Happy New Year!

Its really hard to believe that it has been over a year since our last post. Although we have been offline, we have been following all of your adventures and have enjoyed all of your fun!

We have all been fine since our last post. Our kids are doing great. Our oldest Stephanie and her husband Randy bought a beautiful home in Donald, Oregon. We are so proud of them. 

 

Our youngest Sarah graduated from ASU (our last post) and landed a great job with Tuft & Needle and she loves it. She has been traveling the world including this trip to Paris with two of her teammates. 

 

Tracy and I have busy working and saving for retirement, only 10 years to go, it will go fast, right? We had great trips to Oregon to visit our kids, to Ventura, La Quinta and Charlottesville, Virginia to visit family. We have had fun!

We sold our '93 Tioga, fondley known as "Iris" and bought a new to us 2003 Holiday Rambler Vacationer and have been enjoying it.
 
 We have been working out the kinks like check engine lights and a leaking slide seal, but we have taken it out three times since we bought it in October and it is so nice to have all of the space and comfort. 

We rang in 2017 at Usery Mountain Regional Park. 

 It has been cold and rainey, but when you have heat, a comfy recliner, great food and football, let it rain!

 So that is our New Year's update, one of my New Years resolutions is to post more, now that we have Holiday, there should be more to share. 😀

Thanks for sharing all of your adventures with us, we sure enjoy it! Here is wishing you all a very safe, healthy and happy 2017! Thanks for stopping by for our update.  

It's Been A Long, Hot, Summer!

Well not surprisingly, it has been a long, hot summer here in Arizona!  I am so done with the 110+ days and really looking forward to what Fall brings.  Sure have been enjoying your adventures over the many weeks and can't wait to get our rig out again.

We have both been working hard and putting as much as we can away for our future.  Our daughter Sarah graduated from ASU Summa Cum Laude and immediately found a job at a great mattress company called Tuft & Needle, her title is Office Hero!  She is having a great time and is actually headed back from New York today were she was working on a photo shoot, she is becoming a real traveler!

Proud Parents with the Graduate!

Stephanie and Randy have been trying to buy a house in the Wilsonville Oregon area without much success.  They have put offers in on a few and have been overbid immediately, seems to be a hot market.  We are pulling for them to find a place with RV parking, we can only hope. :)

We have booked two camping trips, one in two weeks and another in November, the campgrounds fill up so quickly, thank goodness for online reservations.  We had booked our October outing and Stephanie said that she wanted to come to AZ.  We were going to cancel our camping, but thought maybe she would like to join us...sure enough, she was very excited about it and it will sure bring back some great memories.  Now we need to work on Sarah to see if she will be part of our adventure!

So that is that, I know it has been a long time without a post, but we are still here and have enjoyed your adventures, while ours have been on hold.  More to follow in the days and weeks to come, really looking forward to the cooler weather and having to wear a coat!  

Safe and enjoyable travels and thanks for stopping by for an update!

Great Visit and First Day!

René and Jeanette

Well we had a wonderful visit today with René and Jeanette of RV VOYAGEUR at Canyon Vista Resort.  We had met them last year at Lake Pleasant and have followed their blog regularly and today's visit was just as great as our last. 

René and Jeanette are such wonderful people and are so easy to talk with, we could have spent many more hours with them, time goes by so fast.  They are off to more adventures this week and then off to Palm Springs after that, we hope to connect with them again prior to their return home.

Well I am off to a new adventure tomorrow myself.  I have enjoyed the last 11 weeks off for the holidays and family time, it sure has been great. 

I am looking forward to a long career with a great company here in Scottsdale as their head of Human Resources, so I won't be posting much as I learn the ropes, but I certainly will be following all of your adventures. 

Thanks for stopping by and safe travels!

Happy New Year!

Boy what a year its been with its many ups and downs, victories and challenges, joys and sorrows, but we have sure enjoyed being able to share the year with all of you. 

We have enjoyed your adventures and we hope that you have enjoyed ours as well.  We are looking forward to many blessings in 2015 and we hope the same for you and yours!

