"We can make it if we try..."

A blog is only useful if it has readers. I tend to read blog posts only if I feel that the information will be useful or entertaining to me. Most of the time I like to feel a connection to the writer, which is much easier if I know a bit about them. Do they think/act the same way I do? Do they live an interesting life? What drives them to do what they do? These are the things I like to know. If you want to know more about my family and myself,...

Are we fulltimers?

I see the occasional discussion about what constitutes fulltiming: If you have a house, can you stay in it or must you 'camp' in the yard? Must you rent it out? Can you have a house at all? Do you have to always be 'on the go'? If not, How long can you stay put before you must bug out?

We moved into our trailer at the end of May 2011 when we moved out of our townhouse. Everything we did in our townhouse we now do in the TT. It is our home. We live in...

When we moved into our TT, one of my 'musts' was to keep all of the tools that I might need. I pared down my tool set quite a bit, getting rid of the duplicates, with the hopes that I would be able to do anything in the trailer that I was able to do at the house. This idea got put to the test in our first month when the infamous 'Chevy lower intake-manifold gasket' sprung a leak in the Suburban. I was able to perform all of the work with my tool bag, and without a manual (I have a Haynes manual...

Over the last few months I have noticed a fading in the brakes of our Suburban. It brakes acceptably, but it has gotten progressively worse. No squealing, pulling or studdering... just taking more pedal and distance to stop. Also, it has been pitching more on brake application which told me the shocks might be bad.

I got underneath it a couple of weeks ago and noticed that the shocks were 'no-name' brand (probably original) and had lost most of their dampening effect. After doing a...

On the last weekend in May 2011, we left the house for the trailer one last time and took it out for it's (our) maiden voyage: a trip from Phoenix down to Tucson to see family. While in Tucson, we showed off our new home for the first time to our family and friends. It got a warm welcome from most. We also made a few calls and set up arrangements for a place to park it once we got back into the Phoenix area.

It was a short trip, lasting only three days, but I felt awesome about it....

We picked up our new-to-us TT late March 2011 and dropped it off at a storage lot near our townhouse. That was a fairly interesting trip in its own right since I had NEVER towed anything before.

For the next few weeks we would work diligently at home: during the weekdays we were trying to sort through our belongings; weekends were spent at the storage lot making the trailer feel more like "ours".

If you are a Fulltimer, you know the process for getting rid...

It could have been because of all of the stress caused by the planning of such large changes in our life. Or, just an eagerness to enter this world. Either way, our son decided that it would be best if he came early. Seven weeks early...

All progress stopped. I took time off from work to help my wife. She would spend every day for a month in the hospital with him while I would stay at home and watch the 3 girls. Suddenly, all of my wife's work at home became mine. I had to get the...

The decision to move into an RV was a year in the making for the wife and I. I first mentioned it to her in passing back in early 2010, but she dismissed it as a pipe-dream. A few weeks later I brought it up again and forced a 'could it work' type of discussion. She had reservations...

"Could we afford it?" "What type of RV?" "Could we all fit?" "Was this right for us?" "For the kids?" "Where would we live?" "Would you...