Boone update:

I finally have time to throw a few pictures in the mix of us setting up for the firework stand and pictures we took of the house where Bryce lived after she was born. Enjoy!!!

Family:

Last Sunday Bryce's family had one of their family reunions. It's been fun to take the kids to them while we have lived here. It's always good to see and meet extended family. Here are a few pictures from it.

LEAF FESTIVAL:

Here are a few pictures from a few months ago. We went to a three day festival called LEAF (Lake Eden Art Festival). We can't wait for LEAF in October. They have the festival twice a year once in the spring and once in the fall. Hands down the best festival we have ever been to. The kids loved it. Isabelle set up shop every day at the kids village where she could pay $3 and sell her homemade items. She made rubberband yoyos out of rubberbands that Bryce collected at the bank. Isabelle made around $200 dollars.

Chimney Rock:

A few weeks back Isabelle had a Girl Scout trip at a place called Chimney Rock. It's a beautiful place to see and hike. While Isabelle was doing her thing with the girls, the rest of our family hiked up to Chimney Rock and it's waterfalls. The mountain that Chimney rock is on is the mountain where Last of the Mohicans was filmed at the end of the movie where they show the people falling off the waterfall. Down the road at Lake Lure is also an area where the movie Dirty Dancing was filmed. So there's a little FYI for all you movie lovers. The sad news about this blog is that a few weeks after we hiked to Chimney Rock, a 2 year old made his way under the fence that surrounds Chimney Rock and fell hundreds of feet to his death. After Isabelle was done we made our way down to the river and had a picnic. The kids were playing in the slow paced water, when a lady told Bryce that they had just seen a few snakes up river from where we were at and that they may be on their way down to us. We pulled the kids out of the water and with in a few seconds we had spotted a handfull of snakes. Enjoy the pictures from that day.

Bus update:

Here is a photolog of what's happening to the bus. It's been primed with white primer and we were lucky enough to get a load of nice oak flooring that was pulled from a house with flood damage. Enjoy the pictures.

Boone

Here we are..... we didn't fall off the earth, but pretty close. We are now in Boone, North Carolina. Boone is 2 hours North East of Asheville. Boone is home to the three time champion Appalatian State Football team. It's sort of like a smaller Portland, Oregon at least that's what I think, Bryce probley thinks differently. We have been in Boone since late Monday night. For those that don't know what we are doing, we are in Boone running a nice old polution making firework stand at the local Walmart.
We have put in alot of time and hard work to set up the inside and outside of the tent. We will be working the tent until July 5th. Then we will be able to go and play around Boone.
Boone is where Bryce was born. She hasn't been here since she was around Lincoln's age (5 or 6). Tuesday night we had time to load the kids and the dogs into the car and head out to see the house she lived in when she was born. She really enjoyed it.
Well it's 1:20 am here in Boone and im SO tired. I have lots of pictures to post, but need more time.

The show goes on and on and on and on....

So it's Tuesday morning here in beautiful HOT and VERY humid Asheville. We have finished our transition between both houses. We think we have control of the animal smell and problems in our house.
Well now it's time to turn our attention to the bus. We are going to start priming the outside of the bus and take down the stop sign. I am going to try to take my CAD drawing from the computer and post the latest layout that I think we are going with. The kids are real excited about the bus and traveling.
Bryce is done working at the bank at nights, her last night was Friday. It'll be so wonderful to have my wife back. It's been so crazy since last November when she went to work. We never wanted her to work, but we had decided together that we wanted to be out of debt. We were talking one night about how it SUCKS! to work all week long and at the end of the day when the paycheck comes, none of it's for you. Why hate work and be away from your family just because you are slave to the lender? So then Bryce took a job to bring in more income to start paying off our bills. We are moving closer to our goal. We took a financial class last fall called FPU (Financial Peace University). It's created by a wonderful man named Dave Ramsey.
It's funny how our church we belong to (LDS) has preached all my life that we need to stay out of debt and not be of the world, but in the world. Not until now has someone (not LDS) come along and made it enjoyable and exciting to get out of debt and stay that way. I don't ever indorse or push things onto others, but everyone and I mean everyone has to check www.daveramsey.com out and really should sign up for a local class in your area. Lets all get out of debt and live for our selves! Let’s not live for being a slave to the lender.
When I have more time I will do a posting on Dave and what he has meant to us in our lives. We have spotty internet at our new residence because we are trying to feed off someone’s wireless connection in the neighborhood. We are looking into wifi cards, but still don't who has the best plans and whose coverage works best in the states, Alaska and Canada. If anyone knows comment please.
I am working half days this week and Friday will be my last day. Ethan my boss has been really cool with me leaving, he said that when we are in town I would be able to work for him. So that takes care of work in Asheville. Well I am off into the hot humid blue yonder.

