We're camping again! Woohoo!

It's funny. I forgot how much I love camping. I love the camper, I love the campground. I feel right again!

Carriage Inc, another RV manufacturer near Goshen, Indiana has let us stay in one of their cool Domani RV's while we wait for our insurance to get sorted. Our months housing expired on Tuesday, so it was perfect timing that they had a RV available for us to use from Monday.

Madi loves her new "special bed" that pulls out each night. In fact it is really comfortable, I lay on it with her for a while last night, most pull outs are thin foam and springs in your back. Oh, and finally, after a year I had the best nights sleep on the cosiest, most comfortable bed. So comfortable that I was still asleep at 10.00am this morning when the guys from Carriage came over to say hi and check everything was OK. We quickly got organized and were lucky enough to meet Don, and catch up with Andy and Josh (who we had met the other day). These guys are just really nice guys. We had a nice chat, had some of the luxury features we weren't sure how to use explained, and took a photo to send to the local paper who wanted to do an update of our situation. I should post the photo here - I will try.

We are staying in the Domani DF300 and it has a u shaped couch down the full slide. Instead of a dinette it just has a long couch with tables that are easy to put in and out to make a comfy dining table. Kids have spent hours today doing colouring and writing on it. it is the right height and distance for them to kneel at, and it is a corner couch at the end for them to lie back and watch the big screen tv!! Madi is especially fond of having a tv in her camper. Normally she only gets to watch tv when we are travelling in the car.

Oh, I do have a proud parent moment. Today madi wrote the word cat, unprompted. Then she proudly showed me and told me "I can write words now, mummy". Wow. We have recently discovered a couple of great DVD's, Blues Room - Alphabet Power and a Leappad DVD set of Letters and words. Its great. Denny loves it too and is up "writing" as well, however madi's words are a little more legible at this stage.

We got on the local news again, as the good news story at the end of the news. Carriage to the rescue. I do have to say, it is really nice of them to do this for us. We have no connection to carriage at all, they hadnt shown up on our initial search as we were looking for a bunkhouse. Though, now we have discovered carriage does make 1 bunkhouse model. They seem to be targetting the serious RVer or fulltimer. We had a personal tour of the factory on Friday with Josh, and we saw the Carri-lite and the Cameo models. They are making a full slide version, like the motor homes. Amazing. The whole side is the slide, and it is full of so much storage - Le and I were just thinking - more toys for the kids. It had a side by side washer and dryer, drawer dishwasher, island bench in the kitchen. And it was beautiful.

But back down to earth, we have submitted the insurance claim and listed everything we had stolen (besides the camper). We removed most things, but we lost stuff under the kids bed. Unfortunately, the handmade hippo and quilt my mum made Madi! And the jumpers that Aunty Glor knitted the kids. Its only when I was packing up the stuff to move I realised that hippo was missing! It will have no value to anyone else as he was well loved. But ...

Anyway, it is great to back into our old rythym, again. Outside in the campground playing with the kids. They rode their bikes around and around the campground this morning and this afternoon. Kicking the ball, and of course picking up stones as gifts for all and sundry. Friendly fellow campers, dogs and cats to talk to. Feels for the first time in over a month that life is right again. Thanks Carriage. We feel normal again.

In the news

Its madi's 3rd birthday today. And we got up real early to drive down to Goshen court house to meet a reporter from WSBT. We were on the 5:30 news. The put a story on the website, and then after the news was on the report was uploaded so you can watch the video here - http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/27671699.html The news headline is "Aussie Family stranded in Goshen Indiana" - which isnt quite true as they knew we are staying up in michigan ... but poetic license and not really the point. Just interesting how white lies stray into the media so easily.

Lots of people have left nice supportive messages - which makes us feel a little better to know the locals are behind us!

We are in the newspapers tomorrow I think. The goshen news and the South Bend Tribune. So i will add links in if they are published online tomorrow.

So we had thomas the tank cupcakes and candles tonight for madi. And she got the rest of her presents, so she is happy. We have said we will take her to the zoo tomorrow so she is keen to see what animals are there. Our zoo membership will get us in free. The membership really has been good value for us - as well as giving us "reasons" to go places to check out the various zoos.