Author: Debbie and Joe

Every morning at 8AM we meet at the build site and have a devotional prayer from a representative from a local church.   We then join hands in a circle and say “Habitat isn’t a hand-out, but a hand-up” as we raise our hands together.   It’s such a wonderful way to start our day of work.

Today’s mission was to paint all the walls in the house.   We broke into teams, and set out to work.   We first had to clean up the floors and prep the walls.   Then, we got to painting the master bedroom suite area with Ramona and Richard from Louisiana.

It was the first time I cut in without using tape (free hand).  I quickly got the hang of it, and it came out pretty good 🙂 .

              

Everyone on the team worked really hard.   The first coat of paint was put on on the entire house before we went to lunch!    We were then treated to a wonderful lunch at the local Catholic church, with quite a spread of pulled pork, beef, chips and homemade desserts.   We then went back to the house and put on a second coat of paint, and were finished by 2PM … ahead of schedule!    The Florida Sand color looks great.

Everyone came back to the campground, got cleaned up and then met for happy hour around the campfire.  The weather was beautiful, and it was very nice to just relax with the team.   Looking forward to working on the flooring tomorrow 🙂 .

We enjoyed the extra hour of sleep on Sunday, since Sullivan is in Central time.   After attending 10AM mass in town, we stopped at Bo Wood Camground a mile down the street to empty our holding tanks.  The weather was beautiful … about 80 degrees.  We decided to take a short walk around the campground to view Lake Shelbyville in the heart of central Illinois.  The lake and surrounding land offer outdoor activities for people of all ages, including fishing, swimming, picnicking and simply relaxing.

We decided to have pizza for lunch, fully realizing that it would not be NY pizza.  Well, that was certainly the case.  The round pizza came cut in squares.   I can’t figure out why they think that’s a good idea.  It just creates pieces that are all crust, and some that are to flimsy to pick up.   Oh well, will have to wait to get back to Upper Crust in Celebration 🙂 .

After lunch, we hooked up Breezy to electricity and fresh water.    We can now take long showers and not worry about it!   Later in the afternoon we attended the Team 3 welcome meeting.   We met up with some Care-A-Vanners that we knew from our build last year, and met some other great folks.   There are 7 RVers on this build.  It was amazing to hear about how these folks came from around the country … some from Michigan, Ohio, Arkansas, Minnesota, Illinois and us from Florida.  Amazing!   We then enjoyed a fabulous dinner hosted by the Faith Lutheran church.

I hear our first job is to paint the inside of the house tomorrow …. should be fun!

We made it to Sullivan, IL!

Since our motorhome is in NY, we had to travel from Florida to NY to begin our trip.   We left Celebration, Florida on Monday, 9/24 and arrived at our home in Brewster, NY on Tuesday evening (actually, ‘Tessie’ did most of the driving on auto pilot).  The trip was more adventurous that usual, since we had to take an alternate route around I-95.   Some Tesla superchargers were closed on I-95 from the last hurricane, so we had to take an alternate route.   It was a bit longer, but no tolls!  🙂

After visiting with Joe’s parents for a few days and overcoming some motor home battery issues, we got packed up and left for Sullivan in ‘Breezy’ on Friday afternoon (‘Breezy’ is the nickname for our Tiffin Breeze motorhome).

After about 8 hours of driving on Friday, we pulled into a ‘Wally World campground’  (i.e. a Walmart parking lot) in Mansfield, OH.   We finished up the drive on Saturday and arrived in Sullivan around 9pm.   We met up with some of our fellow RV Care-A-Vanners, and joined the other RV’s behind the Faith Lutheran Church in Sullivan.  We ‘dry camped’ for the night, which means that we did not hook up any water or electricity.   In Breezy, we are able to spend 3 nights ‘dry camping’ before we have to empty the tanks and fill with fresh water.