These are a few of my favorite things!

The last week I was feeling a little mopey because we are not in "our own home" and I was dissatisfied with having to rent for a while. Buying a new home for our family excited me and then it didn't happen. To try and get myself out of my "woe is me" funk I decided I needed to concentrate on the positive things and make sure to tell Johnny about them so he would know how much I love and appreciate all of his hard work to support our family. I didn't want him to come home to me every day pointing out the things I hated about where we are living (i.e. the butcher knife tip broken off in one of the cabinet doors).

Here it goes. Really this is what is at the top of my list!

1. An actual full size refrigerator, ice maker and all. ICE! We actually have ice at our finger tips! I picked out and bought an excellent but very inexpensive stainless steel refrigerator from a Persian couple off Craig's List. Compared to what I have lived with the last few years our new refrigerator feels absolutely gigantic! I promptly made a trip to Costco to fill it up! I have missed Costco and now I have the storage space to shop in bulk again!

2. A dishwasher! No more stacking our dishes sky high in the little drying rack! No more rock, paper, scissors to see who will have to wash dishes.

3. A water heater larger than 5 gallons! The hot water seems ENDLESS! I can finally take a shower longer than 2 minutes, shave my legs in the shower, and leave the water on while I scrub!

4. Not just one, but two FLUSHING toilets! Now I don't have to make one of my boys pee in the shower while the other one is sitting on the only available toilet! Seriously they all have to go at the same time and now one of my most frustrating problems has been solved. AND, I get to remove draining the tank from my boy's chore list. I bet no other 5 and 6 year olds would even know how to drain the tank on a travel trailer. I guess I'll replace that chore with loading/unloading the dishwasher. Wahahahaha!

5. I have a walk in closet. It would not be considered massive to some, but to me it is easily over 3 time as big as our trailer bathroom was and it is all mine! In the trailer I had one little cabinet and a tiny drawer. After losing so much weight my clothes take up maybe two and a half feet of the closet, but I am sure I can work to fill it over time! Wink, wink! Johnny has his own huge closet too and it is heavenly not to have to share.

6.  I don't have to light a pilot light to cook or check the over for toys! And I don't have to store food under the couch!

7. All of my kitchen gadgets are in cabinets now and I can bake the day away using any pans and bowls I want. In the trailer there was only room for a few things so I would rewash the same bowl or baking dish over and over. Not any more!

8. I have a backyard where my kids can play. They can come in and out without having to ask. I don't worry about them being run over or falling in a pool or being taken by a stranger when they are out there. A private back yard! Who knew it could be so heavenly?!

9. Separate rooms! Seriously?! Need I say more?! With 4 kids (and only a curtain separating them from us in the trailer) I love having a door to close between each room. And not just a door, a door with a lock!

10. A laundry room. No more going to the public or coin laundry. No more loading my kid's red wagon with laundry baskets and trekking over speed bumps to see if the machines are available. We have not bought a new washer and dryer yet, but we will soon. For now I wash clothes at my parent's house a few times a week. Sometimes I just stand in our empty laundry room and imagine having my own again. It will be soon, very soon, and I can't wait.

I think I might go on forever, but you get the point. Living in a house again, any house, is growing on me. I am very blessed. I just needed to recognize my blessings. I have been thinking about some of the women I know who are great friends of mine and who are having a very rough time right now. Some have been having very difficult struggles for years. I have every reason to be happy. I need to be more grateful. My grandmother has a saying "if all our troubles were hung on the line, you'd take yours and I'd take mine." So true!

Jaxon Update

Jaxon is doing well trialing dairy. He has gagged a few times and thrown up a few times, but he also might have been reacting to shrimp. He had shrimp twice. He has never had any previous reaction to shell fish in the past, but this time the side of his face swelled...but he also had an ear infection and was on antibiotics so it also could have been the ear infection causing the swelling. We go see the EE clinic at Rady Children's Hospital in San Diego the start of November and will probably schedule another scope. I hope to trial egg after we get the all clear on dairy. Egg will be the last restricted food we have to trial, but we will be staying away from shell fish for a while just to be sure. If we don't get the all clear on dairy I know I will cry and Jaxon will be devastated. Our battle over dairy will be epic if I try to remove it from his diet now. I have never seen a child so in love with cheese, Gogurts, and ice cream. He is a pizza fiend and will eat more than Johnny and I combined if we let him, which we don't. He eats like the food is going to get up and run away from him when it is something he really loves.

