A monkey and a Lego

That is what kept me up till 3:30 this morning. So yesterday I went out with The Boy to King's Dominion to ridge some rides. We then went to the store and to Sonic before getting home just after 11. I got home, got everyone ready for bed and then got myself ready. I was sitting up in bed when Monkey comes in with a tear running down the right side of his face saying something is stuck in his nose and it is really big. I of course ask him if he put something up there. No, he tells me. There is just something up there. So we have him lay down and I start the fun of shining a light up his nose. Yeah that is the fun you get to have when you have kids. I see nothing, The Hubby sees nothing. We ask him again if he put something in there, tell him we will not be mad we just need to know. He admits, it is a lego, a small tiny, round lego. We have him blow his nose, over, and over, and over. We look again, nothing. He says he feels it down inside. Great, it is in his sinus cavity, super swell.

So I have him get dressed and I get dressed and off to the ER we go. We get there and I notice he is wearing a Lego shirt....REALLY KID?!?!? He looks at me with his Monkey grin and says....well at least these lego's can not fir up my nose......FACEPALM!!!!!!!!!! We get called back and the nurse looks, nothing. The PA looks, nothing. The Doctor looks, nothing. They get a nasal spray to open up the passengers and have him blow, and blow, and blow. They look again and finally can see something. the PA gets the tool and digs it out. She asks if we want to keep it. Money of course say ummmmm duh it's a Lego. I need it to build things......FACEPALM again! Then he tried to tell me we we didn't need to wash it. UMMMMM IT WAS UP YOUR NOSE! We are washing it!

Waiting for the nose spray

I asked him about 10 times WHY he did it. He doesn't know. He says his didn't know that his nose had a hole in the top that it would go into. Ok, I get that. But he is SIX. I figured by 6 he would know not to shove things in holes. I thought we were in the clean. I was wrong. Oh so very, very, wrong. Here is him and the nose lego.

Monkey and the nose lego

RV warming party

The Hubby's parents wanted to come visit and check out the RV. Since right now we are staying about 20 mins from my dad, step-mom, Step-sister, and uncle we decided to have an RV warming party. My dad and step-mom were not able to make it but everyone else had a BLAST. We cooked up some sausages and burgers and I made some roasted corn salad which was gobbled up. We sat around talking, playing corn hole (The Hubby and my BIL sooooo cheated!), and of course at night made S'mores.

The Hubby's parents and the Princess

My Step-sister and Princess playing with the dogs

Everyone outside. I took this from a bunk window.
Not sure how I got up there

Time to eat!


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We were also able to watch my niece play softball one night. She is the one in the green. We hope to go to a few more games before we leave.

Settling in

We have been busy settling in. We are living in the RV 99% of the time only going back to the house to work on it. We are still waiting for it to be rented out. We are hopeful that it will rent soon now that mostly everything is out. We still have a little work to do but then we will be done.

We have been here a little over a month now. It is now our new normal. I think we have all settled in pretty nicely. We have mostly figured out how things will work best for us, but are easily changing things around as we go to see how to best do everything. Especially where organizing is concerned. I am pretty sure this will be a never ending project. Now that we have everything here but some tools I can finally get down to the nitty gritty of finding a home for everything. For some things this is easy, for others I feel like I need a can of Crisco and a big strong person to just shove it all in there. For instance my closet is fine, lots of room left, the kids' closet is pretty full but still ok, The Hubby's closet on the other hand.....I have clothes handing on his door handle. LOL He bought some space saver bags today so I will be putting some cold weather clothes of his in a bag and squishing the daylights out of them. Under the RV is another tricky spot. I was so organized with totes for this and that....until I went to put them int he storage bay. THEY DIDN'T FIT! The bins were just inches to tall to fit in the door. Hence the trip for space saver bags. We got 2 bins of coats into less space then 1 bin would of taken up. I am pretty sure they are my new best friends. Space Bag BRS-86112-6, 2 Piece Cube Combo Vac Bags (1 Large and 1 Extra Large) Clear, 6- Foot by 2- Inch by 13- Inch (Yes, that is an affiliate link) We got the ones that you can roll out the air since we don't have a vacuum with a hose. I was a little worried they would not work very well but they worked AMAZINGLY well. I want to get some more big ones and see if I can put the sleeping bags in there so they take up less room too. That would help a TON.  So the under storage bin is looking good....now for the inside.

Dishes are another fun item. We obviously do not have a dish washer. So that is not me. Originally I had the dishes trying on a drying mat because that was smaller when not in use. We quickly learned that this just not work as well. There is just not enough air circulation to dry the dishes so we recently bought a dish drying rack. We just got a small one from Target with a tray on the bottom since I have to leave it on the counter but I want this one from Amazon. Progressive International Collapsible Dish Rack (yes, another affiliate link, I have to pay for it some way. LOL) That way it will take up less room when storing it. Did I mentioned to storage needs in an RV? Yeah, there is no space. LOL

