Out with the old, in with the new!!!

Hi there everyone,

Well, 2012 looks to be as busy as any prior year and as we enter into our fourth year, living in an RV, we just could not be happier. Although, it is not as if there aren't a few bumps along the way. Shortly after our return from Ashland for the New Years celebration, I decided to change out the faucet on the shower, which was one of the gifts that Carol asked Santa clause for this holiday season. When we bought the Moho, the shower faucet was a gold plated plastic affair that had lost its sheen, long before we bought the motor home. We both love our new faucet, it looks so much better and works really swift too!

Of course, shortly there after, the water heater decided it wanted some attention. It decided that it didn't want to heat water using the electric heating element any more. The one draw back is that we didn't have a propane to run the water heater either, so we had to take the motor home out to get propane and up to Camping World to get the water heater looked at. It turned out to be that the thermostat had failed on the 110 volt side. Fifteen minutes and $188 dollars later, we were good to go. Though Eric suffered a little bit from sticker shock, he learned a lot about water heaters in this little adventure and knows how to diagnose problems like this in the future.

Also last week, Carol and the entire unit she works in, received award for exceptional effort for a project that they worked on at work. It is so wonderful that Carol, and everyone in her unit, got recognized for their hard work that they put in. It's well known that Carol works her backside off at CAL-FIRE, but it is nice to know that she gets recognized for her efforts as well.

Well, we are both itching to head out in the RV, so hopefully in the next day or so, we will be ready to hit the open road on some sort of interesting, all be it brief adventure.

Stay tuned!

Happy camping! - Eric and Carol -

Happy 2012!!!!

Hi there everyone,

Happy new years! We hope you all had a safe and wonderful New Years Holiday! We had a great trip up to Ashland Oregon to see the Wraight family. It was extra special 'cause Kris and crew were here to visit for the holidays from the east coast! It was so wonderful to see them!

Though the weekend was short, we got to enjoy some great food and company together. We took Rosie and Lily with us and Roxy saw in the new year visiting with Katie and Russ. Rosie continues to make progress, though be it in small steps, towards getting use to other people. After a while, she was willing to greet Mikes brother Chuck and his wife Terry with a sniff and a lick. She is really trying so hard. We even think Rosie might have a new love interest. She seems to really get a long well with Sir Guinness of Mayhem. They became fast buddies and played tug a lot while we were in Ashland for our visit.

We find that when on the road, Rosie also likes to stick her head out the window of the car while we are traveling down the road and sniff the air. I don't know about for you, but we don't know how she does it as we travel down the road at 65 miles an hour, but she seems to love to do it, at least for a couple minutes at a time.

We hope that 2012 is a wonderful year for all of our friends and family out there.

Happy camping! - Eric and Carol -

This is how we roll

Hi there everyone,

When you get a chance, check out this video for the Villalobos Rescue Center. IT ROCKS!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Well, after wrapping up a week of work, we were finally able to move the Christmas tree out to the living room onto a new platform I made for the steering wheel. We were able to move the tree because now we would be home all of the time to keep an eye on Rosie so she wouldn't destroy it while we are gone to work.

Thursday night after work, we joined some friends for dinner at Red Robin and then went cruising through a neighborhood in Roseville where almost everyone decorates their home with Christmas lights. One home in particular, had a reprisal of the Grisswold family Christmas and Cousin Eddie in the drive way!

Though Friday meant that Eric had to work half the day, we still had time to go to Brandee's shop and both get a hair cut Friday afternoon. The rest of the weekend, we got to enjoy a lot of quality family time together. Saturday, we had dinner at Sandy and Bill's for Christmas eve. We all got to enjoy a White Elephant gift exchange that evening, that was a lot of fun. Once we got a little gift stealing started, the event became quite lively.

On Sunday, Christmas day, it was our turn to host a little bit of Christmas cheer. We prepared a turkey, cooked in our Convection oven, and all of the trimmings. Katie and Russ came over earlier in the day to open gifts and then Sandy and Bill joined us for dinner later in the day. Carol did a masterful job with the Turkey as always. We are always so pleasantly surprised as to how well we are able to prepare a complete meal in our humble little abode!

We hope that all of you had a safe and happy holiday season.

Merry Christmas to all and too all a good night!

