Originally, we planned to take a short trip to Houston where we drove down and used up some free nights at a hotel.

A day before we were supposed to leave, we decided that we’d rather take out the 5th Wheel RV. This would require a little maintenance and cleaning the day before. So, my husband spent the day checking tire pressure, cleaning the outside and the roof, making sure the battery was good to go and that we had enough propane and sundry other RV-related stuff.

We were excited to use the RV again. It’s one of our favorite things to do together but we only get it out once every few months or so if we are lucky- We don’t do it that often and are pretty new at this.

I learned an important lesson on our first trip. One of my aspirations was to cook bacon and brownies in the RV. We learned that dumping piping hot pans into the metal-looking sink only melted the sink. It literally melted the sink. The sink in our RV is made of a very convincingly metal-looking plastic. Ooops. Don’t do that.

Anyway, we got to Houston after getting 10 miles per gallon and we backed that thing into our spot in the RV Park. Just like our Army days when my husband and I met, we got to the “Priorities of Work” to get camp set-up as efficiently as possible.

Once our plumbing, water, electricity and gas were set-up, we started to cozy up the place. We turned on the heater. It sounded like a chainsaw. It was time for bed and there was no way we were going to be able to sleep with that noise. We didn’t know why it was making the noise and it was too late to find out from anyone who might know.

My husband and I considered aloud and agreed with each other that sometimes a chilly environment under lots of blankets and warmth can make one of the nicest sleeping arrangements. Some of the most blissful sleep each of us could remember happened in the sweet confines of a waterproofed sleeping bag laid in an icy body-shaped hole dug in the snow-covered ground during Army training. Why not just go to sleep without the heater on?

The heater was loud. We didn’t know if there was a problem with the propane.  We had a heated blanket for our bed. The kids had brand new sleeping bags from Santa and footed pajamas. No problem. We turned the heater off, tucked the kids into bed and cranked up our heated blanket.

The temperature dropped surprisingly fast.

In about an hour, the thermostat read a cool 35 degrees.

The heated blanket seemed to contribute to a continual tripping of the circuit breaker so we turned it down to low. It was a heated blanket so the dialed heat settings were supposed to compensate for its remarkable thinness. Unable to  raise the settings meant we were under a glorified sheet. We were cold.

My husband checked on the kids. Of course, they had kicked off their sleeping bag covers.  Our son’s skin felt icy.

He was worried about the kids and figured that we could all huddle in the queen-sized bed as a family under the covers.  We could make sure they stayed covered and the extra heat would be good for everyone.  Our 3 year old boy and nearly 5 year old girl groggily climbed into bed between us.  That was pretty basic stuff.

It didn’t take long before our son started to kick the meager covers we had off.  He also began to kick at his father and his sister because he was trying to make more room for himself.  We were packed in pretty tightly and no one was particularly comfortable.  His sister began to kick back.

“Stop kicking the covers, son!” I heard.

“I want my piwwo!!!!” I heard my son wail.

“Stop kicking me, brudder!” I heard our daughter scream right before she cried, “I’m thirstyyyyyyyy!!!!!!”

“Piwwo!” my son wailed again.

“AWWWW!!!! MY NUGGETS!”  I heard my husband scream.  Apparently, our  son had resumed his kicking and had struck my husband in his….well, do I really need to explain that one?

And, our daughter, was wriggling her head back and forth trying to gain a comfortable position, and started crying like a forty year old woman having a nervous breakdown, “I CANNOT DO THIS ANYMORE!”

This was not the vision.

This is not how this was supposed to play out.

THIS WAS OUR FUN RV ADVENTURE, PEOPLE!

At this point, I was shivering on my side of the bed trying to restrain myself from laughing because of the absurdity of it all.

I braced myself for the cold air and strategized how to get the apple juice for my daughter, my son’s pillow out of the kid’s room, and their two sleeping bags in the quickest way possible to minimize exposure.

In the Army fantasy of sleeping in cold environments my husband and I had reminisced about, we had forgotten the pain of emergence out of the warm sleeping bag into the bitter cold.  That part, where your exposed skin felt the chilly bite of what lay beyond the covers was always an exercise in misery.

But, once our daughter took her sip, our son had his favorite pillow and we were now under two more layers of warmth, things were looking up.

Our daughter even said, “Y’know what my favorite part of the RV is?  Cuddling with my family.”  Yes, things were looking up.

But, for some reason I still heard grumbling from my husband.  About 10 minutes later, I heard him get up.  Then, I heard the chainsaw heater, again.

“Why’d you turn that on?  It’s nice and toasty under these sleeping bags!”

I looked over at him and he was glaring and grumbling barely covered by that thin heated blanket.

The spiderman and butterfly sleeping bags didn’t stretch far enough to reach him.  The kids and I were cozy and happy but he had been freezing.

The sound of the propane heater ended up being more bearable than we had expected, kind of like white noise.

About an hour later, we all managed to fall asleep finally as the heat started to wash over us.

Tomorrow would be a good day.

It would be better.

We awoke with the light.

We just couldn’t wait for this bright and warm new day.

We could have been just A’singing that song “Taking Care of Business” as we prepared to take care of essential morning business and then my camper mates heard me:

“OK, WHERE IS THE &*#&@$^&$#@ Toilet Paper????!!!!!!!”