It’s 2021 baby and it’s been a wild ride getting here.
My last letter ended right when the pandemic was really ramping up: store closures, lockdowns, PPE and toilet paper shortages. You remember. We were in Kansas City for my niece’s birthday party and ended up staying all of April.
To make myself useful, I started sewing masks. My sister brought over her sewing machine and my mom gave me a refresher course. Many of the materials were sold out, so I had to make due with less than ideal patterns and hair ties as straps. I ended up making around 120 masks in under two weeks for my friends, family, and workplaces in Missouri, South Carolina, Michigan, North Dakota, Texas, and Illinois. It was exhausting but I was glad to be able to contribute!
Isaac chose the home improvement route of making himself useful, helping my dad with various projects. His big focus was keeping the stream in my parents’ backyard from overflowing. Isaac rented a trencher and bought pipe with plans to make a french drain. The ground in the KC area is quite tough, it’s basically clay, so digging out a trench was more of a chore than expected. Isaac did his best, but when it was all said and done, the drain didn’t work how he wanted. He’ll probably try again next time we’re in town!
At the end of April/beginning of May, Isaac flew to Nashville for work for a few days, then flew out to Spokane to drive his secret train project across the country to Delaware with his brother. He was on a strict timeline because of work, and the trip took longer than expected because of a flat tire, but they made it in the nick of time!
After Isaac returned to KC, we packed up to head back to the Nashville area, but not before my younger brother and his wife visited KC from ND with a special announcement: they were having their first baby! We left town soon after they did. The area we ended up staying was nice and the RV park had live music every night.
Nearing the end of May, we took a long weekend to drive up to DE (my first time there!) to visit Isaac’s family’s farm and his brothers. After the short visit, we went back down to Nashville.
Around this time protests had broken out all over the country in lieu of multiple tragic and avoidable deaths. I kept hearing after the fact about protests held in the Nashville area, at one point driving down to see the after effects of a late night riot. Finally I was able to catch wind of a scheduled protest downtown. I geared up with my camera and joined around 10,000 people as we marched through Nashville. You can find my pictures and comments here. Apparently I am now considered violent for attending, so watch out. 🙂
Halfway through June we went to Louisville to stay while Isaac worked in the home office, then we set out for KC once again to prepare for the annual MI vacation. Stress was high this year for numerous reasons leading up to the MI trip. My family was on high alert about spreading covid to my 90 year old grandmother. My younger brother found out last minute that he had to work through the holiday (4th of July), therefore couldn’t come for yet another year. Most of our favorite events were cancelled due to lockdowns, so we had to improvise activities to fill up the two week time. These included a gender reveal for my oldest sister who was also having a baby, a first birthday party for Avid, a float trip, outdoor movies, beach days, and Isaac’s very first official fireworks show (watch the video)! On top of the pandemic stress, we were all flustered about where everyone would stay during the trip. We are growing out of my grandma’s house and the single wide she owns was having both plumbing and electrical problems, meaning we lost two rooms. This prompted Isaac and I to be interested in the house next door to my grandma. It had been vacant for a while and the owner had expressed interest in selling. We toured the house (a major fixer upper) and exchanged contact info.
All in all, we were able to enjoy the vacation despite it being an unusual year and unexpectedly very hot!
After we got back to KC, the RV was overdue for being serviced. It had a cracked manifold and a loose gasket, a major project to undergo. I took the RV to the Cat Dealership and stayed with my parents while it was in the shop. It took around two weeks for them to finally get it back to us because of unforeseen circumstances (thankfully not involving the RV). After I got it back parked in my parents’ driveway, I was finding a ton of fruit flies. I was cleaning everything yet they were still manifesting in large numbers!! Finally, I noticed them coming from the stove, opened the stove, and discovered a pan of mac ‘n cheese left over from one of our beach days in MI. My brother-in-law had stored it in the oven for later, but since I never store stuff in the oven, it totally slipped my mind. It was in there for a while… Let’s just say it was pretty gross.
During that time, Isaac had flown out to Southern California for work then Phoenix where I’m pretty sure he almost died from heat exhaustion trying to work on the land. He then flew back to KC, then to Chicago, then to KC, then to Yonkers, New York where he’d be working long term. After a rotation at the end of July, Isaac flew back to KC and we drove the RV to DE so Isaac could commute on weekends from NY to DE. Isaac’s life is a lot of back and forth if you hadn’t noticed.
Also before July ended, my brother and his wife were able to visit KC again before we left town and we were able to throw a gender reveal party. Both my sister and my sister-in-law were having baby boys due in October!
We stayed in DE from August to October. Avid enjoyed running through the corn fields and I worked as an admin assistant to Isaac’s uncle. Those couple months were pretty uneventful beyond the two weeks I stayed with Isaac in NY, a visit from Isaac’s mom, and when Avid mysteriously started vomiting up everything and couldn’t even keep water down.
Mid October we planned to drive out to MI to finalize buying the house! We signed for the house, deemed the Southwick House, on our anniversary and started working on it right away. Isaac had to fly out for work as usual, so the demo was all up to me! I would work on the house around five or six hours a day and spend the rest of the time with my grandma. The RV was parked on an old garage slab in the backyard, so it was pretty convenient. At one point while pulling walls down, we discovered newspapers and magazines from the 20’s and 30’s in very good condition! After a viral reddit post, I made it onto the news.
We stayed in MI until after New Years. Isaac got to experience his first white Christmas, and my grandma was kept company during the holidays she usually spends alone. The last month or so didn’t lend much work on the house as Isaac was busy with various projects and I had done all the heavy lifting I could do by myself. We did end up gutting most of the downstairs and the bath upstairs, revealed the major issues, mapped the floorplan, and created a digital layout of the desired renovations. View the status of the renovations here when we get started!
We went back to DE in January for about a week. Isaac’s brother’s drone company was doing training at the farm, so Isaac wanted to join in as he was getting more and more involved. After the training, we drove up to Massachusetts as Isaac had yet another side project going on! We spent about a month in MA, taking the opportunity on my birthday weekend to visit our final states in the continental US (New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont)! 50 states by thirty, baby!
It was back to DE in March for some more uneventful times! Just kidding, Avid disappeared for 5 hours one day after jumping out of the RV window. She’s going to be the death of me. At the end of March, we drove back out to Isaac’s home office in Louisville, boondocking in the Target/Walmart parking lot for a few weeks. A few weeks ago we travelled an hour or so south to Glasgow to another work site, boondocked for a week, Isaac got his first vaccine, then we made our way to an RV park in a state park twenty minutes away. But not without some issues!
A few minutes into our drive the engine started having trouble. Isaac pulled over, someone stopped to give advice, we tried driving again, and all seemed fine. Nope! Check engine light again, time to pull over. He took my car to try to get a reader for the code, but they didn’t have an adapter. We decided to try to make it to the RV park, but the engine light came back on, this time flashing. We pulled over again, called a tow, and Isaac checked the oil. It was low, so we refilled and tried again! The engine light came on for a minute, but went away, and we were able to make it to the park without a tow. We’re still not entirely sure what’s going on…
We stayed at the state park for two weeks, then moved north to another RV park near Mammoth Caves. I’m not sure how long we’re staying or where we’re going next, but hopefully it will be uneventful!
Thanks for reading!