Timmy stayed in his Level 1 class this week but I am glad because there is only 2 kids in Level 1 and about 9 kids in Level 2, so it is almost like he is getting private lessons. I still haven’t been able to get any good pictures of Timmy in class because his class meets right in front of me. Here are some more pictures of Josh and Samantha at swim lessons.
Once we got here and were settled Nathan decided it was time for the RV to get a good wash and wax. The boys decided they would help put the soap on the RV.
I am sure you can see that this was just the help Nathan needed in the 90+ degree heat. :) SO…. it soon ended up in a water fight with Nathan manning the hose….
After everyone was completely drenched anyway we all went to the pool to cool off and play. The kids are taking swim classes as long as we are sitting for awhile. The classes started on July 1st so they missed the first week but they are doing good in their classes. Samantha was in level 3 but chose to go back to level 2 because she felt more comfortable. Timmy is the smallest (and youngest) in his level 1 class but he is doing better than most of the big kids. Josh is in a Preschool class this year so I get to watch from the sidelines instead of having to go in with him. Here are pictures of all 3 in their classes.
Misty is enjoying being lazy inside the air conditioned RV….
The kids have lessons on Tuesday and Thursday for the next two weeks. I will try to get better pictures of them in the pool. Samantha and Timmy have started school again. Samantha has finished her first week of fourth grade and Timmy has finished his second week of Kindergarten. So far both mom and I like Calvert better than the Abeka from last year. Samantha and Timmy are enjoying Calvert as well. Samantha even has Art each week and it goes with something else we learn. This week we were reading about cave people in History and the art lesson was for her to make cave drawings. :)
Okay… Here are the pictures of mom’s new home. The truck is a 2004 Ford F250 diesel. The camper is a 2008 Arctic Fox 805. It has thermal windows so if we put mom in the snow again she will do better. The only problem it had was that they were supposed to add a microwave and an electric water heater to it before it was shipped. They shipped it from Oregon in such a rush to get it to her in time that they forgot to add both. They were able to add a microwave from a different Arctic Fox they had on the lot but we will have to return later for the electric water heater. It does have a propane heater so she still has hot water. One of the things mom likes most about it is that it has a generator so now if we stop at a Walmart she has air conditioning and power as well.
Here is the side view.
Here is the door in the back.
Here is Joshua sitting on mom’s bed showing off the flat screen TV that I insalled for her. I am proud that I managed to do it correctly with only making the two holes that were needed to attach the arm. She can watch it in bed or swing it out so she can watch it from the dinette.
Here is a shot that shows the dinette off to the right.
Here is the kitchen to the left.
I tried to get a long shot that shows the whole camper from the door…
I tried to get a picture of the bathroom. It is on the right past the dinette. Josh was standing in the way but it basically is a wet bath like a boat bathroom. The shower, the toilet and the sink are all in the same room so that when you shower you are getting the toilet wet.
And with that I am as caught up as I am going to get… :)
Today we are driving to Chicago. I am not sure if we will make it all of the way but knowing Nathan we will. Nathan has to attend a show of some sort for a day and then we will be driving to Boulder, CO. We are supposed to check in at Boulder on April 30.
I forgot some of what we had done this month until I emptied my camera :)
While we were in Statesboro Samantha was invited to attend the birthday party for the daughter of the campground owners. Her name is Lindsay and Samantha and her have become fast friends.
She had her party at a pottery place. Here is Samantha painting her cat…
After the party Samantha and I drove over to Georgia Southern and met up with the rest of the family. They were having an art festival and they had lots of art stations for the kids to enjoy. They were able to sculpt with clay and paint on various objects. Here is one of the stations where the college kids were helping the younger ones to create masterpieces.
They also had a maze that was on the ground somewhere (I forgot where it was). It is a puzzle that has to be figured out. You have to follow the directions of the arrows but you can go as many spaces in that direction that you want. There is only one way to solve it. Nathan figured it out correctly. Here is Samantha and Josh trying to follow the directions. Somehow I managed to snap the picture at just the right moment that both of Josh’s feet are off the ground.
