The fun begins!!!

                                                            Goodby house.

Pulled out of the driveway for the last time at 8:00 this morning. Stopped at the Feed Mill in town to get a rough weight on the camper. Headed to Ottawa Lake Campground (Southern Kettle Moraine State Forest) which is about a 20 minute drive. This will be our home for a week.

                                                                         Old back yard

New back yard

We set up and then headed to Brookfield for the closing on the house. Found out when we arrived that the buyer had a issue with his lender and did not make deadline to close today. WHAT???. Realtor did not seemed to worried, said we would presign all paperwork today and they would complete the buyers portion on Monday. And this was after they asked us to move up the closing date from Monday.???

The realtor said she would deposit the check for us on Monday and drop off copies of all paperwork.

So now we are back home (home is where we park it) and ready for some serious relaxing. Oh I forgot the gkids will be here:).
Champaign on ice and we will finally celebrate.
                                                                  LIFE IS GOOD

Camping in the driveway.

  The kids came over on Sunday and took the rest of the big things that were left. The house is pretty empty. Only our two lounge lawn chairs and the 12" TV  (which is sitting crooked on a box). Don't know why we're not sitting in the camper in comfortable chairs watching a bigger TV. I guess we're just "enjoying " our house. It's hard to believe after we leave Thur., we won't be coming back here. All the years we have been talking about fulltiming, now its just around the corner.
  It's been a roller coaster of emotions going through the process. Right now we can't wait to get to the campground to enjoy some family time and relaxing (when the grandkids will let us).

 
   We have a couple of months to figure out where everything is stored before we hit the road. :)

Only 5 days til we close on the house sale.

  Things are moving along nicely. Wendy has probably made a hundred trips to the camper getting it all arranged. I have the outside storage areas and I will admit the easier job.
  We received our air card (Verizon) and a router in the mail. Had a little trouble setting it up, but between Wendy, customer service, and me pushing buttons we got it.
  We have our South Dakota mailing address all set. We have a vacation to N. Dakota planned in August. We will hit S. Dakota on the way home to complete residency. All that's needed is get a S. Dakota driver licence and register the camper and truck.
 We have already set insurance policies in place when needed.
 Some have asked how we know to do all that stuff. We have thought about fulltime camping for more than 15 yrs. We attended a Life on Wheels seminar in 2007. It was 3 days of classes covering topics such as choosing a home state, working on the road, and insurance. The death of the founding father of L.O.W. and the economy ended this in about 2009.
  The internet is also a big part. Wendy loves reading blogs of other fulltimers. I tend to read the different forums,( Escapees, RV.NET, and iRV2).
 One thing it is a different life for everyone. Budgets and RV selection are all over the board. What works for you may not for others.
 

Rummage done-13days til closing

Well, we had the big two day rummage to get rid of anything  the kids hadn't claimed. It started slow but later was a nice steady stream of customers.
 By the end of the first day we were condensing tables to keep it looking full. We had sold a lot of stuff by days end.
 On Saturday with the tables of small stuff running down we needed to push the big items.
  We had a bedroom set, dining set, freezer, washer and dryer and desk to lose.
  By Sat. afternoon we only had the washer/ dryer and small items remaining. We did get a low offer on the washer/dryer that we can call if nothing better comes up.
 We called it early and packed up the last stuff for a ride to Goodwill.
  We think we did pretty good and are very glad its done.
 One good part was the person who bought the dining set won't pick it up til next Monday, so we have a table and chairs til 3 days before close.
   The big question every asks is where are we going first.
   We plan to work til Oct 1. Then we will drive east to visit my brother Corey and his family st Silver Springs, Maryland. After that a slow trek through Shenandoah National Park we will head towards our daughters place in Statesville N.C. We have a trip planned with her to Jekyll Island for Thanksgiving week.
  We will spend X-mas at her place then trek down to Alabama near Gulf Shores for a time. We want to spend some early spring enjoying some Mardi gras activities-wink,wink.
   As I am prodding Wendy for details, she says to remember our plans are to be written in Jello(try writing in jello)- All subject to change. We want to keep daily drive distance down and stay for more or less time in a given area as we feel. That's the whole idea.
  So if you want to know our plans, please follow along. We appreciate the followers and comments that you leave.

What a week!

                  
  Things are moving so fast. We had the skylights repaired ( what little fix needed to be done) and the chimney work will start on Tue. We applied for a change of address through Alternative Resources in Sioux Falls SD. The closing has been moved up from July 2 to June 29. We were planning to be out on the 29 because we have campground reservations.
  Working on setting up garage sale for next Fri. and Sat. Then we'll have almost 2 weeks to get everything settled in the camper after that. Things should slow down then.
    I found a old anniversary card Ray gave me (I saved alot of stuff) and taped it to the fridge.
     

 Someday,

 many years from now,

 we'll look back on this crazy time

 in our life together

 and wonder how we did it all...

and then, those ordinary, everyday moments

 that we often take for granted

 will shimmer like stars

 as we recount them...

 I'll sit close beside you,

 you'll take my hand in yours.

 We'll look at each other and say :

 "I'd do it all again...

and I wouldn't change a thing.

  We'll have a busy weekend with our grandson Alex graduating High School on Sat. and a party on Sun.

 

Countdown to closing.

Hello all,  to up date the house sale is moving along its course. We had the appraiser do his thing, should be no problem there.
  We have 2 items that we need to take care of. One is chimney repair- got one quote so far. they gave us two choices. One a complete rebuild and the other applying stucco. I reviewed with the realtor and she said the stucco would have to be okayed with the buyer. She suggested we talk to a Randy from R&R Chimney- I surprised her and said he gave us the quote. They of course recommend the rebuild- a nice $1000 more. Oh dang.
  The other repair is flashing 2 skylights windows. Thought that would be the easy part as we had a guy in mind to call. Well 2 no shows the past 2 nights. Another guy to look at it on Sunday.
 We made a trip to goodwill and have been pricing stuff for the rummage sale. That will be June 15-16th.
     Not much time to waste- 31 days til closing.

   Here are some pics of projects to get the camper ready for full timing.

This added to make it easy to maintain water level in batteries.  The sliding tray had not worked and they did not pull out far enough to see water in cells.

Added a small dorm fridge for refreshments. I told Wendy I was going to put a Packer sticker on it and call it my man cave-hahaha- She asked if there was room there to put me in it. ouch!