1998 Fleetwood Pace Arrow

Hello! We are a blended family of 6! We have four beautiful children - a twelve year old daughter, two seven year old sons and a four year old son. My fiance owns his own business that keeps him busy from sun up to sun down. I swear this man doesn't get a second of peace. I also work full time and try to keep some kind of structure to our crazy household and schedules. One thing I love most is hospitality. I love making people smile. I love knowing that I had a part in helping someone enjoy and appreciate life, if even for a brief moment. With tablets and laptops becoming the staple in almost every school at every grade level these days, technology has become the default "go to" for pretty much everything. Like most families, our lives are chaotic with two working parents, four children in various schools, extracurricular activities, doctors' appointments...you know the drill. At the end of the day and, especially, the week you are exhausted, depleted and ready to just zone out. Out come the tablets, phones and TVs to fill the void. Suddenly, my fiance and I looked around us and all we saw were lowered heads with glowing faces drenched in the horrible blue light emitting from the various technology devices. We knew something had to give. Something had to change. We decided to buy a camper and not just any camper. We went vintage. We went old school. We purposefully went for a camper that would not have all the bells and whistles of the luxury homes on wheels. I mean, if we wanted all of that, we would just stay home. No, we wanted to GET AWAY, we wanted to UNPLUG, UNWIND, RECHARGE AND RECONNECT WITH EACH OTHER! We also wanted a story to tell - we wanted to be able to teach our children about something new that was actually old and let them experience the past in a small way. Of course, there was the expected moaning and complaining and (in the case of my seven year old son) dramatic melting off of furniture and onto the floor. "What are we going to do?" "No TV?!" "Ugh!" "We are going to be so bored!!!" They were not bored. Not for a single minute. We plopped that 70's era Shasta camper in a small campsite next to a creek and committed to this adventure with every core of our being. They played in the creek, searched for buried treasure among the rocks and sand, fished (for my kids this was their first time fishing and camping), made s'mores and hot dogs over an open fire, road their bikes through the small campsite feeling a small sense of freedom, and marveled in the beauty of nature around us - the way the water had worn the rocks smooth as glass over time, the different birds with their various songs flitting to and from their nests to other trees around us, the magnificent colors of the wild flowers and the creepy crawly creatures of the creek that slithered their way to the surface occasionally. We laughed, told stories and laughed some more. In fact, I think we laughed more in those two days than we had in months. And I am not just talking about small giggles, I am talking full-blown belly laughs that resulted in several of us falling out of our camping chairs on more than one occasion. We learned so much about each other that weekend. The result - it was the most amazing experience and something the kids talk about even today and beg to do every free day/weekend we have. It brought our family closer. But, maybe most importantly, it taught me (as a high-strung, stressed out, over anxious mom) to slow down and enjoy my children and this fleeting time I have with them to enjoy the magic of their childhood.