Counting Down-How Many More Sleeps?

So the countdown is on!! 26 more sleeps; that is less than a month :) The furkids are pretty anxious to get going. They have been hanging quite close to the door - just in case we try to leave without them. They don't seem to be sleeping as much as they usually do and are constantly on alert.

I'm watching you!!

Is it time to go ? huh huh is it mom?

We had the other kids again today for awhile-those grand little grands . Our daughter had surgery on Friday and is doing well. So we picked up the girlies at daycare after school, brought them home with us for supper, then while Rick did the dishes (not a big chore with the dishwasher) I popped one into the tub and one into the shower, got them all cleaned up and hair done and into jammies. We then delivered them back home to their parents-with their bed snacks; Tim Hortons candy cane hot chocolate and a big chocolate chunk cookie each.


I must mention that when they were here decorating on the weekend they did not know what "mistletoe was" - so we gave them both a lesson in the purpose of mistletoe. I think our mistletoe is about 30 years old, but hey it still serves it purpose. 


Well being 7 years old you have a memory like an elephant and forget nothing. This evening every time poppa or I stepped or walked under that mistletoe they both dove on us at the speed of light. Oh they make me chuckle and they both make my heart sing. I love their innocence and honesty. We are sure going to miss them while we travel-thank heavens for  today's technology such as skype and IChat video visiting.


We did join passport america today..and we are looking into good sams. Rick is trying to decipher the good sams information and merger. Thank you all for your input it is much appreciated. When we have an rv question or travel concern my first thought is to go ask you, our blogger family. And you always seem to have the answer :)


Also a great big thank you to any and all new followers. I sure wish blogger had a way of alerting us when we have a new follower, but alas they do not, so I do not always notice (I tend to be technically challenged as most of you know). We truly do appreciate each and everyone of you new or old. And I love reading all of your blogs, and travelling along with you throughout the good travel days and also the not so good travel days. 


So now we count down, and hope and pray for decent 'get outta town weather' come Dec. 27th-I have lists for my lists and it seems every time I pick up my clipboard to add or scratch something off the furkids go on alert. How funny-they have always associated my clipboard with motorhome! Its like get out the leash-they bounce around "its walkie time" -try writing on the clipboard "its motorhome time"...why they label them dumb animals is beyond my comprehension-they certainly are not dumb.


Oh oh Rick is standing under the mistletoe time for me to dash off...catch you all later..have a super evening..and be safe out there!!!

Home is where you park it

"May your day be filled with blessings like the sun that lights the sky~and may you always have the courage to spread your wings and fly"

Quick Question need some Input!!

Hi Everyone,
Rick is here researching our route and areas to stay through the US etc..just wondering if any of you have advice on which discount clubs to join...Passport America, looks good, what about good Sam..is there any others we should look at? Did any of you join a couple or do they offer combo discounts? We currently do belong to the Explorer Club..that is more for the roadside I think...which has an excellent roadside assistance program....Appreciate any and all advice...and Thank you!!!

Home is where you park it

"May your day be filled with blessings like the sun that lights the sky~and may you always have the courage to spread your wings and fly"

We Decked the Halls!!!!!

Well it has been one busy weekend. We picked up the 'grands' yesterday morning, our daughter had surgery on Friday and is doing well, but Poppa and I thought we would give them a break and take the grands for the day and night.

It was off to the mall (ughhh crazy crazy) to sports check for new winter boots for Caitlin and Hannah. Then to Walmart hair shop to get Hannah's bangs trimmed. Then it was off to their favorite store "clairs" where they sell everything from fingerless fishnet gloves to makeup, glitter, purses, funky hats - you get my drift. The perfect store for two 7 year olds. Poppa's wallet took a beating in that place. 

Then we thought we should have lunch, mercy it was almost 1pm by the time we did all of the above, but the food courts at the mall were packed and the lineups long. Poppa suggested we head back toward home and have lunch at Steves 50's diner (excellent food) where he could at least hear himself think. 

After lunch we pointed the car toward home-I think we must have walked a gazillion miles in that crazy people packed mall. Traffic was heavy, due to everyone coming to town for the Santa Clause parade last evening. Thankfully our two 7 year olds decided they wanted to forego the parade and decorate our home for christmas instead. 

So Poppa headed to the storage barn and started bringing in all the Christmas boxes. Talk about a couple of excited little girls..and of course the furkids were in on it all too. Tucker and Lilly love when the girls are here they become their two shadows.

