We have moved in with my mother! A failure at 63!

No, not really, just a temporary setback. We're having some painting done on the motor home and it has been in the shop for three days now. I just talked to Mark at First Class Fiberglass in St. Peters, Mo., and he has promised to be done about noon tomorrow. We'll be glad to get our little home back again.

We have one more repair to accomplish and that is to get the KVH dish fixed. It quit working several weeks ago. I think we are lined up to have it fixed Friday afternoon, and if that goes as planned, then the ball will be back in my court.

Seajay just posted some help on fixing RV refrigerators on the forum and I can use that information. Our refrigerator has been puny when working on gas, so I guess I need to clean up that system. I checked the vent and it is open. So I'll dig through that information to see what else I can find to try to get it to work better.

There are a number of other fix-its and improvements on my to-do list. I'll tackle them as time permits in the next week or two. Then there is my mother's fix-it list. Once we get our home back, I'll have my tools and I can get to work on her list. Mom is 85, so keeping her three-bedroom home in top shape falls to the children now. No one complains, everyone takes a turn at one thing or another.

Being a full-timer in an RV, I can park and live here at Mom's house and take on the bigger tasks that take time. Several years ago I built a porch for her side door to replace a set of concrete steps that didn't even have a banister. Before that I cleaned out my dad's work shed. It was a clap-trap operation as was typical of my father's construction skills. We loved him dearly but always joked about his skills with tools. Dad never saw the need for any but the simplest tools and he would find a way to fix most anything with a hammer, saw and screwdriver. Oh, yes, and lots of bailing wire and binder twine -- you could never use too much bailing wire and binder twine.

Dad kept everything he ever thought he might use someday, so cleaning out the shed was a two-week operation. Mom put "checking the shed to see what it looks like inside" on her to-do list again. I think she is afraid to look inside, fearing there might be some other homeless people living in there!

We'll spend most of next week here with my mother before starting our trek west. Louise's mother, daughter and other family in Denver will be a quick stop this time since we were there for a month in the spring.

Our real time this fall will be spent in California with Louse's youngest daughter and her family. We have two granddaughters there that have grown quite a bit since we last saw them. We'll be glad to get some grandparent time with them before we flee south for the winter.

Living full-time in an motorhome gives us the freedom to do all these things and more. We enjoy our travel time together and we cherish our family time. It's a perfect retirement lifestyle for us.