Truck Trip (June 26, 2010) Wonderful, Beautiful Utah (no place like home)

There really is no place like home! These pictures were taking as we were driving past Moab Utah. It's always fun driving around with my husband. I absolutely love it! It's wonderful bonding time with him. I look forward to it each and every year. Even with the fun of traveling all over, there's just something about being in your home state and seeing it's beauty. I LOVE UTAH! Thanks for taking me honey. I loved it. I loved my time with you. Thank you for not abandoning me in Nebraska :)

Truck Trip (June 25, 2010) Texas & New Mexico

Here is a picture of the Texas state sign.

Here is a picture of the New Mexico state sign, only a couple of hours later. Notice how different it is to look out the same window. Those darn bugs.

In New Mexico they were doing road construction and whoever had the job of placing cones in the road were either drunk or couldn't walk a straight line. The cones were all over the place! One would be on the far right side of the lane, the next one off on the left side of the lane. You could just look at them and seem them curving all over the place! If I was the one driving, I probably would have hit several of them.

In New Mexico, at a rest stop, we ran across the funniest group of people! There were two guys and a lady, who had bikes on the back of their car. We assumed they were  participating in some type of marathon.

At first only one guy was out of the car, standing up with his knees bent and his arms raised up toward the sky. He would come down a little with his legs and go back up again. I asked David what he was doing and he told me that they were Muslims praying toward the East. . . Stupid me, I thought Dave was being serious with me. For one, I had no idea where East was to check his story and two, I realized he was being funny when the guy started doing jump kicks in the air. It didn't take long for the other guy to join him.

It was one of the funniest things I have seen other people do in public. They were so entertaining, we just stayed and watched until the group left. I couldn't decide if they were doing karate moves, mediation moves or what. It was hard to get a close up picture, seeing how we were in the parking lot for big trucks and they were in the little car parking lot. 

 New Mexico beauty. . .

Truck Trip (June 24, 2010) Oklahoma

Oklahoma was pretty. It was a lot greener than Kansas. The roads however were not well thought out. The freeway runs right through town. It's nothing like our freeway's in Salt Lake City. Their freeway's are on the same level as the other roads and they have absolutely no barrier from the 75 MPH freeway to the 25 MPR road running less than 75 feet away!!! Nothing to stop a car from going over the small grass area and hitting somebody walking down the sidewalk! I told Dave it would be nice if you happened to miss your exit, because you could just drive over the little grass and be on the downtown road! 

I saw a billboard in Oklahoma that my kids would love. It said "For those of you who remember the alphabet game, this is for you." Then it had words that contained every single letter in the alphabet! We play that game all the time with my boys. Of course we get stuck on letters like j, q, z. . . I wish we had a couple of those billboards in Utah!

In the second picture, I was trying to get a picture of a fire off the road. I know it sounds weird, but it was really neat to see!

Truck Trip (June 24, 2010) Flat, Flat, Flat Kansas

There isn't a whole lot to say about Kansas other than I think you could roll a ball from one end of the state and it would make it to the other end of the state without stopping. 

I must admit, I wasn't completely at ease until we left Kansas. I couldn't stop worrying that we would be brutally killed by a random tornado.

Truck Trip (June 23, 2010) Truck Repair Colorado

In the middle of nowhere, while we were listening to the audio book "Host" by Stephenie Meyer, the truck started making this annoying, continuous beeping sound. We were on a tiny road, that had farms as far as you could see, in every direction. The road was so small, that there was no room for us to pull over without taking up the entire road, or wiping out a good chunk of a crop. Dave surmised that it was just low water in the radiator so we kept driving with the irritating sound. We finally made it to a small town in Colorado that had a park large enough that we could park next to it.

Dave opened the hood and all this steam came pouring out of a hose that was leaking. It turned out to be a water hose for the heater to the sleeper. It was an easy fix. Seeing how it is summer, we don't need the heater, so Dave just shut off the hose and we made several trips to the park to fill the radiator back with water.

In comparison to previous years and "accidents" that always seem to happen when I am with Dave, I count us lucky that it was something this minor. Especially for those of you who remember how two year ago we got stuck in West Virgina for two weeks, instead of one, due to one of the front tires about to fall off. Or the time three years ago, when I had to fly home from Arizona, to make it to work on time, due to some complication that caused Dave to be stuck there and extra day or two. Then when I went to fly home, we found I didn't have my drivers license on me (I didn't think I would need it, seeing how I obviously wasn't going to be driving the semi truck) and Jason had to fedex it to me so I could fly home.

