• Hi Everyone, this is Kate. ....the copilot and passenger in the motor home. You will get the facts from Tom and the emotional impact of our journey from me. 
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• Besides all the activity around getting the house ready to sell, and the motor home ready for our journey, there has been a death in the immediate family, so we have been hosting out of town family members. As you can imagine, it has been quite stressful here the past two weeks. And we haven't been able to spend much time at the house because of hospital visits. In addition, all the people going in and out of the house have created chaos for our two cavalier spaniels and one cat. They have been used to nestling next to us on the furniture, but now that the furniture is gone and we are sitting on camping chairs, there is no room for them. We find them staring at us with sad and confused eyes, begging for life to go back to normal. Fortunately all three of our sweeties (pets) do well traveling in the motor home, so their trauma will be short lived.
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  Meanwhile, Tommy and I are also looking at each other with sad and confused eyes, begging for life to go back to normal. Our trauma will also be short lived.

Three days to go!

The buyers' home inspector completed his report and we have a few things to take care of- some small roof repairs, replacing the exhaust tubing for the dryer, and putting a sump pump in the crawl space. We are getting everything done for just over $1000. Not what we wanted to do after giving the buyers such a good deal on the house, but, hey, if that's what it takes to get on with our travels, so be it.

We will depart for Florida on Christmas Eve day. The closing will take place after we've left, but our realtor will handle everything on this end.

We are staging all the stuff that goes with us in the garage, next to the pile of stuff that's being donated. That way if the motor home fills up before everything is in it, we can just move the leftovers into the donate pile. "Must haves" become "nice to haves", and "nice to haves" become "donate." Kate just finished cleaning out the fridge and freezer. She filled up two garbage cans with stuff that we can't use or take with us.

So the journey will finally begin...