More RV Renovations! Kerville Triathilon! And Attack of the RV Ants!

Jonah and I sanding stairs.  I now have little splatters of primer all over my ergo carrier.  Oh well, last baby!

So our goal was to finish the flooring and stairs in the RV before Joe's triathlon in Kerville, TX on Sept 27th so we could take the rig with us.  We did meet that deadline!  Well, sort of...

 The PROCESS (Taking about 2 weeks)




 



Done!

We were able to get the living room complete, except for the slide part of the flooring, under the couch and dinning table.  We even finished them to the point of laying the quarter round down!  The stairs went in on Wednesday and look awesome! Jonah had a blast climbing up them and smiling real big all weekend!  We would then set him back at the bottom and he'd do it all over again.....and again.

So we feel pretty proud of ourselves for meeting our deadline!  However, there were some things we did not get done in time for the trip!  Like the flooring in our bedroom.  So that was just splintery flooring that was unfinished and Joe found a screw popping up through it with his foot too!  Good thing we don't do much walking around in there.  Pretty much just room for the bed!  We also did not get the bathroom flooring done, since it requires us to pull the toilet to do it, and we didn't have time for that!  In related bathroom news, our shower looks like this...

Something to do with a leaky skylight, taking off the old-super-weird-plastic-sliding-door-like shower curtain thing and still needing to replace that with our awesome new more homey shower curtain thingie.  Good thing RV parks have public showers to use!  Cause that's what we ended up using this weekend. 

Everything went smoothly with the RV renos this weekend, except..... we did get a big scratch right in the middle of our new floor!  It happened while driving, we think by a screw that was hanging down out of the slide.  It was the movement of driving that caused it to scratch the floor and wasn't something we could have predicted.  Being that I was imagining the new floor all crumpling in on itself the second we took the slide in, one little scratch didn't seem so bad.  Really it just looks like another seem in the floor, if you aren't looking for it. 

We pulled into http://www.guadaluperiverrvresort.com  at about 3pm, to a well spaced spot and lots of amenities, like 2 pools, spa, river front, trails, playgrounds, etc!  We hardly end up using any of these, but were able to get a spot, backing to the river for $49 a night.  That's a pretty good price for a "resort" park.  And even if they did charge me extra once I got there for wifi and cable (Boo!), they did not throw extra kid or pet fees at me, which I appreciate. 

So we set up, and quickly left to go get Joe registered for the race and pick up his packet, set out his bike, and drive the course.  This took HOURS!!!  I manned the kids and Joe focused.  He was a nervous wreck with this being his first race!  We finally head back to the RV and the rain starts coming DOWN!  I make dinner and we all are laying vertically before 10pm.  Terrible nights sleep though with the storm and coughing and forgotten sound machine.  I had forgotten how loud RV's are!  If someone in your family breaths heavily, you hear it and wake up!  Hence the need for the sound machine!  Not only this, RV's are not known for their high insulation ratings!  You can hear everything that goes on outside too!  So to the man in the RV parked across the road from us, SHUT UP!

Triathlon

Just before the Start

We all wake up at 5am.  Ugh!!!!  Get to the race at 6am.  Race starts at 7:30am.  We were doing the race with some friends of ours, who are not newbies to this like us.  Guys go in the water for their 500M swim and they're off!

Joe getting out after the swim portion

It was a rainy, misty morning and we were all soaked by the end of it!  The kids were total troopers!  Especially Bean, who HATES to get wet!

I don't know Joe's exact times.  Maybe I should find out?  Okay, let me go find out....  K, I found out.

500 Meter Swim  15:04
15 Mile Bike  49.:25
5K Run  29:38

Total Time with Transitions = 1:40:59

He came in 13th in his division.  I was so freaking proud of him when I saw him come around the corner towards the finish line!!!  I was so excited for him, that I might have been so loudly screaming and jumping up and down, that the announcer may have made some comments about it, 3 times.  I mean, ME?, LOUD?!  Anyways, YAY JOE! 

The rest of our day was spent refueling our guys with food and hanging out at the RV.  Baby slept and everyone had a buddy, even Darby.  Happiness. 

Ants

We discovered the white noise phone app Saturday night.  Hallelujah!  Much better nights sleep!  But, we were starting to notice a lot of ants in the RV right before bedtime.  So many in fact, that we had to have the girls sleep on the couch, as their beds were covered with them!  As was the floor and bathroom, and by Sunday morning, even the walls!  It was total ant take over!!!  The only sort of safe zones were our bed (thank goodness), and the couch.  Everything else was covered!  Joe went out to Lowe's to get ant killer of all kinds with the girls first thing that morning.  When he got back and started the massacre, he realized how many there actually were!  They practically covered one entire wall on the outside of the RV!  Looks like they were getting in mostly through the electric cord we had plugged in.  We got non-toxic spray, bait boxes, and poison.  Joe also filed down the nail under the slide before we wrapped up and pulled out (half an hour later then check out, but we had ants to deal with!).  In all of our travels, we have NEVER experienced an ant problem!  Nor had we had any kind of pest problem!  As a matter of fact, we were those RVers who would giggle at the travelers that would spray a ring of poison on the ground around their RV or sprinkle chemicals around every part of their RV that touched the ground.  "Look at those silly, scardy cats who are poisoning our Earth with their toxic chemicals, so they can avoid the rare chance of an insect getting into their RV!"  Well, call me a silly, scardy cat, but laying down bug poison is now part of our set up routine.  Never again will I almost be chased out of my RV by ants that can take over in 1 day!  It can happen so fast people!  SO fast!

Kids sleeping on couch since beds were covered in ants.

And that was our weekend!  Fun!  Stressful!  Exciting!  New Experiences!  Friends!  Great!