So we decided to not have our black (toilet water, yes the bad stuff) emptied. We were trying to see how long wee could go with regular usage before having to change. The front black water tank holds 41 gallons and the back black water tank another 41 gallons. Unfortunately the two tanks are not connected so what goes down the front (main bathroom) toilet ends up in the front tank and what goes down the back toilet (wet bath) goes into the rear tank (we do not use the rear wet bath atm as it is where the cat litter box is. After two weeks the front tank was getting full with pump out day (Thursday) approaching fast.
This park seems to run on a skeleton staff once Labour day passes so I was unsure if they would be doing the Thursday pumpouts. With my uncertainty growing I decided Thursday morning to take matters into my own hands and pull in all the slideouts and drive the trailer down to the dump station. It took us the better part of an hour to get everything in order to slide in and unhook hoses and cables then we were off to the dump station….
A week of wet weather and a front to back slope on our lot and we could not get enough traction to get the trailer out! UGH! So we unhooked the truck and with much effort got the truck out at least. Guess we have to wait for the ground to dry out abit. Luckily we did see the park guy doing pumpouts and we did get our tank drained so in the end it was no big deal, but we made some nice trenches in our lot =)
Add equal parts of 17 month old’s enthusiasm and really cool jungle gym and what do you get? Big fun! Noëlle’s recent trip to a local park with a giant jungle gym resulted in some big laughs by all. Chasing a little one around the jungle gym can be quite exhausting, but the smiles, pics and memories are definately worth it. One of the nicest parts of this park is that they have banned smoking within 30 meters of the play equipment (and this is followed for the most part), which makes the stones/sand at the base of the playground butt free (Noëlle like every child can find a butt in a haystack any day).
A good picture of part of the playground area. There is also a splash pad attached that Noëlle is just starting to get interested in (spraying water is still a bit dangerous).
Not to turn this into a religous debate, but I found the proximity (right next to one another) of the dinosaur bones and the Noah’s Arc playstation interesting =).
Noëlle playing in one of the tubes. This picture turned out very dark, but through the magic of photoshop and RAW picture format this wonderful picture was saved!
Who is having more fun? Also note that Mommy refused to catch Daddy at the bottom of the slide =(.
My favorite picture of the bunch. I’ll let you make up your own caption =).
The “boys” have introduced Noëlle to driving, but as you can see in this picture she was only a passenger as the Jeep is far too big to learn to drive on.
After much discussion and pleading by Noëlle, Mommy and Daddy broke down and bought her a vehicle to learn on.
Daddy’s one condition was Noëlle had to work on her grandparents once she had learned how to drive (steer mostly). Noëlle took to the internet and found some she really liked so expect some links and pics in your emails Grandma, Grandpa and Pepe!
With a new baby boy due to arrive in early January, our bed (king size) could get abit crowded. Noëlle is still sleeping in our bed for naps and night-time. When baby Button arrives someone is going to have to go, and I am abit concerned when push comes to shove it will be Daddy. This is why the bed nook project took on such a high priority (for me!)
Once it was finished Noëlle started napping and starting each night out in her bed, we also switched her to only one nap a day. So far it has gone very well Noëlle is going down much faster for her naps and is going down at night in her own bed and sleeping well. The big problem seems to be that Noëlle seems to migrate from her bed to ours somewhere shortly after Mommy goes to bed….
Quite the mystery. Might be time to set up cameras to see what is really happening =)
Hi all! I know you have been wondering what we have been up to so here’s a look at one of our completed projects that we have been working on. Building Noëlle’s bed nook has been a high priority because we are trying to get her used to sleeping in her own bed (more to come on that in a future post). Here are some pics…
Before picture of Noëlle picking out her bed area. The sliding mirrored doors normally make an area feel bigger, but this small hallway we found always seemed very cramped.
Transformation completed. The area is actually built for a washer and dryer so there is power (big bonus), but there are also water valves and a grey waste water pipe (not so great). In the future we may add a washer to this area, but we will not get a dryer (since we visited Sweden we really like to hang dry the clothes outside).
A good shot of the built in storage for toys under the bed.
And incase you forgot the area, here it is on the floorplan. Next up Closet Remodel!
Last night we had our first thunderstorm and it was a doozie! Somehow during all the thunder and lightning my brave wife ran out without me seeing and snapped this award winning shot of us in the middle of the storm.
Now not to worry we are all safe and the trailer handled it well (no leaks). With a tornado watch in this area the winds were quite high and you could feel it swaying in the wind from the loft in the back. Sleeping in the storm was interesting as our heads are actually in a slide out and not in the trailer when sleeping, there is considerably less sound deadening in the slideout so the rain sounded like we were laying out in the field (dry tho). Once the storm had passed over the light rain put us right to sleep. Noëlle of course slept like a baby through the whole storm, even when she was sleeping on her own (before mommy needed her to sleep). Funny how she will sleep though a thunderstorm, but be woken up from a nap by me getting a spoon from the drawer.
