolicking: ditch frolicking, teepee frolicking, trying to get wifi frolicking (Mia’s head is the best conductor - she has magical brains).

 Spending the night in your RV in the parking lot of a Tesoro gas station isn’t all that bad.  Extremely cold at night, but really not that bad.  Even without having any power whatsoever.  Develops your character.

By 8:30 the next morning we were being towed to a auto body shop with lovely, kind auto body mechanic type people.  They had a van we could use so we hit the road to discover the delights of Fergus Falls.  Cafe 116 provided breakfast and free wifi.  A 10 x 25 foot otter provided entertainment, great paths and bikes provided exercise for muscles in need.  It was really quite a fantastic morning.  By lunch we had the alternator in for repairs and the two dead batteries taken out.  After lunch at Subway and a little more free wifi (parked outside of Cafe 116), we were back to the shop and in just a little while and several hundred dollars later, back on the road. By three o’clock we were on our way.

The event robbed us of time with our friends in Sartell and set back our very loose schedule a day but it gained us some great memories.

Please note:  I'll be doing my best here but we have very limited wifi.  There is not a lot of time to match content to photos, comment about all the photos and even edit their size.  All the writing needs to take place off line and then gets cut and pasted into the blog so it is far from ideal.... but you'll get the general idea.  Sorry!!

pool partying

This past week was full of a pool full of people (say that 20 times).  I think every day we had a bunch of friends over.  Monday night (Aug. 31) a bunch of the neighbour kids came over for a night swim.  One of them brought ice cream and toppings for a late night snack as well.  It was a full moon and there was some smoke in the air so the moon was bright pinky orange.

I started work on Tuesday, feeling very sorry for myself for having to go back into "real life", after two full months of summer with the family.  Pathetic of me, I know.  I'm spoiled.  

When I came home after my first day, I saw several cars in the driveway so I knew we had company.  There were four neighbour kids, Maddy's boyfriend, Mark, our friends and their three young kids, and our kids all in the pool.  At first, for a few seconds, I felt like crying.  I wanted to burst into tears because I felt so sad that I had missed out on the fun that they had been having.  Then I realized how ridiculous that was - because they were still here!  More fun was yet to be had.

I tried to throw Mia into the pool and it wasn't working, so I just grabbed her and jumped in with her...with my work clothes on.  After swimming around a little, I went to get my actual bathing suit on and enjoy our company.  Most of our time was spent watching all (ALL) of the kids attack Mark while he valiantly defended himself with pool noodles and boogie boards.  They also all greatly enjoyed his crazy pool entries - flipping and flying into the pool.

Our friends left for a little while to dry off and all that, and came back later for dinner.

On Wednesday Maddy had a bunch of friends over and Thursday Mia had a bunch.  Before, after and in between all of that, there were still plenty of neighbor kids around as well.  It was a week-long swim-fest.  It thrill my heart to come home every day from work to find a pool/house full of people.  What a blessing.

ourmobilelife

My dearest friend and her family came for a visit.  In a 1986 Winnabego.  From PEI.  And their driving to their home in North Vancouver, BC.  And they are living my dream.

They've taken a month to travel across the country in this old dream of rust and gold, seeing the grandness of our fine country.  I've been wanting to do the trek, albeit across the US (but would love to do Canada, too) over a few months, with the whole family.  Most think I am insane, but I'm used to that.  Not everyone is up for adventure.  But I think you may as well explore and live life to the fullest while we can.  Okay.... back to the friends and enough about me.

We were absolutely thrilled to have them visit.  You have to understand that this is woman is practically a part of me.  She is so very, very dear... as is her family.  And I literally ache sometimes because I don't get to see her for so long.  But we had one afternoon, and it was glorious (as long as I didn't focus on the fact that we only had one afternoon - it is barely enough to get started, you know what I'm saying?)

We spent the afternoon in the pool swimming, talking, laughing and yes, even a few tears were shed (we can't go talking very long without going deep - as deep as one can when surrounded by raucous kids, at least somewhat, and deep usually means tears).  Unfortunately Lucy missed out on the occasion, which really was sad, because you want to share your whole family with each other, right?  Right.  And the last time we were together as two whole families is when Lucy was a baby.  Too long.  Much too long.

Time ended quickly and they had to move on to bigger and better things (I only say that to sound humble, clearly they had no where to go but down!).  We inspected their dream mobile, said our fond farewells, wrestled on the grass a little, and off they went.

It best not be another 10 years until our families are together again.