We were supposed to be camping at McDowell Mountain Regional Park to ring in the New Year, but decided to hunker down at home, watch some movies, enjoy the fireplace and avoid the cold and rain.  As I write this post, the rain is pouring off the roof and it is 46 degrees outside, confirming our tough decision, which is never easy to make, because we love to get away. 

So we will ring in the New Year here and we will pray for and work toward achieving good health, happiness, prosperity and much joy in 2015! Wishing the same for you, safe travels and thanks for stopping by.

Merry Christmas!

Huge Tree on Mill Ave. Tempe

After the many weeks of preparation, it is hard to believe that Christmas is finally here.  It is our hope and prayer that you and your families have a very Merry Christmas! Enjoy.

Traditions!

Sure has been nice having Sarah home from school this week, even though her work schedule has limited our time together.  She had another fantastic semester at ASU with a 4.17 grade point average and she will finish up with six more classes starting in January with graduation in May.  I am amazed at how smart our girls are, so glad that they got their Mom's smarts.

As we get closer to the big day, it wouldn't be Christmas without some Christmas cookies.  My Mom was the baker in our family and it always smelled of cookies, brown raisin bread and candy around our house this time of year.  My Mom would bake over twenty loaves of brown raisin bread for family members and friends, sure do miss that.

Sarah and I decided to keep the tradition going by making some Christmas cookies yesterday morning.  We broke out my Mom's cookie press and we made two of our favorites, sugar cookies and Holiday Nuggets. 

Mom's Cookie Press

I was amazed at how quickly we made six dozen cookies and it sure smelled wonderful in the kitchen too.

Good Cookies!

Sure great to keep these traditions going and now we have to find someone to give all these tasty cookies to or I will have to up my walking to 15,000 steps per day. :-)

Well it is time to head off to the store to buy all of the good stuff for breakfast Christmas morning.  I hope you are all enjoying your Holiday traditions and I hope that you have a very Merry Christmas and Happy and Healthy New Year!

We're Debt Free!

We have been following Dave Ramsey for the last three or so years and wish we would have found him twenty years ago.  I have listened to many couples either call into Dave’s radio show or visit him in person to share their debt free screams.  I have to admit that I get a lump in my throat and become a little misty eyed when I hear people share their accomplishments. 

Many people share the mental change they have made identifying “needs” versus “wants”, naming every dollar by creating budgets, holding budget meetings and becoming gazelle intense to accomplish their goal of not being a slave to a lender. 

Well I have to admit that Tracy has always been the saver and I have always been the spender in our family.  My spending temptation has always been cars and Tracy and I counted 20 of them in the last 32 years that I just had to have.  My thought was that if I could afford the minimum payment, I could afford the car….wrong!

I know that many of you reading this post are debt free as well and that is what attracts me to the RV lifestyle in particular. Not having a lot of stuff and only having those things which a person absolutely needs is a great way to live, especially to those of us who desire to yell that we are debt free.

Dave Ramsey walks followers through a series of seven “Baby Steps” which enable people to acquire their emergency fund, pay off debt using the Debt Snowball, save 3 to 6 months of expenses, invest 15% for retirement, fund their children’s education, pay off their house and live and give like no one else.

We started this process over three years ago and through God's blessings, I am happy to report that we too are debt free.  I would like to say that it was easy or that we found a shortcut to Dave’s process, but I can’t.  What I can say is that although we have sacrificed significantly over the last three years, Dave’s Baby Steps really work, I just wish that we had found them twenty years earlier. 

When Tracy and I went into our local credit union to pay off our home mortgage 16 years early, the teller said that no one had ever done that in his four years of employment and he wasn’t sure what to do.  We were glad that with a few phone calls that he figured it out and we were off to lunch to celebrate the accomplishment of our goal!

So although we won’t be joining those who shout “we are debt free” standing just outside Dave’s radio studio in Brentwood Tennessee, we will  be celebrating our new freedom by working on Baby Step Seven so that we can live and give like no one else in 2015 and beyond!