Needless to say, Dave makes me bring my drivers license with me now, every time I go with him. Which happened to come in handy that same year when were in West Virginia and got pulled over by a bored, mean cop and I had to prove who I was. The cop got us for being out of hours and grounded us for 10 hours in that small town. If I wasn't a woman, who happened to need a bathroom, he would have grounded us right there at the port parking lot. This might be the only time I can say I was grateful for having"mother nature" pay a visit, because it was the only reason we were allowed to go to a parking lot in town, that was within walking distance of bathroom (which also made it so we could buy food).

I could go on and on with all our little "bumps" when I go with him. But regardless of the hurdles Dave has to endure when I travel with him. I absolutely love it! I cherish that undivided time I get to spend with him each year! I am already looking forward to next year!

Truck Trip (June 23, 2010) Reload South Dakota

In South Dakota our reload was wood to take down to Oklahoma. They made Dave put on a harness to tarp his load! I told him to jump off his load like Spiderman and fly to the ground. . . I can't imagine why he wouldn't want to try it. He said something like he didn't want to get in trouble and be banned from coming back.

Annual Truck Trip with Hot Hubby (June 23, 2010) First stop South Dakota

South Dakota. . . the first stop on our week long truck trip. We were supposed to head out on Monday, but ended up having to wait until Tuesday in order to fix something on the truck. Every year I take a week off work to drive around with Dave on the truck. I always look forward to this time with him. It goes to show you that he must love me, to be stuck with me 24 hours a day non-stop and still want to be with me:)

This is where we unloaded our rebar that we picked up at Nucor Steel in Plymouth. When I got out to watch them unload, I was approached by a lady working there who commented on my choice of shoes. I was wearing flip flops and apparently needed steel toes shoes to be allowed to walk around the job site. She settled for the tennis shoes I brought along. She was really nice and talked to me for a bit when Dave was outside working. Dave found a bird that had made it's nest way up in the crane!

This is our second year in a row to end up in South Dakota! It is really beautiful there. I believe it is also called the grasslands. It's makes our desert look really brown. I loved looking at the flowing grass hills! This is our second time to only be miles away from Mnt Rushmore. I told Dave that we have to come back with the kids and actually stop to visit Mnt Rushmore next time!

Here are some pictures of us driving through South Dakota. . . You can just double click on a picture and it will show you a full size version.

Music

I love music. I am also a very repetitious person. I can listen to the same C.D. and nothing else for 8 months straight and not get bored. I can listen to the same song for hours and hours on repeat. I found another one of those songs that I love to have on repeat. I heard it first in church. In church I heard the Michael Mclean version, which brought me to tears in Relief Society. On Itunes I could only find the version sung by a women on the Michael Mclean's C.D. "Tender Mercies." The song is called "Ninety and Nine. "You may not like the music at first, give it a chance and listen to it several times if you need to. It is a great song about how the lord doesn't only love the lost lamb that he goes to find. He loves the other 99 lambs that never left and try everyday to do their best.

I also am learning to love the "Eclipse" movie soundtrack. I found that when I watched "Twilight" the first time, I thought the music was really bad. So for "New Moon" I did what I do best and once I got the soundtrack in the mail, that was the only thing I listened to until the movie came out. By that time I loved the songs and when I heard them in the movie, I wasn't thinking what a stupid song. So I decided to do the same thing for "Eclipse." The first time I listened to the C.D. , I was dreading having to listen to it again. It got better and so far I love songs 1-5 & 9. My sister Michelle thinks I am crazy, but I will be the only one in the theater not irritated by the music, so jump on board Michelle and hit repeat:)

Dave being eaten by Pugsley (June 19, 2010)

Ugh. . . gross! I always knew you looked good honey, you must taste good as well! I wouldn't let the cows get that close to me! Surprisingly, this isn't the full length of the cow tongue, it get's even longer. Makes me wonder who actually buys cow tongues in the grocery store to eat them!

Feeding Grandpa's Cows (June 2010)

It is fun to watch all my three boys play with Grandpa's cows! Will got the brown cow called Pusley to click his hand. One time when it was licking Will, it got all of Will's fingers in his mouth. It wasn't until Dad told us that the cow could crush Will's fingers, that we stopped letting the cow suck Will's hand!