How much time does a dollar buy?

Well it's Thursday already. Where did the week go? We have now sprayed the inside of the bus, but have not had any other time to really do much on it. We are running around pulling out our hair, trying to figure everything out. Our Tenants moved out of our rental home and when we went through the house it reeked of animal urine and feces. We are pretty upset, but I guess that's what you get for renting to others. Last night in the dark I ripped out the nice thick padded carpet out of all the rooms and took it to the dumb this morning. What a waste of really nice carpet that was. I don't understand how human beings can live like this? Can someone just try to explain it so I can figure it out? I mean our house can become cluttered and dishes not done for a day, but the next day it's cleaned up and good as new. If my animals crapped our pissed in my house I would be very upset at them, and obviously it would be my fault because this behavior means that I didn't let them out enough to go potty. Our rental house hadn't been shnitted in just once or twice, but multiple times. Then of course the renters waited until this past weekend to try to steam clean the carpets (HORRIBLE MISTAKE!!!!!) now the house is fermenting with wet animal carpet. I wanted to kill someone last night while having to breathe it in and touch it and dispose of it. Tonight I need to go over and mop all the wood floors and the slate in the dinning, sun and kitchen. I hope the smell can be cleaned up.
At the same time we are packing the house we live in and I’ve started moving things to the garage at our smelly rental. So let’s just say the bus is on hold for a few days until we resituate our house location. We hope to be moved into our rental house by Saturday and start the real renovation of the bus.
We moved the bus to the home of our current landlord. They have quite a few acres and they said we can work on the bus there. It's really not the ideal location that I wanted to work on the bus.
So with working fulltime and dealing with moving from house to house and cleaning them both, Bryce and I are TIRED! Well that’s where we are at, hope life finds you all well...

The Bus! The big huge bus!

So we finally won a bid for a bus on Ebay. After many many hours of searching Government sites, school district sites and auction sites such as Ebay, we finally found our bus! Bryce and I acted like two little kids when the auction time ended and it pop up on the screen that we had won the bidding on the bus.
Wednesday last week we stayed up late waiting for the so called cheap flights to show up on the web. Finally around 2am I had found what was going to be the cheapest. I flew out of Asheville Friday morning at 6am and made a connection flight in Atlanta. From Atlanta I flew to my destination of Manchester, New Hampshire. In about the 33 years that i've been alive I have maybe had to write the words New Hampshire a handful of times. Before winning the bus I probably couldn't have told you where New Hampshire was.
I finished the purchase and paper work for the bus, test drove it with the sellers son (to make sure I could handle that much vehicle) and then started my long voyage home to North Carolina. I left around 3pm and made it home around 6pm Saturday night.
The whole way home I would look out the window and see the bus I was driving. All I could think was OH MY HELL! I can't believe this is ours. You never realize how big a bus really is until you own it and drive it.
We had the seller take out all the seats, but the first two rows. We are now starting the renovation from bus to pimp RV. I am adding a few pictures of the large beast. Enjoy....