Exciting and Emotional

Paul and I are pulling in to the trucking terminal right now to turn in our truck. We will no longer be trucking and it's a little bit emotional for me. We've lived in a truck ever since we got married- two years next week!

We are excited to start doing the marketing for the books and trading in our 18 wheels for a two wheeled motorcycle. But, being a woman, change is emotional for me. Pray that we follow God's leading, do His will and that God will bless our newest adventures.

I have to go clean the truck- PRAY FOR US, PLEASE!

Le Petit Dejeuner a la Truck!

Even truckers need to start the day off right with a good breakfast. Paul and I usually start our day off with a bowl of cereal and Classic Almond Breeze milk, a bowl of instant oatmeal, Eggo waffles or bagels and yogurt. 

When we have a little extra time in the morning we try to get creative by having pancakes- I buy small packets of Bisquick and and save single serving packets of syrup from Mickey D's to keep things simple and to save space.  Or we make fried egg sandwiches. YUM!

This is another one of those meals that can get messy in a truck, but is sooo worth it!

We toast onion bagels or english muffins and butter them lightly before adding a little Miracle Whip (we did a taste test and decided that, between Mayo & Miracle Whip, the "Zip" gave just the right kick!).

Fry up a couple of eggs and add a few slices of cheddar or sprinkle on the shredded stuff.

We keep a package of precooked, microwavable bacon around just for this meal and for tomato avocado sandwiches that we enjoy at lunch time. Add some slices of the bacon and tomato to your egg sandwich with a little salt and pepper and enjoy a foretaste of the heavenly banquet, my friends!

Even Snoop-dog loves them!

Another favorite (and faster!) le petit dejeuner is vanilla chai and yogurt topped with granola and fresh berries. 

Until recently, we had a hot pot that plugged into the cigarette lighter and I could boil up water for tea while sitting in my seat. Sadly, the element went out so now I have to crawl in the back and use the microwave, but a cup of tea is always worth a little extra work and the risk of being splashed by hot water!

Hey, Good Lookin'! What ya got cookin'?

I am home from California. I've survived the flooding at home in Tennessee. I am finally back in the truck with my husband! Ahh, truck sweet truck!

I have so much to blog about, but I'm not really in the mood for all the lengthy stuff right now, so I thought I would continue my expose on the "Secret Life of Truckers."


People always ask if we eat nothing but fast food all the time. When I answer "No!" and try to explain what cooking is like in the truck, people tend to look a little confused. A picture tells a thousand words, so I snapped a shot of my hubby making his specialty "Tuna Quesadillas."

Here is what this type of meal involves when it is made in a truck:

- Opening and draining cans of tuna. It sounds easy, but it can get messy in a truck. If it spills and ends up on the bed and it will smell like fish until we can get to a washer and dryer. Fun, right?!?!

- Rolling down the windows and turning on the fan to vent any fumes out of the truck.
- Setting up and lighting our single burner propane stove.

- Fry tortillas, add tuna and cheese until "melty" (Paul's word!), remove, roll and enjoy!

- Clean up cooking area, frying pan and plates with wet wipes.

That is how it is done folks! Hope you enjoyed this very random tutorial!

Highs and Lows

High: Yesterday Paul and I were driving from Ohio to Massachusetts and had a little time to kill. We parked our truck a truck stop and went for a walk through the woods, fields and down a little country road. It was a perfect afternoon in Pennsylvania.


Low: A week ago I had to have an MRI and found out that I have a torn meniscus in my knee. Luckily, it doesn't need surgery, but they did drain fluid off and gave me a cortizone shot. Walking over the hills of PA was beautiful, but my knee started bothering me.


High: We came out of an open field and on to a little street with a vintage ice cream stand that had just opened for the season. I LOVE little places like that!!!! They just scream summer and make me romanticize days gone by. We ordered fried mushrooms and a twirling tower of coconut soft serve from a friendly grandfather with a big smile. We sat in the sun and ate our mushrooms and licked the cone before a single drop could be lost. Such bliss!  As I finished my cone, we wandered next door to look at beautifully handcrafted wooden lawn furniture made by a tall middle aged Amish man.

