Sunday, November 30, 2008

Mobile Home Living at its Best












Some of you may know, that a couple months after moving to California, we decided that we could not continue paying $2100/mo for our 2 bedroom place in Ben Lomond. Our house in Hawaii has been up for sale, but no luck with that so we were forced to look for another place. This was a difficult thought since we were just settling into our house and starting to get used to having less space than our place in Washington. As we began looking we decided it would be best to stay in our ward so the kids had some sort of consistency in at least one area. Our price range was so low, it was almost impossible that we would find any 2 bedrooms places. We started looking at trying to live in a 1 bedroom apartment. James loves his job, so we knew we had to find a way to make it work here even though it is expensive. Some of the 1 bedroom places we looked at were so scary! After much searching, the Lord answered our prayers. James was looking at a nice 1 bedroom apartment and he was excited about it, but he was hoping that landlord wouldn't panic when he heard we had 3 kids we wanted to squeeze into it. Fortunately, the landlord had 3 kids too, so they knew our plight and said they would rent it to us if we wanted. Then they presented another option, they had just bought an old campground that had a mobile home on it they were going to update and charge $1300 including utilties for and it had 2 bedrooms. We decided that this wasn't our dream come true, but it was what we had asked for and it would be better than living in a 1 bedroom place. Life in a mobile home has been interesting, but it feels like home now and we are grateful to have it. The campground itself has been a lot of fun for the boys to explore, so they are literally in little boy heaven! The mobile home was bought in 1962, so we have some serious retro brown wallboard, a tiny brown kitchen sink, a mustard yellow tub and very linear fixtures. We have started a list in honour of our new home called
You know you live in a mobile home in the Santa Cruz Mountains when...
1)You have tail lights on the outside of your house and a license plate
2) You get to boogie in the kitchen when you are running the washer because the electrical pull turns the kitchen light into a strobe light
3) You can't just flip a switch to turn on the lights you have to walk around to four lamps in one room since there is no overhead lighting
4) You get to hear and see your neighbor yelling at his wife just next door
5) You hear a gun go off outside repeatedly and find that another neighbor is killing racoons with his 22

Some of you have asked to see photos, for those of you who do not care ...sorry there are so many! Some of the shots are dark and its not the camera...the kitchen is just dark :) The picture that says Skyline, is showing our funky doorbell.

2 comments:

The Henricksen Journal said...

Ooooh! Please describe the surrounding area: # of neighbors, the campground activity?, beer cans (tee hee hee). I hope you love it there. Those mountains are gorgeous! And $1300 is a steal! Even for a retro trailer! Miss you!

Pam said...

Oh, Roxane, you are such a trooper. I enjoyed the photo tour of your abode. Ric would like to borrow that 22 for the racoons that come begging at our door! I just want to know if you've been given any reciped for racoon stew?