We've Got Plans!

For so long it has seemed so far away...  However, I can now say we have our first actual plans (God-willing) to leave this house!  We have reservations beginning this Sunday, July 1st, at the Old Stone Village RV Park in McMinnville, Oregon!  We're hoping we can stay there for the month of July, while making plans for what's next.  Currently, we only have a firm reservation through the 23rd.
We won't close on the sale of our house until July 6th, and can't pick up our motorhome until after that, though they are planning for it to be available sooner.  There's still much to do before then!

We continue to make good progress on emptying our house.  Our living room has been empty for awhile, and as of Tuesday night our dining room is now empty also.  We still have some furnitue in our family room.  Consignment NW is to pick it up next week.  Though our bedroom set is staying with the house, our mattress leaves us this Friday, so we'll be sleeping in the trailer after that.

We began cleaning out the 5th wheel on Wednesday, and replacing it with things that we are keeping to move into our new motorhome.  The gas company is coming out today (Thursday) to install the safety posts by the meter, the washer and dryer left yesterday for their new home, along with some miscellaneous lamps, small furniture pieces and lots of Christmas decorations.

We went to bed early last night.  Having no lamps in the house means we might as well go to bed!  Sure, we could use the pot lights in the ceiling (not available in the bedrooms), but we decided to go to bed with the dimming of the sun instead.  We both need the extra rest!

Do you know about Amazon Prime?  It's been the coolest thing, though we are simply enjoying a free 30 day trial at this time and haven't had time to fully try all it's benefits.  We've been able to order some things with free 2-day shipping!  Our main reason for trying the service is because we can stream movies and television programming from my laptop to our TV once we are in the motorhome.  It's kind of a "netflix-like" opportunity.  Also, I can read some ebooks for free - it's a lending library kind of thing.  However, it's the free 2-day shipping that has been so exciting for me!  I don't have to wonder if something is going to get here in time - it only takes a couple days.  Too cool!  I got a new (smaller) crock-pot for just over $20 - and free 2-day shipping.  It just doesn't get too much better than that.

Taking our current 5th wheel trailer to McMinnville this weekend gives us a chance to finish emptying the house.  We'll be packed to the brim in the 5th wheel!  My parents have graciously allowed us to store several boxes temporarily in their garage. The motorhome has much more storage than the 5th wheel - something like 280 square feet!  Without that storage, we'd be having to downsize much, much further.

We got to go over and spend some quality time with "Moby" the motorhome, in the back of the Camping World West lot last weekend.  It really helped make it real for us.  We got to look in every drawer and cupboard, and I even got to read through the user's guide on the microware convection oven.  I have one of those at home, and have been feeling that I simply would not be able to live with that oven alone.  The motorhome currently has a cooktop with 3 nice drawers underneath it - no stove/oven combination.  I don't know about you, but I use my oven a lot!  Roasting anything and everything, and baking bread are two of my regular purposes.

In a 1.1 cu ft micro-convection oven, I'll never be able to roast anything bigger than a turkey breast or Butterball turkey roast on Thanksgiving.  I'm not sure if there's enough room for a loaf of bread to bake without touching the top of the oven.  And yet, if I can make it work, it will save us the added expense of having the stove/oven installed, and I won't lose the extra storage.  I'm thinking I'm going to try to make it work the way things are.  If this was a vacation home, I wouldn't be struggling.  But this is our new home!  Time will tell whether that was a good decision.  There are just some things that can't be decided ahead of time.

There was one disappointing item we noticed in our motorhome while visiting.  One of the bedroom closet doors had been broken.  It wasn't broken when we put money down to hold the motorhome, so we're assuming that it wasn't just left parked with our name on it.  We can't even imagine how a wood door splintered - even if they were still showing it to other potential buyers.  It's disappointing, but not the end of the world.  It just means we'll have to drive back to Beaverton to pick up the door in about 6 weeks.  Not exactly convenient, but hopefully we'll be a lot more comfortable driving by then.

We're still struggling with the logistics of picking up the motorhome weekend after next.  We will be driving up in the truck and trailer, which we are trading in.  They've told us we'll be able to park right next to the motorhome to make moving all our belongings more simple.  If for some reason we couldn't finish, they'd even let us spend the night on their property.  I can't imagine that happening, but it's nice to know.

The biggest logistics problem in my mind is my cat.  She has reservations to spend some quality time with my parents (they refer to Parsley as their "grandcat") while we get the motorhome.  But how do we get her there and then pick her back up?  My parents live in a beautiful condominium area in Beaverton.  They live on a short street with a culdesac.  Not sure we could get our truck & 5th wheel in and out of that street to drop off Parsley.  It's more likely we could come back to get her in the motorhome, in my mind.  Steve's not so sure.  It's going to be a somewhat stressful day - full of unknowns at this point...  But I've learned that things just eventually fall together.

Things are coming down to the wire, and one by one God has helped us with solutions to every obsticle.  I'm anxious to be able to look back and see how the rest of this falls together!