Making New Friends

Since my last post we went to a Fulltime Families rally at Lazy Days in Tampa, FL.  That was so much fun!  We got to meet lots of families that are living in their RVs and traveling just like we are doing now.  Everyone was so nice and welcoming to us newbies.  It was so nice to learn from all of the people that have already been doing this for awhile.  And the kids really enjoyed meeting other kids to play with.

During the rally there were lots of fun activities for us to do.  There were some planned kid’s activities like doing crafts and making tie dyed shirts:

Not sure why Jesse looks grumpy in this picture because he really was having fun, and their shirts came out great!

One of the planned activities was a movie night to watch Dolphin Tale.  Here are the kids laying on the floor watching it with their new friend, Gavin:

The kids loved the heated pool at Lazy Days:

During the rally we participated in a photo scavenger hunt where we had to find a list of various things around the campground and get ourselves in the picture.  We earned points for all of the items we got pictures of, and the points were used during a raffle for several prizes.  I won one of the Adventures with the Parkers books about the Great Smoky Mountains.  The cool thing about winning that book is that we are participating in a book club with several other FtF families in reading these books about a family that visits different National Parks around the country.  The book we’re reading for March is the one that I won!  Below are some of the pictures from the scavenger hunt.

Picture with a Lazy Days employee:

Picture of a cat on a leash with the owner (this one was easy since we happen to have a leash for Fat Cat):

A state travel map with at least 26 states filled in.  We hope to have one of these one day after we have visited some more states:

Awkward family photo (Chris is lounging in the chair reading a magazine while I “pretend” to be emptying the holding tanks, and the kids are in the front chairs playing on their Kindles):

A man wearing nail polish:

We enjoyed a really nice field trip to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium where the Dolphin Tale movies were filmed. Here is a picture of our roadschool group outside the aquarium (we’re in that picture somewhere):

And it was really neat to see Winter and Hope:

The bridge from Tampa to Clearwater is so pretty so I asked Chris to pull off into one of the parking lots on the side of the road so we could take a picture.  This turned out to be a bad idea since there was no way to get back onto the road heading in the right direction.  Instead we had to go under the bridge which just barely had enough clearance for our big truck, then we had to ride the huge truck down a bike path in the other direction for a couple of miles before we could get back onto the bridge!  Chris said he hopes this picture was worth it:

After the rally we moved over to Thousand Trails Orlando where several other FtF families spend the winter.  We have had so much fun with all of our new friends, there is never a shortage of things to do.  There are crafts and games planned for the kids every day, movie nights, campfires, and the adults like to hang out at the hot tub in the evenings after the kids are in bed.  Thankfully my parents have been visiting so we were able to get away and join them for hot tub nights.  Also while my parents were here we got to enjoy a date night out for dinner with some new friends on Valentine’s Day.  My parents enjoyed visiting us and staying in our new tiny home.  Here is a picture of them with the kids playing mini golf at the campground:

We had another field trip with the Fulltime Families to Legoland last week.  That was so much fun!  The kids are big enough now to ride all the roller coasters which makes it that much more fun for Chris & me.  Below is a picture of the whole group before we went into the park.  We’re in that picture somewhere.

We have had a wonderful first few weeks on the road.  Now it’s time to start some trip planning to decide where to go next.