I've been trying to pick the camera up as often as possible, in order to snap shots of our day-to-day life in the Barth. It's rather tricky, as the lighting is HORRIBLE, not to mention the fact that I need to climb on tables and scrunch myself back into corners even to manage to take the shot! But perhaps these will give you a better idea of what life in our RV is like, and I'll try to take a few more shots over time to share.
Every evening after the dinner dishes are done and we've cleaned up the RV a wee bit, we take down the table and convert it into a bed for the girls. The kids grab their pj's in the back while we're doing that, and grab their pillows and duvets.
This is one of Ryland's favourite seats, and it helps to keep him out of the way while chaos reigns! His back is towards our fridge, still full of photos from our big road trip. The rubbermaid underneath the fridge is for food in big bags that doesn't easily fit into the cupboard, like flours and rices and such. It's also a container that mice can't get into:-)
This is a shot of Ryland's bed, which is across the base of our bed, and up higher so that our feet slip underneath. He loves having all of his toys up there, and can often be found playing on the bed, but it's a bit harder to convince him to sleep there! He definitely starts out the night there, but by the next morning.....
we tend to find him here. And I can't believe how LITTLE space he is taking up in this photo, usually he prefers to sleep spread eagle!!!!!
This is a shot from our bed in the back. Jamie is the first up this morning, and is getting the kettle ready to boil for some tea. The wall hanging on the side of our bed has all sorts of goodies stored there, including knitting projects, letter writing supplies, invoices and bills that we need to deal with, etc
Now that it's chillier in the mornings, the kids like to hang out right in front of the heater, which is positioned underneath our kitchen sink, right across from the kids bed.
Here's a photo from the front end of the RV, with Jamie starting breakfast and the kids just waking up in bed. They sleep head to toe, and as the weather gets colder, they alternate who gets to sleep on the inside, closest to the heater, and they share their blankets by piling them on top of each other!
We have no running water yet, so we fill these big blue jugs a couple of times a week at Meg and Ian's house and use it for everything - dishes, tea, drinking, cooking and washing. Whenever possible we shower elsewhere (ie Jamie has a shower at work, we do swimming lessons once a week and get a group shower then, Meg and Ian have an awesome shower that they generously share with us regularly, etc.) However, there are days when we're out at the property for a few days in a row, and then we'll boil up some water for a bucket bath, something we've mastered in our months of living out here! I can't even fathom what life will be like once we have regular access to a shower and tap!!!!!!
We also keep this rubbermaid out our front door, of kitchen stuff that doesn't fit but we're not worried about animals, like canned beans and bottles of oils and vinegars.
Here's a shot of Kea working on a project at the table. You can see the row of cupboards above the table, those are full of kids books and blank paper/journals. Under one of the bench seats we have a stack of games, and under the second bench seat we have all of the homeschooling supplies.
Here's a shot of dishes partially done after a blueberry pancake breakfast, and then a shot of Jamie putting dishes away another evening. Just to give you a glimpse of our kitchen - we use big silver bowls of boiled water to wash dishes, we have a four burner stove-top run on propane, and then a small oven also using propane. The cupboards above the sink hold all of our dishes (we use sets of five everything and do the dishes often!), the cupboard below the sink has the furnace and some pots and pans, the cupboard under the stove has food and tupperware containers. Beside the fridge we have one tall cupboard, most of it has 5 duffle bags each containing all of our clothes (we're colour coded and have pared down our clothes to a few rotating outfits for now!), and then the top shelf contains more food staples that mice cannot access. Every once in a while the little critters make it in, and keep us up all night - so now we've set it up so we at least don't have to worry about them getting into our food!!!!!
I snapped this one evening before hopping into bed - Jamie is creating something with leftover wire, I'm ready to hop in and work on some knitting, and he has another episode of Mad Men lined up on my laptop. It's so hard for us to do anything in the evenings, once the kids are in bed, we pretty much have to crawl in bed too. And well, it's too cold to do much else!!!!! I can't wait to have a bigger bed, to have space to leave a few projects out and to have another room to hang out and work on things in the evenings after the kids go to bed - those are the things I'm missing the most!
Finally, I'll end this bit of a tour with a shot of Kea practicing her violin. We've found a lovely young teacher in Almonte, and Kea is very excited to be learning on a full sized violin now, and without using the coloured tapes showing her where her fingers should be. Personally, I'll be excited the day we have an extra room for her to practice in!!!! This shot is taken from the girls bed, with her standing right in front of it. The door with all the stickers is another closet containing Jamie's ironed work clothes, all of our shoes and slippers, and faces the front door. I'm realizing there's more photos to show of daily life in the Barth, but this is all until part 2!!!!!!
