World… Meet “Betty”

CAPTIAN JACK SPARROW

Before I get started on this particular blog, and introduce you to our future “Happy Little Camper”, allow me to explain how our family works… we name our cars. ALL of our cars, it is as if unless we name them they aren’t apart of our family. Can cars be family members? I think so… our truck (the one which will be pulling our soon to be Happy Little Camper) it’s name is Captain Jack Sparrow.

His predecessor was “The Black Pearl”, while our second family car (the minivan) is named “Will Turner”. Our third car (which doesn’t run due to failing a smog check -or two- and is more like a ‘one-day-wouldn’t-it-be-great-if-we-could-fix-this-car’ cars name is Maximillion.

So, it was only natural we would name our new car/trailer/home on wheels ‘Elizabeth Swan’ because of her Ugly Duckling nature, and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. We call her “Betty”. The funniest thing about all of this Pirate talk, is we aren’t even Piratey type people… except that one time…

Explanation? Um… it was a birthday party, and my husband has always dreamed of becoming Magnum P.I., LOL.

Here is Captain Jack and his new hitch ready to pull our new travel trailer. On Monday we took a family drive out to Lodi, California which is near Sacramento.

While there, we meet up with a rather interesting character (I’ll call him BOB) who had been traveling with the Grateful Dead for the last 5 years. Now it has always been my intention to turn our finding of The Happy Little Camper into a children’s story… our story has just taken quite the odd turn.

In my imagination The Happy Little Camper had a start like this… “Once upon a time down a long and crooked dirty road sat a very sad and lonely little camper.”

Strawberries were administered to our two year old on our drive out to pick up Elizabeth. As was my laptop and the Cars movie on loop.

Jerry Seinfeld should come up with “Kids Watching Cars in Cars” as his next YouTube project. (Side-note if you have never watched Jerry’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee on YouTube you must!)

These two have “trouble” written all over their faces.

Here is what I have for our story so far…

“Not too far away, where the almond trees grow and the sun shines hot on the California dirt, there lived a sad and bent up little trailer.”

“A nice man had owned her, and he loved her very much. He tried as best as he could to fix her up. He painted her with bright blue paint (?) and had dreams of painting her roof bright red – for he was a Patriot.”

“Unfortunately though, he couldn’t keep her. His bills had gotten too high and his pockets had run too dry. He had a growing family of his own to think about, and while this made the little camper even more sad, soon a new family came to look inside her and see if they could help her.”

“The families youngest son checked out her old dirty stove and questioned his mother. The little trailer was embarrassed.”

“The families second to youngest son touched her flooring and saw it was like the flooring they had at home, and this excited the sad and dented little trailer.”

“The third son who was along for the ride began to see past the sad little trailers dented and beat up facade. He scratched his head while standing in her and said… ‘You know, this trailer is pretty all right. With a little bit of paint and some hard work, she will one day be the greatest!'”

“‘WE LOVE HER!’ The children shouted with joy instead of running away in fright. Elizabeth will be her name they agreed, and then they planned on sleeping in her that very night!”

The End… for now.

Next blog… mom gets to start taking stuff apart. *sigh*

The Start of a Vision…

This is our “baby” who was looking quite adorable today waking up from his nap as we set out to look at our loving “Uncle Vince’s” property.

DO WE LAND?

Do we “land” a travel trailer… or do we plan on seeing AMERICA? That really is the question of the hour. I mean right now, my son sits next to me on our second computer watching Minecraft videos. I don’t blame him he just got off work at 11:30pm… and he is only 17. If we are going to “go all in” and live out of a trailer for a year (or two) I don’t know if I would like to ‘stay’ anywhere at all… especially with this type of view in sight…

This beautiful road  wove in and out of the California countryside like a fat and lazy rattlesnake. Our son when he saw it immediately stated how he wanted to go down it on his long board… how it was “calling to him”. Too bad we didn’t have it with us… and a helmet… and full on body wear… and a police escort LOL.

We stopped at the “Red Shack” by the reservoir straight across from the property and had sno-cones. It was 100 outside and this was the only stop before you got back into town. There are no filters on any of these pictures. This was a picturesque California day.

All in all it was a great day as a part of the ongoing #huntforthehappylittlecamper saga. I even found one locally that looks JUST LIKE OUR LOGO… it was absolutely perfect, until we heard back from the guy selling it… IT WAS SOLD! Look at how perfect… it could have been… *SIGH*

However… it would be just like God to orchestrate what we think we want into what we really need. That same gentlemen is selling another travel trailer, a slightly larger more refurbished one which he wants to sell to us at a great discount if he can sell to us directly and by-pass the lot he usually sells to. We get to see it Monday… and I am SO EXCITED 🙂

As far as a “permanent” location, or a “mobile” one… I haven’t decided. The fact our kids are needing to “check out” after working all day at 17… could be an indicator it is time for all of us to check out.

The Hunt Begins…

This is NOT our camper… though I wish it was.

As a matter of fact, we do not have a camper yet, we are just now starting to look. While the dream of my heart is to have a relaxing and well put together completely refurbished trailer… what fun is that?! I know like most of the best things in life, “perfection” only can come through trial, error, and time.

So THESE are the types of trailers we have been looking at…

Egads is all I can say.

One of the listings literally said “we are axing 5900$”. Good Lord, sometimes seeing the beauty behind the sad, lonely, and depressing is mind numbing and potentially exhausting. I maintain hope though. I have a VISION and that vision can be seen on my Pinterest board:  The Happy Little Camper as well as below…

  

One can dream… right?

I suppose it is crazy of us – a family of eight- operating four businesses at a time to even consider a “weekend” project like locating and refurbishing a travel trailer to maybe one day… move in to?

I also suppose our time and limited budget, should be spent on more important things like college funds and investment accounts. While this is all true and to be desired, we as a family have always maintained to live our lives by the Spirit.

That still small voice that says “You should do this”. Sometimes it comes as a fleeting idea, sometimes a strong and loud statement, and sometimes it comes by way of your eight year old who sees you looking at travel trailers online and says … “MOM!!! Are we going to go CAMPING! Oh, I would love a trailer… I would sleep in it EVERY night!”

Hopefully, that child’s dreams will come true soon. Hopefully we will find a ‘sad and lonely little trailer’ which just needs some Heilman Family TLC and a caring eight year old to see the possibilities. That would make me one happy little camper.