Another Untimely Death

Another untimely death took place in Coon Valley, so the carpet installer/funeral director is tied up again today. The owner of the carpet store (the brother of the funeral director) says that he has made arrangements to have someone else install the flooring and that it will all be done by the end of the day tomorrow (Friday). We’re getting pushed back more and more. Kim would like to push off our departure until Wednesday, but I’m still shooting for Monday. Either way, we’ve got a lot to do.

We realized a couple of days ago that the extension to put air in one of the rear tires is missing and the tire is soft. It’s an easy fix, but in order to do the job, you have to have a big jack (probably 10 ton or bigger). I found a tire store in town that has the jack to do the job, but they don’t have the extension. Now I’m trying to track down an extension so the tire store can do the job on Saturday. I called the local RV store, but they closed early today, so now I have to wait until tomorrow.

Our efforts at getting the house packed up are going slow. We’ll be packing things up tonight in preparation for moving all of the big, heavy stuff out tomorrow. My hope is that we can get all the big stuff moved tomorrow (Kim says she doesn’t see any way we can get that done in one day) and then move all of the boxed items on Saturday and Sunday. We’ll see. . .

Today is Louis’ birthday. He is eight years old. I can only imagine what he is thinking about all of this. He’s looking forward to our trip, but I don’t think he really understands completely that we are going to be living in a big metal box for eight months.

I want so much for this trip to be a positive experience for the kids. Probably my biggest fear in taking this RV trip is that I’m going to somehow let the kids down. I know they are excited and I know they are resilient, but I keep wondering if I’ve overlooked anything that could turn out to be negative for the kids. God, I hope not.

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UPDATE: We just made the decision not to leave on our Great Big Road Trip until Wednesday, November 21. We still plan on stopping to see my brother on the way south, but then we are going directly to Kim's parents. That means we will be skipping the trip to Springfield. The kids will probably never learn who Abraham Lincoln is, but we need the extra couple of days to get ready.