Zach and Alyssa are in Vegas and we’re all missing them. Not sure what I’m going to do when all the chicks leave the nest someday…

Speaking of leaving the nest, we’re leaving in three weeks, heading south in the RV, and taking the business with us. Whoo hoo! The snow has slowed down dramatically and it looks like we’ll be able to get the RV to the shop for the pre-trip inspection. Of course, we won’t be able to fill up the water tanks until we get a bit farther south. It’s still below freezing here every night. In fact, as I write this, on Tuesday morning at 10:00 a.m., it’s 29 degrees outside. We have a 70% chance of snow tonight but we’re only supposed to get about an inch (thank goodness).

On the trip, we’ll be meandering our way down to the Florida Keys and back. You’ll be able to track our progress and see lots of photos at https://www.wirelesstrips.com. (You can read essays from past excursions and see photos from those adventures, too). It’ll be quite a big trip and we’ll be seeing some friends and loved ones along the way. My sister, who’s pregnant, and her husband will be the first victims. Not to worry. We stay at campgrounds now exclusively. We don’t stay at relatives’ homes anymore. Things are much less stressful for everyone that way. We have our own little home on wheels and they don’t have to stock up their fridge and put clean sheets on all the beds. Staying in the RV each night also makes work much easier for us. The campgrounds we stay at have wi-fi and we have our satellite dish as a backup. Richard also uses his cell phone as yet a third backup. In fact, I can’t remember the last time we went camping and didn’t have Internet access.

Anyway, after visiting my sister (they’re in Virginia), we’ll be making several stops on our way down. Richard’s in charge of this trip so I actually haven’t a clue where most of the stops will be. We’ll be visiting my brother in Key Biscayne, Florida, too. I haven’t seen him, his wife, or our youngest nephew in several years so we’re excited about that. Our nephew is close to Max’s age so Max is super excited about that stop, too.

We’re going to try to see a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral. We’d originally planned on catching a shuttle launch but it was scrubbed. Even the rocket launch is iffy but we need to at least give it a shot. Max is studying space and space travel in his homeschooling activities and we think seeing a real rocket launch would make a great field trip!

We’ll be basking on the beaches in the Keys and Richard’s dad and Stepmom, Rita, are flying to Florida to meet us for that. Aaaah… Richard has our itinerary pretty booked so we’ll be pretty busy. Don’t worry. We’ll be online and working everyday, too. In fact, we always get more work done on the road than we do at home because we have far fewer interruptions.

This week – a Masonism

Mason (age 21 months) is really starting to talk a lot. He’s always babbled but his babbling started to evolve into some coherent words (mixed with the babbles). As each day passes, we can recognize more words as his enunciation gets better.

We’ve tried potty training a few times but Mason gets bored sitting on that porcelain bowl and potty training is something you just can’t force. If only he would tell us when he NEEDS to go potty! He’s only said the word “potty” a few times, and not at all recently, which is puzzling to me because he really can say just about anything you tell him to say (which is fun when we have guests over – heh…). Anyway, one of Mason’s favorite words is “poo poo.” He says it several times a day, but not just when he’s going “poo poo.” He’ll come in our room and say, “poo poo” while pointing at his diaper. I’ll hear him say “poo poo” when he’s playing in Max’s room. He’ll even say it in the truck when we’re running errands. We just smile and say, “Yes! You can say Poo Poo! Good boy!” But, again, he never says potty.

The other night, after his bath, he was wearing a long t-shirt and I hadn’t put his diaper on yet. Mason came over to me, obviously very excited, and pointed toward the toy box, saying, “Poo poo! Poo poo!” I looked that way and discovered Mason had pottied on the floor! It finally hit me! He’s been using the word “poo poo” for “potty!” All this time he’s been telling us when he’s going potty! All this time we could have been grabbing him and running to the bathroom!! All those weeks of potential potty training WASTED!! Sigh…

Hugs!

Angela

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