10 things we like about Ruby

There are many reasons why we love living in Ruby, the 5th wheel beauty… here are the top ten

1. We get to be close all the time
1. Ruby has a total of 275 square feet… not too big and not too small. .. Well the shower's too small, but it just means more encouragement to take shorter showers.

2. Cleaning up is easy
1. If the place is a total mess, and Trace has every toy and every can out, it probably takes one person 5 minutes to make the place look picked up; however, if Trace is helping it probably takes more like 10 minutes.

3. Traces Bed
1. We made a bed for Trace next to ours. It’s a few inches lower than ours and sinks down in the middle. He likes to roll around a lot in his sleep so the sunken middle makes it so that he has to really get a good start to roll up to us in the night… He makes it up to us every night, but I like to think it buys us a few extra minutes before he starts unconsciously steam rolling us.

4. We have everything we need, and nothing we don’t need
1. We had to send a lot of stuff home when we ventured into RV living. We haven't missed any of it. Hopefully we can keep that going when we move into a home.

5. Our windows have screens and we have a screen door
1. Our last place didn’t have these… You don’t really know what you’ve got till its gone in this instance

6. We get to be "home-ish" owners.
1. Although there's not much to living in an RV, we do get to do some maintenance. We also can modify it in any way we want without trying to figure out if our landlord would approve or not 

7. Our Jack-knife sofa
1. We like to fold out the little (thin and short) thing and watch movies together on it. It’s a good thing that the three of us like to cuddle or else one of us would enevitably fall off

8. Mobility
1. We are looking into the future with this one. Clinical year (starting in January) has the potential to be one of lots of moving. We may have one clinical that is 5 minutes from home and then another that is 2 and a half hours away… So we should be able to always be within 20min of some kind of trailer parking space the entire year

9. Its not creepy
1. Because every single foot of the 275 can be seen from anywhere in the RV, It takes almost no time to reassure yourself that no one or thing is hiding anywhere… I don’t know why this would be a thought that someone would have, but just in case someone did, it would be quickly set at ease… (I've practiced it a few times this past week just in case someone would need to know… I didn’t need to know, but just in case someone else did… because I don’t worry about those things…)
2. Our last apartment took quite a few minutes of heart-pounding hide and seek before you knew there was no one planning on spending the night without you knowing… the street we used to live on was a little creepy, okay. I think it’s a pretty logical thought to have. And I just know that someone had died up in our attic (the smell was awful- and although we made ourselves feel better by saying it was probably just a dead bird… I'm still not convinced). I never got up the nerve to climb up in the attic and check.  SO THANKFULLY, our new home has no attic and no hiding places, unless you are a midget.

10. Laundry Shoot
1. One might think that an RV has no luxury features… This is not true. We have a laundry shoot that sends our dirty laundry into our lower storage area… one foot below. I don’t know how we dealt with the dirty laundry before, but now we don’t have to. 

We found out today that we will be relocating to Tupelo MS for our clinical year. It's 3+hrs south of where we are now. We have no clue what's down there... except of course Elvis' birthplace. 

The Smokies

All BOY!!

Trace got his 1st big shinner..

He was playing on the top trailer stair when he reached for the tomato plant and face planted

into the corner of the bottom stair. It was scary and so sad. This one will take a while to heal I'm afraid.

Married 2 yrs!

Been married 2 years..how fun is that!!
--I meant to post this back on the Sept. 24th but better late then never.

We'v done quite a bit in 2 years I'd say!

Got Married
Went to Scotland
Got Pregnant
Moved to Provo
Chris finished his bachelors
Moved to Wallsburg
Had a baby
Chris got into PA School
Moved to Tennessee
Got Pregnant
Bought a Truck
Moved into a 5th Wheel

Petty exciting stuff!

Confessions of a Tennessee'an Transplant

 We uses the bed of our truck for Traces playpen, complete with a fifth wheel hitch. He said "tractor" and "deer" before he said mama, and he has a deer instead of a dog for a pet.  Trace has watched the baby einsteins "old macdonald" video on you tube 500 times, because we are too cheap to buy him the dvd's.

As a family we have watched all 9 seasons of Little House on the Prairie in 9 months… to put it into perspective, that's 10,032 minutes of Walnut Grove Pioneer drama, in less than a years time. Although we loved it, it was somewhat like running a marathon, we didn’t enjoy every minute of it, but now we can boast. If there was a jeopardy episode that dealt entirely of Little House on the Prairie facts… we would be rich!

Many already know this, but just for the record, we are the Amish paparazzi. Shayna tells me to slow the car down when we are passing their homesteads so she can skillfully sneak some pictures. I'm sure the word has spread amongst them to be ware the silver SUV with the brown haired, crazy-bun woman in the back.

The other night while I was supposed to be studying for a test, I got into a heated debate with some classmates about politics. Feeling like a lunatic, I went home and told Shayna all about it. We agreed that we have become those contancorus sort of people our fathers seemed to be when we were children ... we think of ourselves as amateur constitutionalists.

Shayna hasn't followed a recipe in… well, she's never followed one. 90%* of the time it works out great… but occasionally it feels like we are pioneers just eating what crawls across our plates. It keeps us grounded. She also confesses that she is somewhat of a health food hypocrite. She makes sure we use only fresh ground wheat, agave, and lots of fresh produce; however, she also makes sure that we ingest at least 1/2 a pound of caramel or chocolate daily.

Of course our families wont think twice about this shocking  information, but we may loose some friends over it. We just had to show our true colors at some point in time.

*Shayna suggested 82% and I suggested 97%… she doesn’t give herself enough credit. We settled on 90%.