After Atlanta we drove back to Statesboro so mom could buy a truck. She bought a 2004 Ford F250 diesel that has 60K miles on it. It has a club cab so we can all fit in it. She has always felt bad that we didn’t have a vehicle to drive when we stopped places. We stayed in Statesboro for another week so that Nathan could order all of the pieces that he needed to put onto the truck to make it towable and also make it so it could hold a camper. That gave him time for the parts to get in and for him to go to his friend’s house where he works on the Jeeps and get them all installed.
During the time in Statesboro I ended up taking two trips to the emergency room for allergy attacks and went to just about every doctor known to man to figure out why I was all of a sudden having such a bad reaction. I thought it was from a new medicine but they seem to think it didn’t look like a reaction to medicine. They biopsied my skin and ended up putting me on a HIGH dose of prednisone for a couple of weeks. End result is that it was/is a reaction to something I have come into contact with but they don’t know what. The best guess is that this is a really bad spring season and the trees are trying to kill me. :)
During all of these reactions we took a week and drove down to Ocala to pick up mom’s trailer. It was all fixed up but needed a lot of WD40 to get into all of the locks from it sitting for a month. While in Ocala my mom and I stopped to see my grandfather at hospice. He seemed more alert to me than he did when we saw him last. He was suffering from pneumonia the last time we saw him and ended up at the hospital. He is now at hospice. He doesn’t have a feeding tube but is still eating pureed food. The Parkinson’s makes it extremely difficult for him to swallow. I asked him if there was anything he wanted to eat because he wasn’t eating much the day we were there. He used to love lemon meringue pie and I told him I would make him one if he would eat it so I went back to the RV and made him some little tarts and brought those back with some ice cream. His wife and her daughter said he ate all of them. They have his memorial service planned for the end of May but I am starting to wonder if he may be alive for his own service. :) I have tough grandpas.
My other grandpa was kicked out of hospice in Savannah and was sent back to a nursing home. They have now written him up in their journal as one of their success stories. When we stopped to see him before leaving for Florida we had to track him down because he is now spending his days wheeling around the hallways singing.
While in Florida we stayed in Tampa at Lazydays Rallypark. They had a nice pool that I took the kids to one day and they have free breakfast and lunch at the park Monday-Saturday so the kids got to ride their bikes everyday to get meals. I bought Josh a small bicycle while in Statesboro and once we got to Tampa he figured out right away how to ride it and now he is always wanting to ride bikes. Nathan and I spent his $500 gift card at Camping World while there as well. We bought 2 folding bikes with bags and a hitch that goes between the RV and the truck that holds the kid’s bikes. We are putting our bikes in the back seat of the truck while we are driving since they are folded in bags.
Mom had a chance to catch up with old friends while in Tampa. She spent the time we were there staying at her college roomates house. They went out to adult things like nice meals and shows. :) The day before we left mom and I drove to Orlando and attended the wedding of my cousin, Brian. It was a nice wedding held lakeside with a beach atmosphere. There was a luah theme to it including a show during the reception. It was nice to see both of my aunts in one place and get to visit with them without having to worry what the kids were up to. Nathan stayed in Tampa with them. The only bad part of the evening was that we got home at midnight and were up at 7:00 the next morning to get everything ready for a long day on the road. We took turns driving because we had to drive the RV pulling the trailer and someone else had to drive the truck separately. It was a tiring day but we made it back to Atlanta in one day.
We are now in Stone Mountain. Mom traded the trailer in for her truck camper on Tuesday and she has spent the week getting everything settled inside. She had to throw out a few more things and she says that the truck camper will keep her in good shape because she has to climb to get to everything in it. Punch has a new bed in the aisle by the door so she can sleep on somewhere soft because she cannot get up on anything either. I need to go out and walk Misty in a minute and while I am out there I will walk to mom’s site and take some pictures so I can show what is now going to be pulled behind us. I will have to wait until we get to a large parking lot so I can update the picture on the front of the blog to show the truck behind us.