Happy Camping! - Eric and Carol -

Rosie and Getting ready for Christmas

Hi there everyone,

Well, as is to be expected, December is shaping up to be a busy month for our family. But, we know that the holiday season is busy for all us. As we started December, Rosie was completing her dog obedience class at Petsmart. Rosie was a wonderful student during the 6 weeks, but she still had a lot of moments where she was shy, but she does really well at what she learns. The big thing, for almost every dog, is the follow through of the owner. And though we are trying to be better about getting her out, I'm not doing as good as I should at keeping her practice up.

We took Rosie and Lily to the Rancho Cordova Winter Woof fest this last weekend. Both dogs were great. The Winter Woof fest was a modest little event with about 8 vendors as well as Santa Paws. We hope they do it again next year, 'cause we think it is a great little event!

Speaking of Rosie, we aren't quite sure how to leave Rosie alone at home during the day with the Christmas tree. We normally have the tree on the dashboard, and since Rosie is a 'Dash Dog', we know she would have the tree all over the place when we came home from work. So, for the time being, we have the tree set up on the dresser in the bedroom. When we get home from work on Thursday, we will move the tree out to the living room and see if we can keep Rosie from knocking it over.

We've decorated as best we could around our rig with the lights that we had. We're going to see if we can score some more lights when 'clearance' time comes up at Target later this month. As you can see, some of the homes in our part of Rancho Cordova go all out to decorate their neighborhoods. We sure love our new home here in Rancho Cordova.

We were also lucky this holiday season to hook up with Carol's former boss Jerry Reed and his wife Mary for a Christmas dinner. It is always nice to see them and get caught up on what is going on with their family.

We hope that you and yours have a wonderful Holiday season.

Best wishes, Happy Camping! Eric and Carol Anderson

Dog From Virginia Missing 8 Years Found In NorCal - Sacramento News Story - KCRA Sacramento

Dog From Virginia Missing 8 Years Found In NorCal - Sacramento News Story - KCRA Sacramento

Check out this story above! Please, be sure to microchip your dogs. It may take a while, but it helps to ensure your precious pooch makes it home if they are ever lost!

Happy Thanksgiving

Hi there everyone,

Well, it has been a while since I updated the blog. We've been very busy and most weekend mornings, when I normally update the blog, I've been busy working on my Windows Phone application that will be intended for RVers, but more on that at a later date.

Our Thanksgiving weekend is rapidly coming to a close, but it has been a wonderful one. We had an opportunity to get together with a large number of our family members.

On Wednesday night, Mike and Karen arrived to the Elks lodge in Rancho Cordova to set up their RV for the weekend. They were at Marq's earlier in the week to celebrate marks 37th Birthday, the thought of that really makes me feel old! :-) After Carol and I got home from work, we had Mike and Karen over for dinner at our place where we enjoyed some tasty Skinny Tortilla soup that Carol makes, YUM!

On Thursday afternoon, we all headed over to Brandee and Kevins for Thanksgiving dinner. They, with the help of their daughter Danielle, Sandy and Bill put on a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. Carols Brother Calvin and his wife Joyce were able to join us as well which is always great. One of the fun events of the evening, was Kevins desire to change out the toilet in the middle of the preparations for dinner. Kevin enlisted the help of his brother Paul to undertake this task. They had it changed out in no time! It was great to have Paul home for the holiday season. Paul is returning to Afghanistan to wrap up his deployment with the troops in the next couple months. The food and company of this evening was absolutely wonderful!

On Friday, Mike, Karen, Carol and Eric tripped around Sacramento. We took the dogs to the dog park and we had lunch at a local Brew pub and then had dinner at Karen and Mikes place.

Saturday, Carol and I hooked up with Billy, Loretta to see them and their son Brandon at their house in Pioneer. It was so wonderful to see them this holiday season.

We considered going out on Black Friday and doing some Christmas shopping with the throngs, but our intestinal fortitude as well as our check book, being that we only get paid once a month now, are lacking. So, we opted to sleep in.

Sunday, we went to the tree lighting ceremony for Rancho Cordova where we think almost the entire populous of Rancho Cordova could be found. There were a lot of people there for this fun community event that had vendors and activities for everyone.

Happy Thanksgiving! Eric and Carol