Camping with kids.

 If you read my last post you would know that we have been looking for a camp trailer. We've been stalking Craigslist for a while and when one popped up near Seattle we went right up to get it. I'll tell ya the shortened version of this trip because it was quite the ordeal.

We spent over 12 hours in the car with three kids. I was honestly impressed with how well they did! Shady guy on Craigslist, (who knew there were shady people on Craigslist?!? haha) who talked on his phone constantly. He told us the title was at his house and then said it was in Seattle. That meant that he had to drive up to Seattle and he said that we should go out for lunch. When we came back from lunch there was an older man there looking at the camp trailer and the shady guy left, called Charlie, and told him to drive the camp trailer to his house since the trailer was parked at a friend's house. As Charlie was getting ready to hitch it up to our car the older man sitting there said, "Hey, I just bought this." Saaaaay, whaaaaat? In the hour that we were gone to lunch the shady guy had sold the camp trailer to someone else. Thankfully we didn't give him our money and decided that we weren't going to deal with someone so dishonest. It turned out to be a great lesson for the kids! I was a little bummed that we had driven all that way, but I knew that God must have something better for us.  One door closes, another one opens, right? I just wasn't expecting the door to open an hour later. We decided to up our price range and look on Craigslist in hopes that we could talk someone down to a better price. The PERFECT one popped up and I called the guy. The price was almost $1000 more than what we wanted to pay but I figured I'd give it a shot. The guy say he would only go down $500 so I told him thanks, and that we'd keep looking. He asked if we had the cash and I told him we did. He dropped the price to what we could afford and we bought it!! Praise God! 

Here's a picture of her. I still haven't named her yet.

Isn't it cute?!?

We decided to take the kids to Detroit Lake camping. This was the only campsite available on such short notice and it was absolutely perfect. Tucker had a cold and was cutting a tooth. Y'all know how that can go, and we still had fun! We spent most of our time fishing, going on walks, hanging out by the campfire, and eating S'mores. Sounds like a successful camping trip to me and I can't wait to go again. Here's some pictures of our trip.

                                                  Just a man watching the sunrise haha!

Daddio, Emily and Jakey boy.

Just a girl fishin' and Tucker throwing rocks.

Jakey boy in the forest.

Daddio getting some sun. Tuckers face cracks me up haha!

Jake lost his pants.....

He's so sweet <3

Hangin' out in the trailer

Jake doing what he loves to do: FISH.

Mommo and Jakey boy hanging out in the forest.

Burgers and hot-dogs for dinner!

S'mores

                                

Priorities.

The past couple months I've been putting money back for new windows. Our old ones are absolutely terrible and when you buy an old house you have to expect that it's going to be constant work in progress. We've been doing things to our house every summer since we moved in. Just in the four short years we have built an addition, put in a new front lawn, did a complete kitchen remodel, new flooring, new carpet (twice, thanks to our child who had a puking problem while she was crawling ha!), painted each room at least twice (no, I do not have a problem ;-)), managed to have three kids during that time, and many other small projects. Charlie added it up and we have put at least $30,000 in this house. That's a lot of time and money. 

Ok, back to the windows--I'd been saving up for a couple months and I FINALLY saved up enough money to buy the windows. Charlie talked to his dad and they were trying to decide to best way to put the new windows in. We have vinyl siding on our house and putting new windows in was going to be a bit complicated. Turns out, the only way to put new windows in is to take off the vinyl siding. This means spending money on new siding, and siding the whole house. Ouch, that didn't fit into my $1200 budget. At this point we asked ourselves: If we are taking the siding off, why not put insulation in as well since our house doesn't have insulation in the walls? The window project was going to cost around $1200, was easily going to be a $5,000 project and ANOTHER summer gone to house projects.  Oh, and don't forget that I'm due in 9 weeks so there'd be a newborn thrown into the mix as well!

The thing is that it's not like we don't have fun with the kids because we do. Our summers are not completely consumed with house projects. God has blessed us with the ability to spend at least three weeks in Kentucky visiting my family every year, fun camp-outs, visiting zoos, etc. So we were faced with a decision to either put new siding, windows and insulation in the house, or buy a really nice camp trailer. We weren't exactly sure what to do at first. After thinking about it for a little bit I told Charlie that house projects are always going to be there and memories with the kids aren't. He agreed. Lord willing, we will be doing the siding next summer and this summer will be filled with newborn cuddles, camping around Oregon/Cali (in our NEW camp trailer!!!), a trip to Kentucky and the Creation Museum, building a new back deck, and mostly enjoying summer and hanging out with the kids. The thought of doing all this instead of putting new siding on the house makes me VERY happy. I know we'll look back and be very glad that we spent the money on something that will create fun memories for the kids and ourselves. House projects are fun......said no one ever. Ok, they aren't THAT bad.....but you know what I mean haha!

I decided to post a view pictures of the yard progress that I took the other day. Here ya go:

So this is when we bought it. No one can like this. Why is the drive-way going through the front yard?!?

Redoing the front yard....

How it looks today. That's a HUGE improvement if you ask me. 

Another before picture.

Aaaaaaah, so much better!!

<3