Wow. I had just posted about the anniversary of my mom's passing a few days ago, mentioning that my Mom-In-Love (Jeff's mom) had just turned 100 years young. This was her, last year, with her new great-grandbaby, our great-nephew.
We received word on Tuesday evening of her passing. We mourn for our own loss, not for her, because we know that she's in the embrace of our Lord.
She lived a very full life in those 100 years. As someone mentioned to us in their condolences to us, she was "a very lively woman." I don't think she ever met a stranger, because it seemed she could strike up a conversation with just about anyone.
I remember when Jeff and I started dating. It wasn't long before I was going to church with him and his mom! I was embraced wholeheartedly by her, and the church, from the beginning!
I will always treasure the weekly lunch dates she and I had while Jeff and I still lived near her. Oh, how I have missed those conversations over shared meals! Her stories were always full of life and, most of the time, laughter.
She became a second mom to me early in the relationship between Jeff and me. Because of my own mom's chronic illness, she did a lot of the wedding planning with me. I truly hope that she knew how special to me she was. She will always have a place in my heart.
We were so excited to officially begin our full-time RV lifestyle! We always knew there would be hiccups along the way, both because we had never even stayed overnight in an RV before and because we had purchased a travel trailer that was 15 years old. We knew we would be tired at the end of our first day, but we never imagined how exhausted we would truly be!
The video above is our first "official" YouTube episode documenting our new lifestyle, and it shows how minimalistic we were planning to live. When we decided to begin this crazy RV life of ours, we decided that we would give up nearly everything we owned... which really wasn't much, considering that we had been living in an apartment that was about 500 square feet, and that we were living a pretty minimalistic life anyway.
We began by purchasing an inflatable... yes, inflatable... couch and mattress to get us by until we figured out what would work in our small space. These worked just fine until a) the first real cold (by Florida standards) night hit, and b) Bailey decided to jump straight from our bed onto the couch.
Let's just say right now that air mattresses offer zero insulating properties. Zilch. Nada. And that when the said mattress is sitting on top of a plywood slab that also has nothing insulating beneath it, well... you get the idea. Brrrr! Sigh. Time to shop for a new mattress... something we had been planning on for the New Year's Day sales. Oh, well.
Let's also say right now that a dog's toenails will puncture an inflatable couch. Easily. Yes, we knew that. We also usually kept the couch covered with a blanket to protect it. For some reason... probably because we were using it on the previous cold night... that blanket wasn't on the couch when Bailey decided to play parkour and jump directly from our bed onto the couch. We instantly heard the hiss of air from the puncture wounds. Sigh. Time to shop for a new couch. In the meantime, we were thankful that the couch had two separate air bladders so we could "make it work" until we could find a new one.
Now, for the problems that actually occurred on Moving Day.
First, the shop that was making some repairs on our trailer and getting it ready for us installed the hitch incorrectly... more on that later. They also didn't insert the weight distribution bars correctly, which we discovered as we were pulling out of their lot onto the (thankfully) small road and one of the bars actually fell off and onto the pavement with a loud clang (again, thankfully we heard it and it was on a road that wasn't busy).
Second, the seven-pin connector wasn't inserted tightly into the truck. We kept getting an error on the lights and couldn't figure out why. We never received a "disconnected" signal, so we assumed it was a wiring issue... which was actually not a bad assumption (again, more on that later). We were almost to our destination when we finally got the dashboard notification that the plug was disconnected. We were able to pull over immediately to check it. Turns out, the plug must have been disconnected for quite a while, because the road had completely destroyed it. Sigh.
Something we learned, and would continue to learn, from these and future events? If you want something done right, do them yourself. In more than three years of owning this trailer, we have completed all repairs ourselves since then. Other than having Discount Tire... who we love, by the way!... install new tires on Bandit (our name for the trailer), we have done all the work ourselves. Trust me when I say it has been a definite learning curve.
Do we regret our lifestyle change? Follow along here on the blog and on our YouTube channel to find out!
Today is the 11th anniversary of my Mom's passing, just six months after Jeff and I were married. We weren't sure if my mom was going to be able to attend our wedding in August of 2011. She was a very sick woman.
