family time

We wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. One of the biggest reasons we worked for Amazon this year was to have the opportunity to spend the holidays with our family. We have been really busy the last couple of days. Monday evening I kicked Rudee out of the kitchen and made two large batches of noodles. She had finally finished her baking and candy making so I really didn't have to push her too hard, she was tired. :-)
Tuesday morning we were out the door early and, along with daughter Amanda and grandson Nicholas, headed toward Rudee's Mom's house to get things ready for dinner and family time. We spent all day cooking, cleaning and setting up tables, chairs etc. Her family all live within a few miles of each other and have the tradition of gathering at the old home place on Christmas eve. Over the years, as her family grew, we moved the gathering from the living and dining room to the attached two car garage. Rudee's Mom is in her 80's and not able to do all the work needed to host such a large event so we were thankful we were able to get everything ready for the rest of her family to enjoy. Just another advantage of this full time RV lifestyle. :-)

Christmas morning was spent inside our daughters house watching the grandkids open their presents. Amanda made a nice breakfast for us and we had a great time with them. That afternoon we gathered everyone up and drove over to our son in law Ryan's brothers home where we had another nice meal. We had a great time and it sure made working those weeks at Amazon worth all the aches and pains. :-)

I am getting closer to getting our slideouts and jacks fixed. We initially thought we were going to have to take it to an RV repair place to have it replaced but I did a little more research on the internet and it didn't look too hard. I decided to give it a go, so Monday morning I got the tools back out and removed the motor. I then called an alternator/starter repair place in nearby Crawfordsville, Indiana and they said they would take a look at it. We made it a family event and loaded up the grandkids and headed out. We dropped the motor off and they did a quick test, yep it's bad. They don't have that type of motor but said they would try and fix it for me so I left it with them. We did some shopping and were eating lunch when the shop called me and said it was ready. They took it apart and it was "full of rust" so they cleaned it up and got it working again. We finished lunch, picked up the motor ($32.00) and headed home. I quickly got the new motor installed and then headed inside where I nervously pressed the button for the living room slideout. The motor started but only ran for a couple of seconds and quit again :-( RATS!
I checked all the wiring again and we had power to everything so I took the motor back off again. Ryan was home from work by this time so we tested the motor using a battery charger for power and got it working again. We installed it on the motorhome once again but it still would run when under the load of turning the hydraulic pump even though we can turn both shafts by hand. I decided to order a brand new motor and have it shipped here so we are still living with the slideouts in. The motor we removed was an aftermarket one made in Slovenia so this part is apparently a replacement for a past failure of the original part. I think carrying a spare one might be in our future rather then having to wait for one to be shipped because I have yet to find one on a shelf at any of the local places.

We have also had some other issues. The temperatures have been really cold here with the lows in single digits. Before leaving Kentucky we filled the water tank up since we knew we would not be able to hook up a hose to their house since it is a couple of hundred feet from the spigot to our rig. Tuesday morning we woke up and a water line had frozen somewhere so now we had no water flowing! I had prepared for the cold by placing an electric heater into our "wet" bay and our wireless remote thermometer said it was almost 40 degrees in the bays. Since we had such a busy day planned I didn't have time to search out the problem and the temps were not going to warm up much anyway. Once we got home Christmas eve I checked the wet bay and, even though I thought it wasn't needed, I turned the electric heater up a notch to see if that helped. The last thing I did was move a hose that was attached to the water filter so I could close the compartment door and it was frozen! That hose is what I hook the outside hose to when using an outside water source. This way the water passes through a filter before entering the coach. I had left the other end hooked up to the outlet into the rig and it was also frozen. Hmmmm, I think I might have found the problem. I unhooked the hose, crossed my fingers and shut everything up again.
Sure enough sometime during the night things thawed enough to let the water flow again and we have not had any other problems! :-)
Our plans for the rest of the week will be pretty laid back. I have two TV's to replace here in the motorhome and hope to get those projects completed and of course the new pump motor will need installed (I'm getting pretty fast doing that!). Besides the good news of being able to take a shower again Santa Clause was nice enough to leave me a package of underwear under the tree. Life is good again! I'll keep you posted.