THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE

Remember that children's story? Lately, it feels like we are the tortoise....plodding along our course, while our dreams are the hare, bounding ahead and yelling back at us to hurry up already!

Our home is still on the market and we continue our daily routine of making sure everything is in it's place, free of clutter, counters wiped clean, mirrors spot-free and ready for the arrival of interested buyers. And they are trickling in. Not fast enough, but at least there is some interest.

Meanwhile, we continue to check out homes online in Nashville and discuss details for our move. (We are so ready to make this move! Can you tell?)

Call it a brilliant idea or not, but we are thinking about purchasing a motor-home before we leave, stocking it with the comforts of home and packing it up with items we will need once we arrive plus our pets (two cats and one dog) and driving back--towing the Liberty. Everything else will go by way of a moving van.

We can stay at KOA campgrounds across the country and take our time, seeing different points of interest along the way. Our animals will be less traumatized (the kitties will not have to be flown and Kona will not have to endure the trip in back-seat of the Liberty) and we will not have to find pet-friendly hotels to accommodate Kona. We will save money on hotels, meals and expensive snacks purchased at gas stations along the way. We can stop in major towns, hit the grocery store and replenish what we need.

So, this weekend, we are going attend the RV show in town and take a good look at all the different size and models of class A motorhomes, so that we when are ready to make a purchase, we will know what we like, do not like, etc. and can be more informed consumers when we are ready to buy.

So of course, the moral of this famous little story is that we continue on, stay the course, and just like the tortoise, we will win this race and hit the finish line with our dreams.

CHRISTMAS TIME

It's December and despite living in southern California, we live far enough inland and every winter we get frost and cold weather. Well, not cold by Minnesota standards, of course, but I consider waking up to 28 degree temps with ice and frost covering my car and lawn....cold. Don't get me wrong, I love it! Its a taste of winter for us. I love taking my 6:00 a.m. walk with Kona, bundled up with gloves and a warm jacket. Bruce and I can't wait to wake up to an overnight snowfall once we live in Tennessee.

Because our home is for sale and we want to keep it feeling open and uncluttered, we opted this year for a small artificial tree. After much searching and frustration for the perfect tree, we found a fiber-optic lit 4 foot tree at Home Depot. Its ornament free, but I draped strands of gold-bead and red-bead garland between the branches. It is perched prettily in the corner window on our hearth and is very beautiful. It's not the same as our traditional fresh tree which fills our house with the wonderful scent of pine, but we have a lot of delicious candles that burn every night and fill our home with yummy Christmas aromas.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

Here we are now nearly four months since our summer trip to Tennessee and we are finally making the first big step in getting there. We listed our home for sale last night, culminating a month of preparation and beginning the challenge of living our lives while trying to show our home.

But, our adventure has taken off! Since we are not going to move to TN for a year (or so), we will be finding a small home to rent until we are ready to pack up the car and head East. During that time, we will also pare down to the essentials that we want to haul across country. We have already made some decisions in that regard, but there are many more to make. So much to do....ready, set, go!

WE'RE ELATED !!

Our first trip was such a successful and fun adventure. We covered a lot of the Middle Tennessee neighborhoods we'd researched online, during the 11 days we were here and this is where we believe we will ulitmately be settling. Of course, we wondered if we'd be okay with the humidity and yes, we admit that the first couple of days, it was an adjustment, but we decided that it was "do-able" and found so many other wonderful attributes to this area of our country, that in the end, the humidity factor was truly a "no brainer".

We also now have a great collection of maps of the various areas of Middle Tennessee (so if ya'all need to borrow one), just holler! It really helped to have our laptop along for the trip and access to the free wireless at the hotel, so we could pull up information to help us along each day that we set out on our own to find areas we were interested in.

DALE HOLLOW LAKE CAMPING TRIP

We spent three days of our trip camping at the Obey River Campground at Dale Hollow Lake with Beth's brother and family (who, by the way, are already proud Tennessee property owners!) They towed their Ski Nautique boat behind their motorhome all the way from California and camped and boated for two weeks.

Dale Hollow Lake is 39,000 acres with approximately 620 miles of shoreline! We were in awe of the beauty and serenity of the lake and spent some downtime daydreaming about owning a home with views like these. We loved being out on the lake, whether in the boat or floating out on our rafts. We have great memories of the few days we spent here!

We experienced an overnight Tennessee thunder storm in our tent (with lots of wind, thunder and lightning) while trying to sleep ! And I am happy to report that we survived the experience with our sense of humor intact! However, we have decided that we will probably not tent camp again. We agree that we prefer the comforts of motorhome camping! But being the die-hard campers that we are, we will probably break out the tent one more time or two before we give in.