I am a dog lover.  My dogs are like my second set of children.  They are spoiled beyond belief and in return are extremely loving and loyal.  They are also very accustom to having a large backyard to roam freely in. 

I had this awesome idea to purchase a wireless dog fence system yesterday from PetSmart, because this keeping the dogs on a 3' leash tied to the picnic table just isn't really working.  My husband had an all out fit in the store when he saw that this system was going to cost us about $600.  I argued my case, citing that it would be soooo much better for the dogs to have some freedom, it would be in their best interest and how much safer they would be.  I basically kept talking until he caved in and let me buy it.  So yes, it was totally my idea. 

We get back to the rv with the system, get everything set up and my husband puts one of the collars on Katy.  Sure, pick the only female, the smallest, the youngest, the most timid dog we've got to test it on... really?  So he decides to test it out on himself first.  Okay, at that moment I had to giggle because I was having flashbacks to an email about a guy who bought his wife a taser for Christmas...  Funny story, if you haven't read it you should Google it.  You'll laugh till you pee your pants!  At any rate, my husband came through it unscathed and said it was the equivalent of a 9-volt battery, not a big deal.  Of course he wasn't wearing it around his neck like the dogs would be, he tested it on his arm.  Uh huh.  Katy of course crossed the boundary line immediately and didn't know she was supposed to come back into the circle.  Imagine that.  Maybe we should have read the directions out loud to the dogs so that they would know the rules too.  So here is poor little Katy, stuck outside the boundary area and the collar starts zapping her (we honestly did have it set to low).  She started yelping and flopping around in an attempt to get the collar off, literally crying like a baby, and LOUD!  My husband is running around in the street trying to catch her so he can remove the collar, while I am fumbling around trying to unplug the stupid thing from the power.  This naturally caused some of our animal loving neighbors to investigate, which was rather embarrassing to explain I might add.  Poor Katy remained inside the rest of the evening trembling in fear under the kitchen table. 

I was ready to return the damn thing after that and then I hear my husband say, "What's fair is fair!" as he's putting the next collar on Larry, our middle "child"... Really?  We're actually going to try this again???  I'm pretty sure I saw Larry's eyes cross...  and into the rv he went.  I found him hiding on the dash between the windshield and the curtain. My poor baby boy!

At this point Jack, the oldest and wisest of the bunch, was none too excited about partaking in what everybody else was doing.  I'm pretty sure he had been paying very close attention the entire time.  He was hesitant to say the least.  That is until the cat wandered on to the scene.  If Jack got shocked we don't really know.  You can't exactly hear the collar beeping when it's traveling at the speed of light half a block away.  So we turned it up a notch.  It did get his attention after that but thankfully he didn't whine or yelp, or spend the rest of the evening trembling in terror like the other two.  That's okay, he minds pretty well without a shock collar anyway.

The moral to the story is this folks, the directions that came with the system were most likely written by someone who knows something about training dogs and their behavior.  You, and your dogs, are not smarter than this person.  Read the directions and then follow them.  There's a reason you don't just slap the collar on the dog and turn them loose.  Trust me on this.  It's going to take a couple of weeks, just like the directions say, but we'll get through it I'm sure and once we do I will have three very happy dogs and my husband will have his happy wife back.

Well, it's a done deal!  Got the house packed, everything in storage, my U-Haul loaded and headed for south Texas.  It was a mostly uneventful trip however, traveling with three large dogs in a Jeep pulling a U-Haul made it interesting to say the least.  It amazes me how much dogs shed, particularly when they get into warmer climates.  I'm fairly certain that I may have caused an accident or two simply by rolling the windows in the Jeep down and letting clouds of dog hair fly wildly out the windows.  I'm not sure how long it will take to get the dog hair out of the Jeep.  Glad I packed the shop vac.
So, twenty seven hours later, I arrive at my final destination.  The RV is parked in a nice little campground only a block or two from the bay.  There is a palm tree right in our front yard!  Palm trees are pretty amazing if you come from Colorado, let me tell ya.  It took me a couple of days to get the U-Haul unpacked and everything put away but it's done, finally!  Piece of advice, you REALLY don't need all of that stuff!  I think I may have to have a yard sale before we move to California...
My third day here I went to Walmart and spent $30 on a tv antenna.  I was soooo excited!  What I failed to realize however was our proximity to Mexico.  Soap operas in Spanish.  Yep, that was it.  As much as I would like to learn Spanish, I haven't yet.  I'll be returning the antenna.

So, the first post of my newly created blog.  Better be something special.

My husband and I have decided to rent out our cozy little home and move.  Into an RV.

Now what 42 year old woman in her right mind would give up a solid career, a quaint little 3 bed, 1 bath home with a nicely landscaped yard in a peaceful little town in Colorado to move into a 31' RV with a man and three, yes I said three, large Australian Shepherds?  Well... it sounded like a very exciting adventure when we made this decision.  I have no other reasons than that.  Adventure.  Something I've had a lot of in the past 12 months.

I met my husband in April 2011.  After a whirlwind romance we were married on January 1, 2012.  Our year together has been amazing!  Our first real trip together was to Vegas over July 4th weekend.  Three weeks later we were front and center at a Kid Rock concert at Cheyenne Frontier Days.  Then there were several trips to the mountains to see friends for the weekend and a few Rockies games at Coors Field.  Labor Day weekend we went to Pennsylvania and Maryland so I could meet a portion of my soon to be husband's family.  Baltimore is an amazing by the way.  In October we flew to Branson so I could meet the rest of the family, and drove back to Colorado.  The beginning of December we were in Boston for a long weekend and at the end of December we were in South Padre Island, TX for our wedding/honeymoon.  As I said, whirlwind!

So, now we've been married for four months and have settled into a not-so-adventurous routine and we've found ourselves bored out of our minds.  My husband works in renewable energy, wind to be exact.  He is quite accustom to being anywhere but home and living out of motel rooms.  He recently found out that he will be working on a project in Texas for several months and will go from there to another project in California for another several months.  This time I decided I'm tagging along.  We're both very excited, if a little scared, about what a traveling life will hold for us.  I am very much looking forward to some time off.  He thinks I'll get bored inside of 30 days and go job hunting.  Hence, my blog.  This is going to be my way of "keeping busy" while making an attempt to relax and enjoy that time off that I desperately need.  My hope is to entertain a few people with my "tales from the campground" in the process.  At least my friends in Colorado will get a kick out of it, they know I'm funny.