Hannah and Tucker at Movie time

Caitline and Lilly at movie time

Our Little Tree and lighted garland-practising for the Motorhome Decor

Fiber Op Santa Made an appearance

The Girls Created a Centerpiece

Working on the village setup

Our Fiber Op Angel is in place

After all the decorating-supper-and baths it was snuggle down movie time-of course the furkids were on guard !!

After movie time and snacks it was off to bed -until around 6:45 am this morning when some little one was standing beside our bed poking me and stating it was time to get up.

After a big breakfast of pancakes and bacon it was announced that we 'must' make christmas cookies. First we video I Chatted with Aunt Becky and Uncle Matt in TN...

Poppa had to run to the store though because we forgot to buy decorating supplies. What were we thinking-(apparently we weren't)

While he was gone we ladies got busy mixing up shortbread cookies:

The wear their 'great grams' aprons- that seems to have become a ritual whenever we cook..here are some cookies ready for the oven.

Decorating time for 'all' the kids

Some of our finished product

So the manger is setup (we don't put baby Jesus in until Christmas eve) the village is setup and the halls are trimmed here in our stix and bricks. 

I told the girls at breakfast this morning that I emailed Santa last night and told him how very good they were. And low and behold when I opened my email after breakfast there was a beautiful message for each of them from Santa!!! They were so excited. I found this wonderful magical little program on the internet last night and signed them up. For those of you who have grands or little ones check this out..its adorable http://magicsanta.ca/homepage.html 

Just click on the 'start here' button. And you can email a copy to your grands.

I have seen a lot of controversy on the internet and facebook lately, concerning "happy holidays" instead of 'Merry Christmas' etc. and just thought I'd add my two cents worth. It will always be Christmas to me, and I will continue to wish everyone a very "Merry Christmas"-our family will always keep the "Christ" in Christmas and remember the 'reason for the season'-one of our rituals in years gone by was to have a birthday cake for Jesus on the center of our Christmas dinner table. While shopping yesterday, and viewing the masses of shoppers, rushing from store to store, screaming at their kids, being rude to other shoppers I wonder if they all even took a moment to remember the 'reason for the season'..

On another note, I sure didn't get many stitches into this over the weekend, hopefully sometime this week I will accomplish more....

Have a wonderful week everyone-where ever you may be-I'm off now to try and catch up on yesterday and todays blog readings. 

Take care

Home is where you park it

"May your day be filled with blessings like the sun that lights the sky~and may you always have the courage to spread your wings and fly"

Happy Thanksgiving to our American Friends!!

May you all have a wonderful day, lots of sunshine, great food and fellowship, with family, new friends and old friends!!

Yesterday we were blessed with over a foot of snow..for those of you 'laying' in the sun it is 'white' 'wet' and 'heavy'...we have had the plow in twice to clean out our driveway. Oh and did I mention it is also 'cold'. :) 

Just so you will all be thankful to be where you are and for those of you who forgot what it looks like here are a couple of snaps to 'remind' you to be thankful you are there and not here!

Ossumer parked up in the snow!!

Poor Ossumer

He is very Anxious to Roll Out

A shot of our back yard

Have a wonderful 'Thanksgiving' folks eat, drink and be merry and above all be 'thankful'...

Home is where you park it

"May your day be filled with blessings like the sun that lights the sky~and may you always have the courage to spread your wings and fly"

-8 C and 17 Degrees F-

I haven't been blogging lately as there isn't much to blog about other than the cold weather and I'm sure you all don't need to hear about how cold it is here.


Ossumer moved from the front driveway to the back driveway on Sunday. We have been busy, unloading winterizing and reloading him to be ready to head south. We took everything off (you know how things pile up over the summer and you never know what is truly in there)..all the clothes and linens etc. 

Ossumer resting among the foliage -ready to head out -pointed in the right direction I must add













Rick needed to find a way to keep the main power cord out of the snow-we sure don't want to have to dig it out come roll out time-so I'm down one storage bin as you can see. 

We reorganized and reloaded all the linens and clothing in preparation for the 'South', and then moved him around back to his resting place until we can finally take off. We are anticipating being on the road on Dec. 27th-and praying hard for good weather. The only things left to load are the food items, and some personal last minute things. I think we are ready. The bed is dressed in warm fuzzy fleece sheets, an electric blanket and lots of quilts. The fuel tank is full, the alignment is done, and the propane is topped off.