Mom had end-stage COPD and all of its complications. The photo below is very dear to me. It was taken just moments before me walking down the aisle, just before our moms went into the sanctuary.
On the left is my "second" mom, Jeff's mom. In the wheelchair is my mom. This is a bittersweet photo because it shows just how aware my second mom is that my mom wasn't going to be on this earth for much longer. My smile shows how unabashedly happy I was that my mom could be there for a moment in time I'm sure she thought would never happen... my marriage to a man who has my heart for life.
You can see a shadow of happiness in my mom's expression. It was all she could manage through the mind-numbing weariness and pain that this vicious disease causes. She was able to stay for the ceremony, and she managed to stay just long enough for photos afterward, but my dad whisked her home right after that.
That was in August of 2011. Jeff and I felt something (or someone) was leading us down to Florida and we moved in November 2011. My mom passed away on February 27th of 2012 at home surrounded by my brothers and sister and my dad. I wasn't able to be there.
Jeff's mom just turned 100 years old on the 25th of this month.
Please feel free to enjoy the memories of our wedding and honeymoon in the above video! Have a blessed day, everyone.
In this video, I talk about why we decided to live full-time in an RV.
Jeff and I went to our first RV show shortly after moving to Florida in late 2011. That's when something silently clicked in the back of our minds. We have always loved to travel and explore new places, but it was so expensive to go on vacations! And we were always limited by his vacation days at work.
We went to several more RV shows throughout the next few years, and we also went on vacations. We had fun our trips, but it always seemed like a race to get as much done as we could at each destination... all while watching our spending budget.
Another consideration was the overall cost of living in the Tampa Bay area. It was getting expensive! We had already downsized to an apartment of about 550 square feet, and we were still spending a tremendous amount (to us) on rent. It seemed like such a waste of money! We were not interested in purchasing a home, either, as neither of us wanted to be locked into one location. Neither did we want the cost and time of home maintenance and repair, or the home-owner's insurance that costs a fortune in Florida.
In 2017, after a road trip up north through the Blue Ridge Mountains to Ohio to visit family and friends, we decided to begin researching the viability of living in an RV. We started looking at YouTube and were astounded to find channels like Keep Your Daydream and Long Long Honeymoon, just to name a couple. Between watching these channels and researching many RVs and RV camping memberships (like Thousand Trails), we decided that this was indeed an option for us. It was time to get serious about making our plans for the future.
Thankfully, the YouTube channels that we focused on stressed the fact that full-time RV life is not for everyone. We understood the sacrifices and hardships we would encounter from the beginning, and we researched like crazy to prepare for our new lives... everything from the actual purchase of an RV to common repairs and maintenance we would have to be able to do.
In November of 2019, we finally pulled the trigger and purchased a used travel trailer. It was a 2004 Fleetwood Wilderness 270FQS, and we still own it today.
Would the research we'd done be enough to get us through our transition to full-time RV life?
Wow! We have been full-time RVers for more than three years! Where has the time gone?
We began this Crazy RV Life of ours in November of 2023, but we've remained in central Florida for the last three years.
We did, however, make a dash for Alabama back in September of 2022 in order to evacuate from Hurricane Ian. That evacuation reinforced the travel bug in us, that's for sure! We ended up with a solid case of survivor's remorse since we enjoyed our evacuation so much, and so many others lost so much to that vicious storm.
We've finally begun our national travels, though! So far, we've spent January and February in South Carolina, Alabama, and a few nights in Georgia. You'll have to follow along in order to see where we go from here!
Speaking of following along... Did you know that we have a YouTube channel? It's called... wait for it... Our Crazy RV Life. We started it back in 2019 when we were transitioning into our RV life. You can watch all of those videos from Season One if you would like (we would love it if you did!), and, while you're at it, we would be absolutely thrilled if you would take the time to Subscribe to our channel... it's FREE!
Boy, I think that's enough plugging for one day, don't you? Anyway, we would love it if you would follow along in Our Crazy RV Life, as well as show my photography some love!
