Search Results for AT (326)

The Call

Ashley Longnecker / April 15, 2015

March 23, 2015. I spent the whole day cleaning and staging each room so that I could get some amazing pictures of our home. The kids were so helpful in picking up their toys and making everything look in tip-top shape. We scrubbed off all the crayon marks on the walls and dusted all the doors and frames. We cleaned all the windows and got some really amazing pictures taken. It took me from 9am until 3:30 to get every room clean, staged and photographed. I was so motivated that day. I remember having an extra pep to my step and just thinking how fun that was to see my house for what it truly can be (when there aren’t little people making creative memories all over the place). I remember praying over the rooms that day. Praying for the next family who has this house that they would love it as much as we do and that their family would be blessed in their new home.

Behold, the Beast! Meet Beebop - Our Trusty F350

Ashley Longnecker / April 02, 2015

We have a “car guy.” His name is Reb Croft from RC Motor Company and we’ve ALWAYS bought our cars form him. If you’re in the Knoxville area and looking for a car/truck/suv, go visit him. You’ll be glad you did. He knows his stuff and he can look for whatever you need.

After much research about hauling 5th wheels, we decided on an F350 dually with a 7.3 powerstroke diesel engine. We told Reb, and he got right to work. He knew exactly what we wanted. Leather seats, relatively low miles with 40/20/40 seats up front and a bench seat in the back. He looked....and looked....and looked. It’s crazy hard to find the specific truck that had all the things we were looking for. We’ve never had to be so specific in our search for a vehicle before.

Finally, we found one and it looked amazing. I got my hopes up, Reb flew all the way to Michigan to check it out and drive it back if he thought it was what we wanted. But then I got the call. No good. Reb saw lots of rust in the bed and several other things that just made him uneasy about the purchase. We told him if he didn’t think it was the right one, then we trusted him. He flew back to Knoxville without the truck. I was pretty upset, but we knew the perfect truck was out there just waiting to be found.

After several more false starts and dashed hopes, I found what looked to be the perfect match on Craigslist. It was a beauty! Man, she was dark grey, long bed, running lights, leather in great shape and to top it off, she had a chip! Oh, that glorious chip. Now, I don’t know much of anything about cars but...I know we get ridiculous gas mileage with this chip. I like it.

I had Reb call the guy to see if his asking price was solid and to feel him out and make sure he wasn’t going to murder us if we came to look at the truck. Jon ended up calling him after Reb did and we set up a time to drive to Memphis to check out the beautiful beast.

The trip

The weekend came for us to drive to Memphis and go check out this beautiful truck. We planned to drive there Saturday, spend the night in a hotel, meet the guy with the truck Sunday morning and hopefully drive it home that day. Well.... let’s talk about that, shall we.

The Thursday before we were supposed to leave, Knoxville was covered in ice and snow. Schools had been out for the entire week and the roads were horrible. We called the guy again to see how the roads were in Memphis and they were fine there. So, we decided that if we could get out of our driveway that Saturday morning that we would go on with the trip.

Good iPad Games for Your Older Kids: Part 2

Jonathan Longnecker / March 10, 2015

We're back with more iPad games for your kids that aren't stupid, "free" or crammed with in-app purchases and ads. They also look and feel like someone actually cared when making them. In other words - these are good, solid games that are worth paying for. 

This time I wanted to focus on games for the older kids in your family. Don't worry! I'll let you know if there's stuff like language or violence that you may want to watch out for. Looking for games for your younger kids? Check out Part 1.

Waking up from the American Dream

Ashley Longnecker / March 03, 2015

Are you excited?

This is a question I have been asked over and over for the last 5 months since we made our traveling plans known. 

These last 5 months have flown by. There has been so much organizing, selling, painting, preparing and planning going on that I sometimes just stop and have to remember to breathe. Every now and then I’ll find myself trying to think about what it will be like when we are actually out of the house and living everyday in our 5th wheel. But it’s hard. I’ve never slept in a 5th wheel let alone stayed in one, ever. This is a whole new experience for our family. We’ve never pulled a 42 foot trailer behind a truck. We’ve never tried to cram 6 people’s belongings into a 420 sqft space. 

Good iPad Games for Your Kids: Part 1

Jonathan Longnecker / February 10, 2015

Hey, you know what's fun? Grabbing one of those crappy free games on the App Store and letting your kids try to play it. It's jam packed full of annoying ads, game play mechanics that require in app purchases and so many popups there's no way you could possibly enjoy playing it, let alone your kids (who keep accidentally tapping the wrong thing and ending up in a web browser with some ad or in the App Store trying to get them to buy another app).

I lied. This is not fun. This isn't how games are supposed to be. 

I remember throwing a cartridge into my Nintento or Sega Genesis (yeah I'm old) and just losing myself in the graphics, music, story and game play. You know, back when games were fun? 

Recently I've become determined to make sure my kids know what a good game is. The first step was to grab this awesome Sega Gensis with 80 games built in! That's right, you can play Streets of Rage, Sonic the Hedgehog or Vectorman all from this one console. It's pretty cool!

The second step was to find fun, high quality games for our iPad without in-app purchases. Also said games may not involve endlessly running or flinging animals from a slingshot over and over again.

In the words of Barney Stinson, "Challenge accepted!" Here's a few of the best games we've played over the last year or so. They're not free or cheap, but they're great games you can play with your kids on the iPad. Great graphics, engaging story, thought-provoking puzzles and blistering action. We hope you love them as much as we do.

Leo's Fortune