Life at Home
September 19th, O9
We have been is Salt Lake for a few months now. We have many things we wanted to accomplish while we are here. We are working on them all.
As soon as we arrived home, we started a round of family activities. We had luncheons with family members on both sides of the family. Then we had a great family reunion on my side of the family and spent time at the beach on Bear Lake. It was really fun and we had a chance to use our little van and get the bugs out while we were building it.
After that, Katie came home from Hawaii and we went to lunch with her and some of the members of Jim’s family that we hadn’t seen yet. We ended up at Gary’s home visiting all afternoon.
Tyler and Tiffany seem to be having a problem. We have seen more of Tyler on this trip home than we had seen of him for a long time. We have seen their kids more than we usually do too. It is so great to have them around. I do enjoy having the grandkids around.
Tyler and his kids have been coming to our “Sunday Dinners” which we started up again as soon as we arrived in Salt Lake. These dinners take place every other week and our family tries to come over after church. This gives us a chance to keep up with what is going on. It gives the cousins a chance to stay acquainted. It keeps our family together and I love having everyone over so it is a win, win situation. But the family is getting bigger and the kids are growing. I need a bigger house!
We decided to make some changes in the van we bought to come home in. Jim built some boxes in the back that we can use to store things in. They run the length of the van but stop before they get to the back doors. This was so that we could build a kitchen in the back end of the van. These boxes have lids on them and we took some old cushions we had, and with Gary’s help, we covered them with material I found at a sale. We also bought some Naugahyde at a sale and covered the boxes with that. They make nice benches with the cushions on top and Jim and Gary built a table between them that can be lowered to make a bed in the back of the van. At the back of the van is another box that we have divided into sections. Jim made a sliding shelf in this box that holds a stove and there is a compartment for a water jug. The other sections are for silverware, dish soap etc. There is a tight fitting cover on this box that keeps the dirt out of our “kitchen”. Next to the kitchen box, or “chuck box”, as I like to call it, (because it is an adaptation of an idea my mother had for a box we called “the chuck box when I was younger”) there is an electric cooler. Jim rigged up a battery to keep it cool and even if it doesn’t cool a lot, it will keep frozen food cold for a few days. We will have to be aware of the fact that it doesn’t cool as well as a fridge.
Jim put carpet on the floor of the van and we bought a port-a-potty to fit under the bed. I made some curtains and now our van is a mini-mini-motor home.
Next, with Gary’s help, AGAIN, we made awnings that we can put over the kitchen area or on the side of the van, or both. We now have all the comforts of a motor home, in our little van.
We hadn’t been in SLC long before we could see that we were short of cash, so I went back to work, part time, in the home health industry. But sadly, they haven’t been able to give me enough work to make a difference. I can see that I need another plan.
I talked to my sister, Mary, about it and explained that I needed a way to earn money while we traveled. She suggested that I talk to a man she knows who earns his living on the Internet. I did this and now I am learning to market things on the Internet. I can see that this is going to take some time to get up and going because it is actually a new career altogether. I will take some time and a lot of learning. But it will be worth it. The company not only teaches people to market on the Internet, they teach you click by click. They are really involved in helping people and this turns out to be a great thing to be involved in. I am excited to learn. I hope I can hold out long enough to start earning money at it.
Now besides these things, I have acquired a class in primary, with the understanding that I may have to leave on short notice. If you know Jim, you know what I am talking about. I know that when he is ready to go back to the boat, we will leave in a hurry. That is the way we do things, and I might just as well count on it.
