Rescheduling, Repairs, and Recouping

Hey Guys! We’ve been back in Missouri for two months now.

We got back to Missouri Sunday, December 31 just before midnight. It was a very long 15 hour drive day! We had Monday to recoup from the drive and then Jerl had an eye appointment Tuesday then surgery Wednesday. This was his second eye surgery in less than five months. He’s still healing, but it’s going much better this time. He had to have another gas bubble inserted into his eye…this time during the surgery. It was much less painful for him that way. The bubble finally completely disappeared Tuesday, March 7. He was pretty excited that it was gone before we took back off on our adventuring.

Mother Nature greeted us the week we got back with some snow. It was pretty, but it kept us from getting our home-on-wheels to the Ford dealership for engine work.

Once the weather cooperated and Jerl was able to drive, we made the three hour drive to the dealership where we had to leave our home for repairs. I’m not going to lie…it was really hard to drive off and leave our home there. We’d heard some pretty gnarly horror stories of things that had happened to other people’s home-on-wheels while they were on dealership parking lots getting repair work done. We had to prove we’d had proper maintenance done on the engine (regular oil changes), but after that Ford was great to work with. We ended up needing a whole new engine and catalytic converter. Not from anything we did…apparently the engine was malfunctioning from the start and we were lucky it lasted as long as it did. The dealership never seemed to be bothered by our many calls for updates and always answered all of our questions.

With our home-on-wheels staying three hours away, we had to move out. I didn’t move every single thing out, but I moved out everything we might want or need and anything that I didn’t want to lose just in case something happened like a fire, or theft, or a storm…you never know…and y’all know I’m a planner. We ended up being out of our home for about six weeks!

Luckily, we were able to stay with my (Jennie’s) mom and dad. Our furrbabies made themselves right at home. I think they kind of liked all of the space…and the carpet. They really liked the carpet. We don’t have any carpet in our home-on-wheels. It was really funny to watch them roll on the floor and spread out. We ended up getting a runner to put in the RV for them and they’ve been enjoying that too. The things we do for our furry family members…

This unexpected detour really threw a kink in all of my planning. The Grand Western Loop was cut short. Big time. So, I had to rework the schedule. We won’t have time to do the entire loop I’d originally planned. It’s kind of working in our favor though. We’re going to be spending more time in California than we’d originally planned…which means we’ll get to see more places! We’ll be breaking the Grand Western Loop into two smaller loops with a winter in Florida in between. The blue loop is our revised Grand Western Loop, the red is our Florida winter, and the green is our…well, I haven’t named that loop yet…it’s the other part of the original #grandwesternloop. And yes, we are booked all the way through the blue route and most of the red route. Florida is another hard state to book for those of us who are under 55 and have kiddos…and wear clothes. The state parks book eleven months in advance and boy howdy…let me tell you, they book up the day they become available…usually within hours!! I still have two more state parks to book, but I have to wait for the eleven month mark to do it.

The boys enjoyed an actual winter…for about a week. And then they were over it. None of them complained when I told them we would be spending next winter in Florida. Ha!

We’ve enjoyed frequent family game nights! If you don’t have 5 Minute Dungeon, you’re missing out. It’s a fun, fast-paced, short game where you work as a team to defeat the dungeon.

Alex and Nicholas had fun helping my (Jennie’s) mom and dad down at their shop. Nicholas helped Grammy in the office while Alex helped Grandpa out in the shop. I think Alex kind of loved wearing Grandpa’s shirt. They both did stuff I used to do when I was growing up. It’s kind of funny to hear them talk about their day at work.

Oh! I’m learning to make bracelets. It’s something for me to do to pass the time…I’m thinking about eventually opening an Etsy shop for it. I’ve had so much fun picking out beads and learning a new craft.

We signed up for UniversalYums…it’s been sooo fun! Every month we get a box filled with snacks and every month it’s from a different country! It comes with this great little booklet that tells us about each snack plus some facts and games about the country of the month. Plus, you get clues as to where the box will be from the next month!

When we got our home-on-wheels back, we found out some of the plumbing pipes had frozen and busted. We thought we’d winterized it before taking it up to the Ford dealership, but we didn’t get it done fast enough (all that snow and ice) and the water filter busted which made it impossible to blow all of the water out of the lines…so…we had busted pipes. We had to take our home-on-wheels to an RV dealership for some more repairs. They worked their magic pretty quickly. We’re still moving back in as I’m writing this post.

We definitely didn’t plan on starting 2018 like this, but that’s ok. Honestly, I think it’s going to work out even better for us. We head back out this Saturday, March 10 to get back to our adventuring…so, I guess I’ll…

See y’all down the road!