We have now been fulltiming for two weeks and we are just loving it. Everything has been a little crazy since we left for Florida a month a ago. We luckily managed to find a truck in Florida and did not have to fly out to Nebraska and drive back to Florida.
We got a 2006 Dodge 3500 Dual-wheel, Crew-cab, diesel, 6-speed. Just what we were looking for. Greg had looked into all the towing specifics, and this was supposedly the one that could tow the most – 23,000 pounds. Just what we needed!
We drove up to Indiana to pick up our new home, this was on August 5th. We drove back to Canada and everything went smooth at the border. The officer only had an issue with our Indiana temporary plates on the trailer (they will be Florida plates), and issued us a piece of paper that is good until the end of October here in Canada. Whew!
Here is our new home and truck
When we came to Canada we stopped by at the in-laws to pick up some of our belongings…Yeah, some were all we had time for. It did not look like much, but it was more than we remembered. We drove to a campground that we had found that was fairly close by, down in Cayuga.
It proved to be in a little worse shape than we had hoped for, but we ended up staying for a week.
During this time we went to another campground in Ontario and visited with Angie and her family (Freely Living Life). We immediately fell in love with their family, Noëlle loved their kids and we decided to move over there once our week at the first campground was up.
Noëlle is loving the life in the RV. We move according to her schedule, we play outside a lot with the “boys” (as she calls them), and we just hang out as a family.
Nothing beats playing with water
Noëlle is cuddling with Mag, who is adjusting well
Water play at the waterworks park
Daddy and Noëlle playing on the couch
Our little climbing monkey
The highlight of the week is when there are puddles to splash around in
Nothing beats playing with water
We have also been planning some changes to our RV, and already got to work on some. We started out in the office by building a desk to fit our computers.
Floor plan
Our new desk, we love it!
That is all for now! We promise to get a little better at this blogging thing 
The blog has been quiet for some time. We finally heard back from the Consulate in Montreal and got an appointment for July 22nd. We booked our tickets back to Canada. Once back here there were a lot of things to go through, many hurdles to pass, like vaccines to pass the medical in Toronto.
We got through all of that and headed to Montreal. Unfortunately we had to leave with no Green Card.
We were missing a couple of papers. Now we have to send them in (along with hubby and daughter’s passports) and it will take 6-8 weeks before we get them back.
Sigh. The 5th wheel we have ordered will be ready any day now. We had already booked tickets to go to Florida to pick up a truck and trade in our licenses. Since we already have the tickets we are going to try and go down. I asked if there would be a problem, she said it’s okay to go, but it’s up to the border people if they will let you in.
Once in Florida I will have to change my license, get insurance, buy the truck and finally the 5er (which is up in Indiana somewhere). Because I am an American citizen I should be able to do all of this. We can only hope for the best!
Then we will have to drive it back to Canada, send the papers and passports away and wait for our Green Cards. Once we get them the tradeshow season will more or less be over, so we will probably make our way down to Florida.
This whole process has been so long and stressful. I just want it to be over. It’s like fighting a hydra, you chop one head off and another two pops out.
That’s why it has been a little quiet over here, cause we have been crazy busy. Hopefully we will have our RV within a couple of weeks… I can’t wait!
During the week we had a few days of thunderstorm activity which unfortunately knocked out the wireless router hence our lack of reported activity.
With internet back functioning I’m posting a animated gif of Noëlle at Alexander’s graduation party (more to come on the party and grad later).
You just had to know this would be a project Noëlle would be all over. Mormor wanted to plant little spice gardens and Noëlle wanted to be involved in every step.
Step 1: Pick up the wooden boxes. We got the two wooden boxes from Morfar’s work. We had a nice tour and I was very impressed. Noëlle was a big hit with the ladies that worked there as usual. One even told Steph in swedish how cute she was and took after her dad. Yup! *puffs up chest* Takes after her dad =)
Step 2: Seeds purchasing. We went to Lindesberg (pop approx 5k) to a farm that looked like it was converted to a garden store. Noëlle wasn’t too impressed till she found the petting zoo area!
Noëlle doing alittle swedish rally car racing which quickly ended when she found…
The rabbit was so calm and peaceful he/she let Noëlle pet him/her for quite along time. Of course Noëlle was in heaven. With seeds and dirt in hand back to the farm to set up we went.
Step 3: Filling the boxes and planting seeds. Well you know how they say a picture is worth a thousand words, well here’s three. Yes, daddy was and is just speechless.