Moved

We FINALLY made a decision and rented a house in south west Hemet, CA. After 3 years I couldn't take the trailer any more. Now it is in storage awaiting the time when Johnny is sent to work far enough away that he can't come home every night. We looked at quite a few houses to buy and every time it didn't feel like it was the right one, or right time, or right anything. Nothing was falling into place. I was so unsure. I look back on it now realize I was seriously having a "stupor of thought." Eventually Johnny's truck had more issues and we dumped over $8,000 into repairs in two months...goodbye down payment. So we are renting and moved in this past weekend. It feels good to be in our own place again but it doesn't feel like home yet. After having all of our "junk" in storage for over 3 years much of my own stuff doesn't even feel familiar and I have quite a large pile of Goodwill items for the boy's school fundraiser. Seriously why did no one tell me I am a terrible decorator when we lived in Mesa? I am fighting the urge to go buy new EVERYTHING! Even all the clothes I had in storage are being sent off to friends or thrift stores. I keep thinking over and over "why did we pay to store this"?

I know I will feel more comfortable with time. The boys love having two separate rooms and more space to run and play. They love the freedom to go play in the back yard whenever they want. I love having a toilet that will flush and a dishwasher. The house echos due to our lack of furniture so the kids seem very loud the last few days. Surprisingly I have slept well here and look forward to decorating for the holidays.

Percival Family Camping Trip 2012

This weekend was my little sister's 26th birthday and in a few weeks my dad will reach his 60th birthday. To celebrate we went on a family camping trip to Tent Peg campsite near Running Springs on the way to Big Bear California. The weather was beautiful and the campsite much more remote than we were expecting. With no official bathroom (just a fly hut with a hole in the ground) and no running water, I ended up being very happy that we hauled our 32 foot travel trailer down a treacherous road and through a washed out river bed to the site. We even tore off one of the back jacks going over some rough terrain.

My parents, sister, niece, and others (including two dogs) slept in the trailer, but to our boys sleeping in the trailer would not be camping considering we have lived in it on and off for the last 3 years. My boys slept in a tent and Johnny and I opted for a mattress in the back of the truck.

The first day we spent the morning Geo Cashing. We found two canisters not far from our site and had a nice hike.

 After nap time we went to a small creek and let the kids frolic while we washed off our nasty dirty feet. Garrett found a little hole where the ice cold water was running to make himself at home.

Garrett and my nephew Toby both had the time of their lives getting dirty and sticking every single piece of food they were given on the ground before partaking. If you took the dirty food from them they would fall to the ground and throw a fit making the mess even worse.


My older boys had fun exploring, hiking, riding their bikes down the hill, playing Hide and Go Seek and Piggy Wants a Signal.

How is it that camping is so relaxing yet so exhausting at the same time? When we left I had every intention of sleeping the entire way home before unloading and taking a shower. That didn't happen. Going up the first hill on the road home we sank deep into some soft sand and had to call my sister Jeanine and her husband Kevin for some assistance. Luckily they were only a little ahead of us. It made my heart hurt to see our little "home" on wheels, something that we have invested quite a bit of time and money into, stuck on the side of a hill! We had to keep backing up to try and get the truck out of the sand, but the trailer fish tailed and almost went off the side of the road into a fence. Being the genius I am I tried to bend the metal fence post out of the way enough that our one reaming back jack wouldn't catch on it when we got going. Apparently the fence was not as strong as I thought because it popped loose and I rolled back word down the hill. I was only a little sore but very embarrassed. Of course that was after I slid down the embankment on the other side of the road into the trailer tires one of the times Johnny was trying to get going. Whoops.





 After over an hour pulling with two 4X4 trucks, five tries, digging out the embankment, lots of wood, and one close encounter with a large tree we finally made it up the hill. We also tore off our other back jack on the same spot as the first one going into the camp site. Maybe the trailer was not such a great idea...