November

1 – TIME FOR NEW PICTURES

 

Well hello everyone and YEE HAW. I’m back! I haven’t wrote any…yet. No worries. We’ve been taking plenty of pictures that you can laugh at.

 

So what’s been going on with us? Whew! We just got back on the road from a weekend in Austin camping for my annual family reunion. We sure had fun – just tired and ready to make a living again!

 

Over the weekend a lot of our family and friends got to see our new home, the truck. They are all amazed with it. I think it’s funny because when they get on up in the truck, they get to our bed and just kind of look around as if they are thinking, wow, this is it! It’s pretty comical. We like it though. Call us redneck if you want to.

 

So we were in Indiana last week before we came home to Austin and I was a little let down when a lady from bible study in INDIANA said that Joshua was more Texan than I was. 😦

 

He’s from New Mexico…and hello, I’m from Texas! lol – He was wearing boots and a hat so I’m sure that’s what did it. Here I was in heels and a skirt. Don’t let it deceive you!!!

 

Well here’s a cute pic from when we spent a few days near a mall and a LOT of shopping centers on the Tennessee/Georgia border. Tammy & mom, you would have loved the area. I’m talking Chicos and Coldwater Creek and just everything you could imagine. Well on Friday night we went walking in the mall, just looking. We stopped in JC Penneys because I saw some Georgia peach hats! Check this out:

 

 

Haha

 

 

This reminds me of….. Oprah….. (Jess)!

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Skyler, you’re gonna like this. We found a hang out with music and beer in Amarillo, Texas when we stopped for a few days. For some reason we got the idea to do a comparison picture of Joshua’s belly… A beer belly or not. Yea, we were having fun, being the loudest ones laughing out loud over this:

 

Normal pic of Joshua

 

BEER BELLY (pushed out). . . Skyler, this is YOUR buddy!

Notice the effort. Man, good job, baby! Haha. He just saw me posting this and I asked him, laughing, “Did you not think I would post this?” Nope, he knew I would. I guess some things you just regret later… haha

Also that night, a few pics:

Night out in Amarillo

Guy in a bar dressed like ??, Joshua playing with his basketball

 

Look for the next post about oil fields and me working in my hard hat!!!

 

 

 

2 – OIL FIELDS: MY FIRST EXPERIENCE

 

 

So you checked out the pics of the “Georgia peach” hats and of Joshua’s “beer belly”? We are just barrels of laughs, lemme tell you.

 

 

  

We went to Wheeler, Texas to an oil field and well, it was quite the experience. That was Joshua’s first OVERSIZE load with this company, so I got some pics. We had to chain down a oil derrick control room and delivered it to Ringold, Louisiana. We could only travel during the daytime and only go 55 mph. We like that every now and then but we prefer something we can go a bit faster in! It takes a lot of attention because we hung over the lanes.

 

 

WHOA, MOMMA!

 

About 40,000 lbs on the trailor

Pretty Sweet

Pretty crazy job site. The white is the oil derrick (taken apart)

 

This is what we were driving on – Really loose, sandy dirt. Cotton field on left.

 

 

I took quite a few pics of the oil field, because it was quite an experience!

 

 

 

Cotton: I never had felt it in its natural form

 

 

Now that you’ve seen my first oil field experience, my next blog is about wind farms!!! That was even cooler!

Had to put the oversize sign & flags out

 

3 – WIND FARM & GATEWAY TO THE WEST

The wind towers are providing more and more energy in the U.S. year by year. I’m really fortunate that I got to go to a wind farm. We were steps away from the huge towers being put together. We hauled the three spinner racks to Kermit, Texas to a wind farm in…literally…the middle of nowhere.

Spinner racks are what the three blades attach to. The spinner rack, center hub and three blades combined weigh 80,000 lbs. See pic below.

 

 

Three blades & spinner rack, Joshua barely touching

 

 

Dozens and dozens of wind towers. Peaceful out there. Blue boxes in foreground are what we hauled. They hold the blades in place when being transported.

 

Hard hat, safety vest, safety goggles & gloves NECESSARY!

 

Enjoying our work and sporting the PINK!

 

Felt good to be working in nature. Good to feel the DIRT! Very liberating to me!

 

 

I love going to new places and I like getting “dirty” once in a while. I’m getting used to helping with strapping and chaining the loads down. That’s pretty fun and you get  some good exercise. I’m gonna come home with some muscles!!

 

We are headed to Laredo now, not our most favorite place, but that’s where we’re usually sent when we’re coming out of home time (this past weekend). From there, it’s exciting to find out where we will go next, which we usually don’t know until the day of or day before where we’re going next.

 

In the past month that I’ve been in the truck, I’ve been to 14 new states. Pretty sweet! We saw the Gateway of the West last week. We want to stop next time. This time we were on our way home so there was no way we were going to waste the time!

 

 

Gateway to the West - St. Louis, MO. WHOA!!

 

St. Louis, Missouri's Anheuser-Busch

4 – STATE LINES & EXCAVATORS

Chillin in the middle of Louisiana country!

 

In the picture above, we had just unloaded the oil derrick power house in a new location for the rig in Ringold, Louisiana. We were waiting to be dispatched a load so all we could do was relax and DANCE beside a field to some tunes on the radio!

 

I get extremely hot working outside in 60 or 70 degree weather. When you’re chaining and strapping, and heaven forbid tarping, it gets hot. You might need a jacket when you step out of the truck but by the time you get to moving and lifting, a tshirt is enough! I can only imagine how it will be during summertime. Whew!

 

Well, I thought I would be able to post a few videos on here – one of the truck inside, our living quarters, and another of me doing some hard labor. I won’t give up… but I can’t seem to figure it out right now. I will try and email the video to you guys. It’s pretty neat… Maybe you’ll feel like you’re right there beside us working.

 

So we’re still on our way to Laredo, Texas right now. It’s relaxing being back in the truck, but so good to go home. I can’t wait to see my niece, sister and dad and spend some more time with them next time around.

 

 

We will swing into Austin once a month, if not more, and then like in October we were able to go see Josh’s parents and sister Amanda in Colorado. That was pretty sweet!

 

 

Fun to be passing those state lines! Tennessee is one of my favs!!

 

Got to see my Booboo for Breakfast. XOXOXO

 

Joshua driving the excavator onto the ramp so we can load it

 

Close up of J in the excavator. He's so good!

 

 

That’s all for now folks. We love y’all. Keep in touch!!