Well, the day finally is here, "I AM FINALLY OFFICIALLY RETIRED" as of June 27th! Now the dream begins. Said good-bye to some good friends at work, I will truly miss them, management gave me an awesome farewell retirement party, a gift card that I used to buy yard plants, cedar mulch and a bottle of good liquor, lol, and oh yeah, they gave me a beautiful clock that will look lovely in the motorhome, lots of hugs and memories of my life there!  I also had a surprise from my fellow employees on Sat., balloons, gag gifts with a meat and cheese tray, crackers, donuts and a fruit tray, I had no eye make-up left on my eyes, was a very emotional couple days!  But now on to the life I really want to be living as soon as I get everything done around the house for the house-sitter to take over Aug. 1st, the motorhome is getting a complete going thru inside and outside, rebuilt transmission, tune-up, roof coating, etc., thanks to RPM Auto repair and my son who works there!  Should be able to bring the motorhome home today!  Been sorting thu household things that we will be taking with us, sold lots at our yard sale, donating some, garbage man is starting to hate us, lol, gave a lot to the kids and grandkids, been working on the garage and clearing a lot of junk out of there also so we have room for storage! Making arrangement with our friends up north to stay at their log cabin by the lake until we pull out the end of Sept. for Mission Texas.  PHEW, no wonder I am exhausted.  Most of all want to spend a lot of quality time with our kids and grandkids before we leave for the winter, I know it is going to be hard on them when we go but it is going to be even tougher on us, but winter's we all go into hibernation and don't see much of each other anyways, plus, with Craig's knees and the pain he goes thru in the cold months and even my arithitis started getting to me last winter, plus this is a 5 year dream of ours and it is only for 6 months we are going to be gone, then for 6 months in the late spring, summer and early fall they will own us until we are off to are next gig in the winter.  So until next blog, gotta go and get the yard work done!

INSURANCE FOR CRAIG!

Well, since Craig won't have any insurance when I retire, he called the veterans administration and got all signed up an ID card, had his physical and will be able to get all his meds thru them, plus all medical needs! We are so relieved! I will be covered by my employer until I am 64 and then I can get on medicare! One more thing out of the way! 

RETIRING THIS MONTH!

Hello, my name is Viola Cook(Vi) and have been married to Craig for almost 23 yrs.,we have 4 children and 9 grandchildren, we live in Bay City Michigan and about two years ago Craig asked me "so what are our plans when we retire?", I said "lets sell everything, buy a motorhome and work and live full time in it and see the world!" he almost fell out of his recliner, he said "I can't believe you just said that, because that is what I have always wanted to do, but would never ask you to give up our home to travel!" I first heard about people actually doing this when a co-worker was getting ready to retire and said him and his wife were selling their home and buying a motorhome and traveling, they were going to work for their sites and see the world!  I couldn't get that out of my mind, so I started checking full-timing on the internet and bought several books on it, and the more I read on it and how we could do this the more I wanted it. A year and a half  ago we bought a 36' 1997 used Dolphin motorhome and went to Virginia for our first trip to see our daughter and loved it. We had a house fire about a year ago and had to live in our motorhome for 6 months in a long term campground while our house was being rebuilt, we met so many full-timers there and seen how happy and carefree they were, got some good advice and put the plan in action! At first we were going to sell the house but thought we'd try it for a year and hopefully by then the housing market will come back and we'd get more for our home. Craig has been retired on SSI for 3 years and I retire June 26th this year, we got our first camphosting position in Mission Texas! We will be going on a limited budget, but by working for our site we can do this, we have a housesitter for our home that is going to pay all the expenses, so that puts more money in our pockets! I have explained to our children and grandchildren about our plans, told them we will be gone for 6 months in the winter but will be back in the summer to spend time with them, we love Michigan and don't mind the summers here, but for health reasons and the pure fact that we hate cold and snow we have to go! We will find a camphosting job in Michigan for the summer and out west for the winters!

 So come along and join us as we prepare to live our dream, watch as we get the motorhome ready, what we plan on packing and what we plan on leaving, etc.! We have already had a big rummage sale, donated a lot to Goodwill, gave things to our children and grandchildren, working on getting our bills in order, we are completely portable with cell phones, satellite tv and verizon internet!

So follow us on our next leg of our journey!