We have been keeping busy with lots of visits to Kings Dominion. We got season passes so we could go for a few hours here and there. When it gets crowded that is about all everyone can handle. Cat Boy has been doing super well there. We get him the special access pass each time we go that we can go through the exit since he does not do well with waiting in line or people he does not know touching him. I don't think we could manage the park without it when it is even a bit busy. The staff at guest services is great, I just go up tot he window and ask for the pass for him because he has Autism. They fill it out and hand it over. No fuss, no muss. We do not let him use it if the lines are short because we do want to build up his ability to be able to wait in lines. We have not yet been if it is super busy but the pass says when the lines are really long they will give us a return time. So far that has not happened but we try not to visit during peak times. The pass has also been great for his anxiety. He started off not wanting to do any roller coasters because he could not see the whole ride. We watched a few you tube videos after the first trip and that helped. We have now moved up from him on riding the coaster in Snoopy Land. all the way to all the coasters that do not go upside down. He wants to get on them though but has told me he is not to that level yet. The next level his mind will let him get to includes Anaconda. So we are working on that. It has been amazing to see his growth. Monkey goes on anything and everything that he can but is still to short for some things and The Boy has rode every roller coaster. That was his goal and he did it. He LOVES them. I think tonight we are going to take a date to there and just ride coasters together. We met one of Cat Boy's old ABA therapists and her girls there the other day. We had a blast even if she did pick the HOTTEST day to go. The Boy loved riding the coasters with her and has a picture of them on the Intimdator 305 hanging by his bed so he can see it every morning as soon as he gets up.

Cat Boy on his first Roller Coaster with The Boy

Monkey and The Boy on the Drop Zone

Princess in the water park

  

Princess on a ride. You can see Monkey and Cat Boy behind us
. Selfies are not good. 

We hope to be hitting the road soon but are waiting for our house to be rented. So hopefully soon. Not sure where we will be going yet but I can't wait to get started.

Deciding on a new home

When we took the kids to look at RV's for the first time we thought we wanted a 5th wheel or a class C. We knew the class A's were nice, but there are WAY more then we wanted to spend.

We looked at a few 5th wheels first. Those are the ones you attach to the truck bed. They were really nice and some even came with washer and dryers. They had a bunch of space and great floorplans that would work for our large family. However after looking at them, even some used ones we quickly realized that they were out of our budget as well because we would also need to buy a truck that was powerful enough to tow the 5th wheel AND could fit 6 people. The cost of the 5th wheel and the truck was more then we wanted to spend to get started, esp since we wanted to pay cash for as much as we could

Next, we looked at a Class C. Those are the ones with the little van cab and then it juts out into the RV. As soon as we walked into the first one we knew it would not work for us. First, they are expensive since they are a car and an rv. Second, it is just one open space and we wanted bedrooms. Since we will be living in these full time we wanted it to feel as much like a house as we could. What might work for weekend trips and a few vacations here and there would NOT be ok for every day living. Plus we could tow a small car behind it but we don't fit in a small car. So we would still need to drive 2 vehicles everywhere which is fine but kinda defeated the purpose of getting one that can be driven.

We went home after the first day of looking and did more research. We though we knew what we wanted but we were wrong. We now knew we wanted a U shaped dining table, a BED for each of the the boys (some have couches you can fold into beds ect but we wanted them to have a 24/7 bed), a bedroom for the boys with at least 1 bumpout but ideally 2, a bumpout in the living room, an outdoor kitchen would be nice but not a need, and as many cabinets as we could get. So we took the knowledge we gathered that day and hit the internet. We decided that a travel trailer was our best bet. A few days later we had a list of models we wanted to look at and we went looking again. We hit 3 dealerships in VA that day. 2 of them the salesperson was NOT helpful at all. They just kinda took us to the ones we asked to see and that was it. The 3rd was great, He was new at very excitable. You could tell he was still enjoying this unlike the other 2 who were just showing us units because they had to. He showed us a rig we LOVED. Everyone talked about it all the time. Since we wanted to pay cash we needed to wait till we sold off some stuff before we got it. Oh course you see what is coming, just DAYS before we were going to buy it, (I am NOT kidding it was like 2 days before), I went on-line to check for the unit like I did EVERY day, and it was GONE. I knew they had 2 so I quickly called to put a deposit down on it, The guy on the other end said he had JUST got an e-mail from their other location that they had someone to buy it. In less then 24hrs the 2 rigs had sold that had been sitting there for over a month. We were CRUSHED.

I searched and searched the internet for that same unit. Of course I found a couple but they were all for $4,000 or MORE then the one we were looking at. No go! We were considering another model site unseen and having it delivered. I just wanted something before there was nothing. Yes, I was flipping out a bit. We had sold almost everything, The hubby had started his new job about 1 1/2 hrs away, and we had no RV. Logically I knew it would be fine but logic goes out the window when you are in the process f flipping your life upside down. The Hubby took to the internet again and came upstairs saying get everyone ready we are heading to Richmond. So we did, I had no clue what he had found and I am not sure he was 100% sure either. We returned to a dealer we had been t before and got a MUCH better salesman. He showed us the unit we wanted to look at, went inside with us and pointed stuff out, answered questions, and was very helpful. We LOVED the unit. Even more then the one that we lost out on. The kids were bouncing off the walls saying BUY IT, BUY IT NOW BEFORE SOMEONE ELSE DOES!!!, So, we did!

The rig. Keystone Cougar X-Lite

 We went inside to do paperwork. The Hubby and I were excited and wanted to be sick all at the same time. The kids were just plain excited! The Boy must of made me assure him at least 20 times that it was our rig now. The whole way home I would just randomly yell out, "Oh My God we bought an RV!!!!!". We ended up with an Keystone Cougar X-Lite.

 

 
 



The kid's room.

My kitchen



Princess running up and down the hallway. She is in the kid's room.

The boys sitting at the table.