Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Some Work but Mostly Play



Oops!  I'm behind on the blog again.  In true catch-up fashion I'll update our progress with a list of things we've installed:

door handle
converter/power center
all 12v and 110 outlets
reproduction Bargmann 99 taillite lenses
toilet riser (Brian made it & tiled it)
external waste plumbing and dump valves
hot water heater (and winterizing bypass)
curtains (I made them... all 14 panels)

Did you catch that?  Maybe I should say it a little differently:

This part is so exciting!
We have power!
We have a working toilet!
We have curtains!

Our trailer is starting to feel so much like home that can't resist using it. We've taken the trailer out the past two weekends. 

The first weekend, drove to the north Georgia mountains for a family reunion in McCaysville, Georgia.  Our extended family (from Missouri, Illinois & Wisconsin) stayed both in my parents cabin and a neighboring rented cabin.

Family Reunion highlights:

  • picking blackberries, with the chigger bites to prove it (yikes! a first for us!)
  • walk around the neighborhood, seeing a mother & fawn
  • zip-line in the backyard
  • introduction to Facebook Scrabble on an iPad (hooray for wifi)

 
I see something shiny behind that cabin



 my grandpa's home made ice cream (always the best)

digging for treasure (with uncles and a metal detector,  so fun!) 

kayaking and subsequent lake "swims" on two separate occasion
I won't say which two of us fell in but I will say that Y chromosomes were involved.

 This past weekend we visited another fine Georgia state park.  Samuel thought it was especially appropriate that Brian finished the toilet just in time (read= almost-all-night-er) for our visit to the Georgia state park called Tugaloo.

Get it?  Tug-a-loo!  
 We enjoyed the luxury of sleeping in our giant bathroom.

What a scorcher of a weekend!  On Saturday it was 99.5 degrees.  (The record high for that day/location is 101.)  We've camped with these friends for so many years but this is the first time we've ever ventured into a lake. I'm pretty sure our kids will look back at this weekend as "the time they let us play in the mud." 

 For the record, Annabelle says, "I didn't play in the mud."

Highlights from our Tugaloo weekend:

  • Starbucks drive-thru...

Ok.  Maybe that was just a highlight for me.  It was only the second time I towed the trailer.  I was feeling pretty smug.  (No need to mention whether I drove over any curbs or not.)
  • another mother & fawn sighting (it must be that time of year) 
  • field trip 20 miles down the road to the air conditioned Coleman outlet
  • ice cream at a truck stop  (People watching? Yes!  There were people watching us!  I guess it's hard to overlook a group of 20 sweaty campers.)

For a brief moment Saturday we thought it was going to rain.  
Samuel taped a garbage bag over our new...um, sky-lite. 
Yes, we lost an original Hehr vent cover.

just the kids

the whole gang

Back at home, our neighbor rang the doorbell Sunday night holding something odd.  It was aluminum, square-ish, and old.  She said her husband thought it looked like something that belonged on our Airstream.  It was our vent cover!  We lost it before we left our street.  Thank goodness for kind neighbors!