Bellies, Beds & Bells

Waking up to hard wood in my back is not as sexy as I thought it would be!! We woke up about 2-3 times last night to pump up our 'trusty' air mattress...and still woke up laying flat on the boards the bed lays on. Not cool, man. We figured now is as good a time as any to head down to 'the city' (Fresno-Clovis area) to get a new bed and pick up some things we can't get here in the mountains...or we don't want to pay for here in the mountains! We drove down and hit up the R.E.I in the good part of Fresno....sorry for giving Fresno a bad name in the previous links, this area was not bad at all but I still would not go to Downtown Fresno. R.E.I. was fun to walk around, we looked at everything; shoes, socks, sweaters, jackets, pants, little camping items, etc. We bought ourselves a solar shower (made by Seattle Sports) for a great price of $20.00 and a little 'shampoo' holder (hopefully this one will hold up, I think this is #3...they all seem to explode & break in the high altitude and heat!) We stopped for lunch at Chipotle, yummy yummy in my tummy. We drove in a big circle, trying to go to what we thought was a mall but was just outdoor shops, that you would find in a mall. Our main objective was to find a new bed so after we found ourselves from being lost, we were in a Jo-ann's parking lot...perfect! We looked at the foam padding they had, measured it, laid down on it (yes on the ground) and made it super dirty and after talking it over decided to look around before making a final decision. The foam at Jo-ann's was 2 inches thick or 5 inches (I think) thick and only 24 inches across. When we laid down on it, we bottomed out; touching elbows and knees to the tile. Plus, it wasn't wide enough to fill the entire space we need it to fill and to get what we needed would have been about $80+ for something we didn't really love.

We looked at some bells for Savannah (to keep track of the lil bugger)...the jingle wasn't loud enough for me so we left. Our next stop was going to be Home Depot to look at the carpet padding, we thought if we could get three layers of carpet padding it may just work (but honestly that's too many layers for this girl to roll up every day). On our way to Home Depot I saw a sign for a Fabric/Rug store, I told J' and since it was cater-corner to Home Depot he parked and we walked across to Home Fabrics. They pointed us to their foam and to the foam we went! This place rocked, there was no guess work here. They had a price chart alongside the size chart, we just had to know our measurements...60 x70. We went straight to the letter, "N" 60 x 72...perfecto!! We put them down on the ground and yep, we tried them out again. Guess what!? We laid down on 2 inch foam padding and did NOT bottom out... I think we found our match baby! We paid $107.64 for two foam pads and put a new definition on Happy Camper, haha. I told J' if we could only 'finish' them with some material my momma would be so proud!

[caption id="attachment_750" align="aligncenter" width="225"] Mr. Foam pad tester man[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_751" align="aligncenter" width="300"] So many to choose from[/caption]

We scratched Home Depot and went to Wal-mart to buy our necessities; toothpaste, toilet paper, paper towels (a must in my world) and some other little odds n ends...thank you to my peeps who "Back my Blog" you helped with these necessities and you rock so thank you. J' also wanted Spaghetti and for once it didn't sound like a bad idea to me (for those of you who don't know me, I'm not a huge spaghetti fan). I have never seen sooo many people at Wal-mart in my life, I mean it was disgusting, icky, ugh, gross. As we were walking out we saw the dog tag kiosk so we got lil 'Nana a new tag with updated info on it, important if she's going to be running around like a mad woman! While we were in town we thought it would be super fab to get the van washed and the sheets washed and dried. Making many circles around town to find them, we stopped at other places we needed to...and yes, we do have a GPS but sometimes she gives us the silent treatment and we can't get a straight answer out of her. On our way to find a laundromat and/or car wash, we found a Petsmart, so we popped in to get 'Nana a bell, I knew they had them in the kitty aisle (3 bells for $5.99). This place was just as crazy as Wal-mart, they were having adoptions so there were kids screaming over the puppies and puppies barking for the screaming kids...Savannah was as scared as I've ever seen her. Still driving to find a wash we came across a JC Penny, we stopped in just to see what they had for jackets...yeah, that was funny! Looking for jackets in the middle of summer in California...yep, funny joke. This place, however, was a full-on mall, Fashion Fair Mall. We walked around, did a big loop and left. I felt a bit like a minority there, never felt like my safety was a risk though (and there is a TON of security here, like Military style security), but we had stuff to do anyway so we left.

After our chores (yes we finally found a laundromat and car wash), we headed to the Wal-mart we were going to stay at for the night, but before we stopped we grabbed a not so impressive bite at Wendy's, although the Frosty was super delish. Since we loaded the van this morning all crazy, everything was still piled in the middle (yes this happens a lot...we live in an Astro van people!) We still had to get the foam pads down into place to make a bed, so we found a vacant parking lot and started the transition. Our stuff was in the van, on the van, and in the parking lot but after about an hour everything fit in just fine...right back into their places. Now with the foam pads we are not smooshed up against the ceiling, it'll be so nice to not bang our heads, shoulders, knees...whatever on the ceiling as we are sleeping. With the air mattress we only had about 2 maybe 3 inches of move-around-room, now we have feet! After our clean-up we drove to our Wal-mart and got out the computer so we could watch The Bachelorette. We missed the last one and since it is the last day of the month, we don't feel bad for using our data for it...hee hee It was a good day although we had to spend a little bit of money, but we got a new bed, new bell for Nana and some yummy goodies for our bellies. I don't think you can complain about a day like that!

PEACE