Low: As we made our way back to the truck we took a short cut down a weed covered embankment. By the time I climbed into the truck I was hopping up and down and whining. The back of my shirt and jeans were covered in some kind of a stinging nettle type plant! I hate to be graphic, but looking back I can now see the humor in the scene I was making...the plant had particles falling from my shirt and down the back of my jeans. I had sat down to try to brush the back of my shirt only to hop back up because my rear end was itching, stinging and burning all at the same time. I was hopping all over our tiny space whining and howling as I tried to quickly dance around Paul to close the curtains and strip off all my clothes! I had tiny white things that looked like the ends of a cactus pricking into my fingers, shoulders, back, bottom and legs. Paul had to use a flashlight and tweezers to remove as many as he could find. Sheesh!!! Not the way I had hoped our afternoon stroll would end!


High: My dear husband did his best to remove the evil needles from my skin. He bought me some sweet treats and sour apple soda to cheer me up. Its a blessing to have someone take care of you!


Sooooo, how was your day? Hope you didn't get into any "sticky" situations!

The 1st Anniversary of His 29th Birthday!

My dear, sweet husband has been outside of the womb for 30 years today! We have been teasing each other about our turning 30 this year and Paul has now begun stating that I will be the old one, he is only celebrating the first anniversary of his 29th birthday! Hmmm...



I am so blessed to know and love this man! I could not imagine God having created someone so perfect for me before I met him, but than I met him and was, once again, shown how great and loving God there is. I have been given a husband who is far more perfect than I deserve- all I can do is be eternally grateful!




In honor of this blessed day of my husband birth, I would like to share 30 reasons why I love him.



1. He has eyes that see me the way God sees me and not the way I see myself.




2. He is handsome with a beautiful smile.




3. He loves me and God (not necessarily in that order!).

4. He is an adventurer to the core who loves to travel and experience the wonders of God's creation.

5. He is a gentleman. A man who knows and understands what it means to truly be a man.

6. His dream house is a treehouse (think Swiss Family Robinson)!

7. He keeps me calm when I'm flipping out, but causes me to worry about his neck when he flips out!

8. He's the ONLY person allowed to call me "Bubba" and get away with it!!!!!

9. If he could only eat 3 things for the rest of his life it would be cheese, tuna and flour tortillas.

10. He is a wonderful Godfather and will be an incredible father.

11. He is passionate about teaching kids through camp ministry.

12. He could spend all day flying remote control airplanes and helicopters.

13. He has crazy red curls! I fell in love with him before I ever saw him clean shaven and with out a fro- thats saying something! ;)

14. In college he wore parachute pants!!!! And drove a crazy lifted pickup truck.

15. He is a Brother of the Eternal Song to the core. He loves Our Lady and his Brothers.

16. He won the National Iron Kids Triathalon as a teen.

17. He is willing to try almost anything crazy and adventurous.

18. He owns his own hang glider and was once almost decapitated by a jet ski.

19. He loves training our dogs, horses and pet squirrels. He is a regular Dr. Dolittle.

20. He can consume more candy than anyone I know and he never gains a pound!!!

21. Kids love him! My 9 year old cousin refers to Paul as his best friend. Our neighbors little boy once knocked on our door and asked my dad if Paul could come out and play! :D

22. He inspires and encourages everyone who knows him.

23. He is the silliest person I know!

24. He is adorable when he sings Garth Brooks off key!

25. I love how much he enjoys playing sports, but doesn't need to sit around watching the on tv.

26. He took ballet lessons (and wasn't very good!)!!!!!

27. I love that, though he is cute, he doesn't look good in a dress (see below).

28. As they say in the song, "I love the way he loves me"!
29. I love that he sacraficed by giving up the job he loved, changed careers and left his hometown to move across the country, live in a truck and be with me.
30. I love that he chose me to be his wife!!!!

Thank you, Lord, for blessing me with a husband who is so good and loves me so much! Help us to be a blessing to each other.
Happy, happy birthday, baby!!!!!

Commitment to Loveliness

Today I am joining Charming the Birds from the Trees in making A Commitment to Loveliness!

