Home at last, it was so nice to sleep in our own bed.  We had moved into my mom’s townhouse in Garland, just before we left on our trip.  At the last minute (2 days before we left) we helped Mom move into an assisted living apartment.  It was a rush job, but she settled into her new community pretty nicely.

It was great just to be able to go to Walmart, where we recognized all the food.   Seeing the kids and grand babies was awesome.  We tried to surprise the boys by just showing up at their house, hoping to get a big reception, but they acted like it was nothing new (other than asking us if we had any presents for them).  Hunter got new glasses, and is wearing them all the time now.  He looks so cute and nerdy at the same time (a chip off the old block).  Maverick is really learning to talk well and Elle is jabbering up a storm, nobody knows what she saying, but she has a lot to tell us.  Sami hosted a fun Easter and Birthday party for the whole family.  It is so sweet to see the little ones playing together.

Maverick (2), Hunter (4) and Elderly (2)

I’m sure it seems like we just disappeared, but as you will see, we got really busy and Bill had no time to work on the hundreds of underwater pictures and videos from our diving in Wakatobi.  We will have to post that blog, and Hong Kong, later when he gets caught up.  Aside from spending time with family, our goal was to sell my mom’s townhouse (so much for the plan to use her house as our base when we were in town).  This also meant we needed to sell everything we owned again.  My brother found a great real estate agent who also knew a lady that did estate sales.  I must say they were both excellent.  The real estate agent came and took beautiful pictures.  She had Bill moving pretty much everything in the house.  He moved furniture out of and back into rooms, staging first one vantage point, then the next in every room.  It really paid off.  The house went up on MLS on a Wednesday, with an Open House that Sunday.  At the end of day Sunday, we had nine offers.  We had a couple of deals fall through after the inspections (not sure what the buyers expected on a 50-year-old town house), but within a couple of weeks we had a total of 15 offers and it sold for over the asking price on an all cash offer.

With the rushed move in late December, we still needed to spend some time finishing up my Mom’s new apartment.  She is quite the art and memento collector so we helped her select the items she wanted to keep (and that would fit in the new place), and got them moved over and displayed in her new home.  Mom (like Dessa) also loves flowers and her garden was her favorite spot at the house.  Her apartment looks into a courtyard, so we set up a pot garden for her (that would be flowers in pots, this isn’t Colorado).

I started going through drawers and closets as soon as we got home, and was overwhelmed by all that we needed to do to clear out the house she had lived in for 35 years.  Thank goodness the estate sale lady stepped in and took over.  She provided a full-service solution, she sorted, priced, displayed, advertised, held the sale, documented the sales, then boxed up what was left and arranged a charity pick up.  Such a relief!  It allowed Bill and I to concentrate on the sorting and disposition of all of our stuff.  We had sold everything in 2013, when we moved into the RV the first time, and now we were faced with doing that again.  It is amazing how much stuff we accumulated in only two years.  It was painful letting some of the furniture go, it was almost new.  The kids did not need it because they had furniture from our last downsize.  We sold the car and Bill’s 65-inch TV (that was the real painful part) ourselves, but we let all the rest go in the estate sale.  We did not get a lot of money for it, but at least it was done.

Being home after such a long trip also meant doctor and dentist visits, and we both had minor procedures.  We had maintenance done on both of the motorcycles, the truck, and the RV.  An innocent search on Pinterest gave us (us is a bit of an exaggeration but I went along with it and really like the results) the idea to paint the interior of the RV.  Like 99% of RV’s, ours had a mostly dark brown and black pallet.  I don’t know why the designers think that is a good idea in an already tiny space.  Our RV had some printed upholstery around the windows that I wanted to cover, so when I started looking on Pinterest it was for solutions for this issue.  What I found was complete makeovers where the interiors had been painted mostly white.  We decided this was our opportunity and hired some painters.  It took them more than twice as long as they estimated, but they did a pretty good job and now it looks so much better.  Bill changed the back-splash in the kitchen, and we bought a new couch.  The old couch had fallen apart while the RV was in storage, and it is one of the few things that can be changed. We still have a couple of things to change like the pendant lights in the kitchen, and the bathroom sink, but we are really pleased with the transformation.

Before

 

After

We spent as much time as we could with my mom and the grand babies, but before we knew it, it was time to move back into the RV and start our tour of the US and Canada. After 7 weeks at home, we hit the road.  The plan is to chase perfect weather.  We’ll take a month to wander up to the Toronto area to visit Bill’s family, then a few months heading through Quebec and down into the Maritime Provinces before catching the fall colors in the New England area.  We’ll wrap up the trip coming down the east coast chasing warmer weather.  We’re planning a couple of flights home during this 6-month loop to see Mom, the kids and the grand babies.

Away we go…  first stop Memphis, Tennessee

View pictures of the kids here

View RV Makeover pictures here