Off the road

Last night we slept indoors.

While our RV was parked in the drive, we slept inside a warm house. Munchie and Wilderheart slept in the guest room on a twin bed, and I slept on the couch in the living room amidst a pride of kitties. And I slept very, very well.

Almost seven months after getting "on the road" we are going to be off for the winter. And five of those months were spent in one location anyway, so there was very little road seen through our front window. In fact, I'd be surprised if we put more than 300 miles on the RV in all that time.

Am I disappointed that our Free & Easy Life didn't turn out as we planned back in March? Of course not. We have had so many plans change and so many unexpected things happen in the past year that I tend to keep my mind and soul open to other possibilities.

We are blessed to have the friends and family that we do. I still ache for the connections I have back in our old home town, and I am sad that it isn't a quick drive to see my parents.

As for our new home? We are very, very blessed to have friends who have lent us a helping hand through this time. We have rebuilt old connections here, and strengthened our relationships with our performing family. It has been an incredible summer - one in which not only Wilderheart and I have grown, but our loved ones around us have grown as well. I am humbled by the kindness and generosity we've encountered.

And our Munchkin - the light of our lives - has grown a great deal, too. She is simply amazing. Motherhood is a tough job, but I can't imagine a more rewarding experience.

I'd write more but my laptop is about to run out of power. I just wanted to get in a quick update on where we are. We are safe. The snow fell on an empty camper last night. Our family is warm, our bellies remain full, and our hearts are overflowing.

Sunday morning silence

Munchie and Papa have gone off to the store for supplies, so I am left here alone in our Little House in the Big World. After living here for almost a week, I was able to reorganize some items to make it a little easier to function. I put away the laundry, re-made the bed with the extra blankets we picked up from the house yesterday, folded up the blankets we borrowed from Munchie's God-Papa (thank Heaven for those blankets!), and put away the clean dishes. Then I went through every cupboard and made sure that the items in those cupboards actually belonged there. 

Now I'm sitting here, alone (The Mutts - who we have been remiss in introducing until now* - are stowed away in the garage of the house for the moment so I could clean), listening to the spring winds blow in, occasionally accompanied by the trill of a meadowlark or punctured by a passing flight of killdeer. 

The house we are fixing up is parked in the middle of a field/marsh area that, at one time, was a horse farm. It is obvious that the house - built in the 1970s, was built to be state-of-the-art at the time, but never, ever updated.

Never.

On the bright side, where there is wall paper, there is only one layer. The woodwork hasn't been painted over a dozen times. It's a rather WYSIWYG home. 

The land around it was sold off, maybe 5-10 years ago, and some McMansions sprung up. Fortunately, the lots are a reasonable size, and this house remains on a fairly nice chunk of land itself. 

It's very peaceful here, and I'm glad that this was our first stop on our new journey. It's been a fairly low-key, yet challenging enough start to keep things real for us (Have I mentioned that the house isn't hooked up to city water yet, but has its well capped? Yeah, so we have to drive to town to refill our water tanks.. kind of a pain...). Yesterday we checked out a nearby RV Park to see if we wanted to live there and have Wilderheart commute the few miles to the house every day. 

We decided - firmly - against it. 

First of all, the reason we're in an RV and not in an apartment or on a friend's couch is so we can keep the family together. Second, the park was far away from town with no easy access - unless I wanted to ride my bike along a highway. And if Chris needed the car to get to work, we'd be stuck. Finally, I had a bad feeling about the place. That is always enough reason for me to stay out of a place. 

Well, since I started this post, my two great loves have rejoined me, and I've been feasting on coffee and doughnuts with Papa while he helped Munchie eat some yogurt and crackers. Oh, what a life!

*We will post about our other two great loves soon!