The furkids are ready to roll. Their medical kit is all packed and their paper work in order. We took them to the vet last Wednesday. Lilly needed a lyme shot and tucker was due for all his shots. Tuck man had a major reaction to the shots and went into anaphylaxis shock on us. Talk about scary..this is one of my main fears with shots. We've experienced this a few years back with one of our show goldens-so I am always on the look out for it to happen. Normally it happens within 15 minutes of being inoculated-we were at the vet office for almost 40 minutes after the shots waiting for the bill (ughh) and travel paperwork and we thought whew all is ok.


Upon leaving the parking lot he yelped in the backseat I turned to look and he was starting to swell. We immediately ran him right back in (talk about happening fast)..they raced him off to a back room and administered antidote needles-we stayed out in the waiting room for another hour or so to ensure he was going to be ok. Thank God those antidote needles work fast. His dear little face was all swollen and his back fur was standing up straight as hives were popping out everywhere. Thankfully he is ok, but his lips were still swollen the next day. I was very concerned about taking them across the border without lyme inoculation but I'm thinking next time we will skip that part for sure. We are so thankful we were not back at home when this reaction reared its ugly head~as I'm not sure we would have made it back to the vet office in time.

See Everyone I'm Back to Normal and doing OK

So now we prep for Christmas, the grands will be coming this weekend for a night and we will put up our little tree (no room for the big one since we've downsized), village and lights etc. They will be excited to decorate our little home and make christmas cookies I'm sure. Thankfully they both have decided to forego the Santa Clause Parade stating it is too cold and they sure don't like being cold. And frankly neither do we but we would have taken them if they wanted to go.


I am somewhat struggling to keep up with my blog reading and am finally caught up - and it seems you are all doing well and are all safe, happy to hear the estate sale went well for Paul and Marti, and hopefully they will both feel better soon. Our hearts go out to John and Peggy due to their recent troubles-but good to see they are still moving on. And happy to see that the rest of you who are already "there" are safe and sound and enjoying the weather. Karen is handling the cold very well cranking out socks on a daily basis it seems-Kevin and Ruth are having a blast-and Rick is sure enjoying his sunshine! Contessa and Colin are almost done the renos-and The Bayfield bunch are in the valley of Fires. Brenda and JB are 'horsing' around and having a blast.


Tomorrow we are forecasted to receive 15-25 cms of snow...yuck!!


Take care all, I just wanted to leave a quick update-to show we are still here and anticipating leaving in late December. But like the RV life plans are always set in Jello. Be safe out there!

Home is where you park it

"May your day be filled with blessings like the sun that lights the sky~and may you always have the courage to spread your wings and fly"

A Lesson Learned Thrust Angle

Up early this AM to take Ossumer to have the alignment done. At the door at 8:00am and right into the bay. Two guys started pulling the chrome wheel covers and attaching their equipment to each wheel. It wasn't long before the computer screen started to show some numbers that meant nothing to me at the time. The guys were really nice and started explaining the numbers to me and indicated that the biggest problem was my rear axel “Thrust Angle”  at –37deg it should be between – 6 and +6. OK sound good but what does that mean? It means that the back wheels are not at 90 deg to the frame like they are supposed to be and that the axel has to be moved back to correct the problem. My brain starts to see Big job big $ especially after they tell me they cannot see anyplace to adjust the axel. They find the ID tag on the axel unit and get the part number off it and go to the office to look up the specs and return in a couple of minutes and tell me they have the answers to adjusting it. Well about 45 minutes later they have the numbers on the screen showing +4 deg well within the limits for thrust angle. Now they have to do the front end apparently you should not even consider adjustments to the front until the back is correct. The front toe was adjusted within 20 minutes and they started cleaning up the equipment and I went to the office to pay the damages. I was very happy with the invoice for $172.00 for 2 guys for a total of 4hrs and 20min shop supplies, welding and cutting torch.

Now you might ask why did I have it in for alignment? When we picked the rig up back in June in Ontario and started back for NB I wasn't totally happy with the handling but hey I had been driving a Workhorse Chassis for the last 3 years and they are no sports car when it comes to handling and this felt real good compared to that and maybe I just needed to spend a few miles getting familiar with Ossumer. Well since June we put about 4000 miles on and was not 100% happy with handling especially in grooved pavement so decided we should have the alignment verified. I waited almost 2 years with the previous rig and ruined 2 tires by doing so and put up with a lot of white knuckle driving. I only had about 6 miles driving back home today and none of that highway and no crosswind but I could feel a real difference in the handling.

