Life In The Camper

I had this very long blog entry that documented our week of packing and moving and it disappeared and I'm very upset.  I supposed I have to re-do it while the memories are fresh but man…..

Anyway, people keep asking how camper life is going, why we choose to move into it early and call us crazy for choosing to live this way.  We may be a little nuts for choosing this.  It's certainly not as spacious as a house but it is essentially a house with all the modern conveniences (except that our shower sucks) plus wheels.  A large large number of people do exactly what we are doing now.  In fact, if you go to any base campground  90% of the people on them are living there full-time and have no plans to leave, or they are geo-baching it, or in limbo like us.  All of the folks we have encountered are officers too which is interesting.  Do you know how cheap it is to live in a camper at a camp ground?  That's mainly why we chose to move into it early, we can bank our housing allowance.   We have a month or so left here in VA and the date to leave keeps changing and has since the beginning.  Rather than guess and endure the stress of not knowing exactly the date of our departure without a house waiting for us on the other end, why not challenge ourselves to live minimally and bank our BAH?  Living small without a lot of stuff is very attractive to Jon and I.  We have everything we need in here, and an entire house in storage in CA.  Stuff is stuff.  Space is different.  Space is space, and well, that's why we will only live in here temporarily.

Depending on the hour or minute you ask how we are doing, the answer I give you will vary.  Our first week was rough.  There was a puker and after she recovered there was a snotty cougher and while that was happening there was a crap ton of rain.  Mama was a little grumpy, the dog is lucky to still be a Kalbach, and I'm terrified of everyone getting really sick.  (Lucky for everyone, Ella only had a 24 hour bug. )  We are very warm, very comfortable, and yes very close.  It's like living in a hotel room with all our stuff.  It's really not bad but at times it isn't the best.  What's cool about living in a small space is that it takes 30 minutes max to clean the entire house.   That includes dishes, kitchen, floors, bathroom, beds, and picking up.  Leaving our day to plan to spend time with the people we love and will leave soon.  It makes Jon and I test the length of our patience on one another and the kids.  We have some work to do.

I think what I dislike the most is the crappy weather and the campground we are at.  We are staying near our old house so the kids can be close to school.  The campground is a mud pit and almost completely full.  It's surrounded by woods on 3 sides and a main road runs past the fourth side.  I feel a little claustrophobic because of that.  We will likely move when the kids finish school next month (a week or two before we take off) to a less crowded one on the beach.

So don't worry about us.  We are doing great.  The clouds look to be moving out right now and I see the sun on the horizon.  We plan to hit the bowling ally and then have dinner with some of our navy family tonight.  Tomorrow we are having breakfast as a family at the laundromat (HA!), and in about 5 minutes I'm ordering a super cool collapsable bathtub to bathe Freddie in in our shower to solve that issue.(YAY!)  We have play dates and dinners with friends to look forward to, and I haven't even had a chance to  use my Instapot yet!  Tomorrow we plan to cook in that.  I've never used a pressure cooker before.  There is a lot of buttons and a decent size instruction book.  I need to study it so I don't blow up our house.