It is so nice to have our refrigerator working again! We had Doug come back over a couple of days ago and help us get the frig back into the cabinet. It only took about an hour to slide it back into the cabinet. It would have taken less time, but it kept getting caught on metal place in the cabinet. Once we figured that out the frig slid right into the cabinet.
I finally got around to decorating our Christmas tree yesterday. I normally would have done sooner that this, but with the refrigerator doors sitting up in the passenger seat and on the dash there wasn't room for the tree.
I've been collecting ornaments as souvenirs and now have so many that our tree won't hold all of them. I used the ones I bought this year traveling around the Southeast and added some that we bought in Alaska last year.
Here is a photo of our tree after I finished decorating it. You can see the refrigerator back in its cabinet in the background.
Here is a photo I took this evening of our Christmas tree sitting up on the dash.
The refrigerator is working with the new cooling unit installed. We have it running on electricity for now until we get it back into the cabinet.
Mike made the final wiring connections this afternoon.
Mike has called David at RV Cooling Warehouse (where we bought the cooling unit) to ask him some questions about installing the new cooling unit. David has been great about explaining the installation and giving pointers to help with the installation. We have been very impressed with the service from David at RV Cooling Warehouse and will definitely recommend him to anyone who has problems with their RV frig.
I printed a wiring schematic for the circuit board for the refrigerator that I found on the internet and that helped simplify reconnecting the wiring.
It will be so nice to have the refrigerator working again! We've been using coolers for the last 2 weeks and the novelty wore off a week ago.
We're going to let the frig run for a few days before we call Doug to come back over and help us put it back in the cabinet.
This morning Doug (my niece's husband) came over at 10:00 to help us pull the refrigerator out of its cabinet. Since the refrigerator sits about a foot up off of the floor, we had to come up with a way to slide the frig out of the cabinet and place it on a platform the same height as the cabinet.
A friend of ours had given us a wooden platform and Mike had bought casters and attached to the legs and converted the platform to a dolly. Having the dolly the same height as the refrigerator cabinet really helped in pulling the frig out. The dolly also made is possible to move the frig around so we could get down the hallway to the bathroom and bedroom.
Here is a photo of the refrigerator sitting on the dolly in our kitchen
and a photo of the old cooling unit.
We took a break to have lunch once Mike and Doug had removed the old cooling unit. Then it was back to work and by 3:00 the new cooling unit was
Mike ordered a new cooling unit from RV Cooling Unit Warehouse on December 3 and FedEx delivered it last Friday. He ordered a cooling unit built by an Amish company in Indiana. After researching the difference between the Norcold units and the Amish units, Mike chose the Amish cooling unit because it was heavier duty and costs considerably less than the ones Norcold builds.
Since our RV refrigerator quit working on Nov. 29, we've been using coolers in the RV and the refrigerator in the church building next door to store our food. We're using the coolers for the food that we use frequently everyday and then we restock the coolers from the items that are in the church refrigerator.
We called my niece tonight and her husband, Doug, will come over in the morning to help us pull the refrigerator out of the cabinet, so Mike can remove the old cooling unit and install the new one.
We took the doors off of the refrigerator and freezer and removed all the shelves today to make the refrigerator a little less heavy. Mike also disconnected the water for the ice maker and disconnected the propane from the frig.
We had a family of Sandhill Cranes visit us this morning and Mike put out a few pieces of bread for them.
After spending weeks trying unsuccessfully to get our HP Photosmart printer to work wirelessly with Mike's new Dell laptop, we bought a HP All-in-One 6520 at Best Buy a few days ago. We're still learning all that it can do, but it works great with both of our laptops and we really like the fact that we can scan a document and save it to our laptops wirelessly.
We've had a busy month here in Kissimmee. On Sundays we met my brother and family and another couple for lunch at Perkins and then spent the afternoon visiting at my brother's house. We went to my brother's house for Thanksgiving dinner and my niece and her family joined us.
We've had 2 meetings with our realtor here in Kissimmee and have looked at about 10 houses so far. A couple of houses that we were really interested in already had contracts on them, so we didn't look at them (maybe the sales won't go through). Our realtor, Dave, recommended Broadway Pizza Bar in downtown Kissimmee and we ate lunch there one day after house hunting - we will definitely go back again.
Since we sold all of our furnishings from our house in Dothan when we started full-time RVing, we will have to completely furnish the house that we buy. Our son, Fletcher, suggested we check out Ikea, so we drove the 12
We got up at 7:00 this morning and started breaking camp right after breakfast. Glenda came by to say goodbye before she left to go to church. Jimmy also came over to see us before we left. We paid W.T. for the electricity for this week ($25.20) and after saying goodbye to W.T. and Jimmy, we left The Willows at 9:00 (CST).
Mike drove the RV down to Tractor Supply to get propane and I stopped at Publix to do some last minute shopping. We had planned on filling our propane tanks at Tractor Supply since they were charging $2.29 a gallon for propane, but the employee there hadn't been certified to fill propane tanks on a RV. We had to stop at the Flying J in Dothan and got the propane there and paid $2.999 a gallon.
We left the Flying J at 10:30 and drove south on US-231. We passed by the Peanut Festival Fairgrounds and I took a photo of some of the rides there - yesterday was the last day for the Peanut Festival.
We crossed into Florida
We've been here in Dothan for 3 weeks and will be leaving tomorrow to go down to Kissimmee, FL. We've been busy for those 3 weeks with doctors' and dentist's appointments.
Mike and I went to our primary doctor for our regular checkup and she said we're doing fine. I had injured the toenail on my left big toe and it had turned black, so our doctor referred me to a local podiatrist. The podiatrist suggested killing and removing the nail - I didn't like that option since the nail would never grow back. I think I'll get a second opinion when we get down to Kissimmee.
We both went to our dentist for a checkup. Mike still had one of his wisdom teeth (it was impacted and loose and it had been hurting for a while), so our dentist pulled it. I went to the chiropractor for a few adjustments. Tinker was due for his canine influenza booster and I took him to Care Animal Hospital (our vet for over 30 years) for that.
We met Mike and Gayle (our friends in Ozark) at Cracker Barrel for dinner one night. Mike and Gayle had driven their motorhome to Alaska this summer and we enjoyed hearing about their trip. We visited with W.T. and Glenda here at The Willows and our friend Jimmy came by often. We ate dinner twice at Mexican Connection and visited with Sharon, Debbie, Sandy and Chad, but we missed seeing Frances and Caroline since they work during the daytime.
Mike and I have been talking this year about looking for a home to buy. We think that with the housing market the way it is and mortgage interest rates being low, that now it is probably time to buy a house. We had planned on full-timing for 10 years and we are entering our 8th year. We usually spend the winter months in Dothan or Kissimmee and rarely travel, so the only difference will be living in a house during the winter instead of the RV.
We have contacted USAA (we're pre-approved for a loan) and signed up for their Movers Advantage program. We told them we are looking at homes in the Kissimmee-St. Cloud and Vero Beach-Sebastian areas. USAA contacted a realtor in Kissimmee and 1 in Vero Beach and both realtors have called us. We told them what size house we're looking for and that we want to be able to park the motorhome at the house.
We still plan on RVing because we haven't visited places like Monument Valley, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon and Yellowstone National Park (we did drive through Yellowstone in 2011).