Since we were out and about with the rig we made a stop at CTC ( Canadian tire Store for our American friends) and had the propane tank topped off not bad at $31.00 since June. The only thing left was the diesel tank was showing below 1/4 full so a stop was made at Petro Can and that tank was filled up for only $358.00  ( $1.37 a litre) hopefully the next fill will be stateside and be a little better price. Ossumer is back home in the driveway and ready to roll if his owners will get their stuff loaded and their butts in the seats.

Time moves along one day at a time

Its been 2 weeks today since I had my procedure done to fix my hernia and I have been under the watchful eye of my dear wife to not do anything to damage the wonderful work that was performed. Well that pretty well limits one to what they can do to pass the time.
Does anybody have any idea how many RV type blogs there are ? I am still finding new ones. Google Maps has provided me the mileage to various locations south of the “medicine line” ( JB) and street views of all major intersections and entrances to RV parks. Have no idea now where to go they all look like good destinations. It will be South to start with but then do we head west (Arizona maybe) or stay with the East coast (Florida) has still to be determined.
RV Park Reviews goes hand in hand with Google maps just by searching for campgrounds in maps you can get all the names of campgrounds in a area and then you can check them out in RV Park reviews and in there if you have lots of time ( I do) you can look at older reviews as well.
When the blogs have been read the map has been checked and the campground selected what is left? Well there are the forums like RVNet, IRV2, and each of those alone have various sections that have to be browsed on a daily basis, never know when someone will need to know how to dump their black tanks or what kind of toilet paper they should use.
Now when the brain goes into information overload there is always walking of which we have been trying to do every day and we have been having beautiful weather for getting outside 15C and sunny today.
Sunday was a wonderful sunny day so Elaine and I decided it was time to get out and see something different for a change. There has been a major project about 30km south of us to build a wind farm and we have tried before to find it but failed. We loaded the furkids in the car and took off on an adventure into the backwoods and hills of Albert Co in search of the big windmills.  

Kent Hills Wind Farm

We found them along with some left over snow from the storm that went up the east coast a week ago. We ended up driving about 130km and seeing some of the beautiful countryside right here in our own backyard. Having worked for the telephone company for many years I had built pole lines and ran cable on most of these back roads but that was a few years ago and had a little trouble navigating the area but we made it back home.
Tomorrow for excitement we are taking Ossumer to have his front end alignment done that should take up a couple of hours and when that is finished on our way home we will have the propane and diesel tanks topped off, then he will be all ready to hit the road. Hopefully we will make it back home by 4:00PM so we can watch Dr. Phil. Sound like a fun filled day?

Sunning our BUNS !!! Important Reminder Folks!

Yup some of us are 'sunning' our buns at our stix and bricks and its not me!!!

Its Master "Tucker"...hanging over the back of the sofa having a snooze and sunning his buns!!! 

I have been chatting with other RV friends, some are heading south, some are already there, and some are anticipating travel within the next few weeks (us included I hope).


Please everyone- I want to take this opportunity to remind you all to check your detectors and make SURE they are in working order. It can be chilly this time of year-we have the furnaces and propane fireplaces etc running in our rigs. And generators -if we are in extreme cold or heat and are boondocking.  I've recently spoken to a few folks who have unplugged and unhooked their detectors because they were beeping etc. Repair, replace if necessary and above all test your detectors. It is not worth the risk being without them. They are 'lifesavers' to say the least.


Remember the five bikers at a rally last year that didn't wake up in the morning. They were running a generator and the carbon monoxide leaked and sadly I don't think there was a working detector on board. It is a silent killer. 


Your propane and Co2 detectors need to be high on the top of your priority list for maintenance. They all have an expiry date so check that out also.


Propane is one of the most convenient, energy efficient, portable fuels available. Spring a leak and its also one of the most harzardous problems you'll have to deal with in your RV. Same goes for carbon monoxide folks. 




So please everyone take five minutes to test, repair and be sure to replace your detectors if necessary-personally I wouldn't be caught dead without them.


And remember to turn your clocks back tonight :)

Take care all and be safe out there!! 

Home is where you park it

"May your day be filled with blessings like the sun that lights the sky~and may you always have the courage to spread your wings and fly"