It is almost impossible to decorate and make it feel terribly cozy truck. The key word being almost. I was so happy when we bought new sheets for the truck, matched up our comforter with [gasp] a throw pillow! Paul quickly decided the truck wasn't big enough (it really was crowded) for the two of them- it was either him or the throw pillow. Out went the pillow. So now my goal is to start small and work my way up to the big things (like throw pillows).

We have tried to keep flowers in the truck. Paul surprised me once by tucking over a dozen roses all our the truck. They were in the clothes hamper and my mug. Tucked beside the microwave and the tv. There were several by my seat and one on my pillow. Several times he's bought me a dozen roses and set them in the drink well on the dash. They were always lovely, but would always spill when we'd hit a bump, unhitch a trailer or when the dogs would want to eat (seriously!) them!!! We may have had a few setbacks, but I shall forge away at making our home and our life a little more lovely!

Here are the ways I am striving to make a commitment to loveliness in our little home on wheels this week:

1. Decorate for St. Valentine's Day by changing my blog background. I look at it almost daily and feel uplifted when I see something bright and new! Do you like the change?

2. Turn off the news and listen to more uplifting music... Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban, Gypsy Kings, Nickel Creek, Edith Pilaf, Billie Holiday, Michael Buble and anything Celtic.

3. Make more of an effort to look my best even if the only people who see me during the day are Paul and the people I pass in the rest areas and gas stations.

4. Add fragrances to the truck either by spritzing on a little Happy Heart in the morning or spraying room spray.

5. Turn on the Christmas twinkle lights in the evening (No, we haven't taken them down yet!) and enjoy a cup of tea and a good book with Hubby instead of turning on the tv.

How will you introduce a little added Loveliness to your life this week? Share your thoughts with me and hop on over to http://www.charmingthebirdsfromthetrees.blogspot.com/ to post your own link and to see some "lovely" ideas!

Have a lovely evening!

EXPOSED! The Secret Life of Truckers

Friends are always curious about what its like to live in a truck and, too be honest, I was too before I made one my home.

I had never seen the inside of a truck's cab until Paul began his first month of driving and even then it was only a quick peek from the door as we were loading his stuff into his trainers cab. I didn't have much of a chance because as I lifted his backpack and Bible up to him a police officer tapped on my shoulder and asked for an ID. Ahhh!!!

He said that it looked a little strange seeing a young woman climbing up into a truck that was parked in a pull off on the side of the road (Paul's trainer couldn't exactly "swing by" the house to pick him up! I had to drop him off!). I was mortified and humiliated that little old moi, in my baby pink pea coat and sparkling white engagement ring, could be suspected of being, well- YOU KNOW!!! How awful!!!

Paul's trainer explained what we were doing and I waved my ring in the officer's face. He left, but not before running my plate to make sure I didn't have anything he could "book" me for!

The crazy thing is that this is not the first time I've had this happen!!!

Previously, a friend and I were pulled over for driving slowly in a truck parking lot- we were looking for the place to get diesel fuel for a four wheeler. Luckily, the police officer shined his light into my face and said," Oh, you're the little girl who works next door at the motel! You ladies go ahead and have a good night." That in itself could sound bad enough, but I was indeed the "little girl" who worked [the front desk!!!] at the motel.

The point is that the world of trucking was a mystery to me until two years ago. Honestly, it was a world that I had no interest in discovering, but when I heard about the money that you can potentially make, I immediately suggested that my (then) fiance might want to look into it as a way of paying off all our student loans so that we could start off our marriage without debt weighing us down.

Look he did and now here we are. I thought it might be interesting to write a little about the nuts and bolts (ahem!) of our day to day life.





So far, I have mainly written about the 10% of our time which we spend visiting with friends and exploring new places. The other 90% of our time seemed too mundane to recount, but I've been discovering that most people are very curious about that 90% of time.



From time to time I will write an expose on the life of a trucker, Paul, and of his lovely (*blush*)wife , me.

I am the Lois Lane of my own little Smallville on wheels. Only difference is that I'm on to my Superhusband's secret identity! (Have I ever mentioned that I am adicted to all things Superman???)

This, my friends, is where the rubber meets the road!