And Her Name Is…..

Man! Who would have thought deciding on a name for our van would be so hard! Would the van be feminine or masculine? Should I give it a unique, one of a kind name or something that everyone would understand?

I asked for help on Facebook from my friends and I got some great suggestions. We have considered The Beast, Sequoia, The Nest and many more other great ones. My truck is named Sierra after my JMT hike in the Sierra Mountains in California and that name came easy to me. This one seemed not as intuitive. After laying in bed with excitement trying to see what names would come to me for almost a week now, the funny thing is that the name truly was right in front of me the whole time. I was pushing the name out of my head every time it entered because in a way it seemed a little too generic.

I can hear people already as they read this thinking, “It is just a van, seriously! Pick something and move on” or even wondering why I care so much. One thing to realize about me and my family is that my truck is part of my identity at this point…the camper shell with all those stickers on it aren’t there for other people to read or see. Rather, that camper shell is like an arm or my hair…it is part of me. Those stickers were thoughtfully selected as worthy of being on my them and represent many of the adventures I have been blessed enough to take with my boys and or my husband in that truck. So Sierra isn’t just a Toyota Tacoma, she is a gift that has allowed me to take my boys all over the country, through intense mountain dirt roads to an epic campsite, through the heat of the desert, through the snow of Colorado…getting safely from one point to another and all the while making epic memories.

So this “new” vehicle can’t just be unnamed or given a quick name with no thought given. It will be a vessel to carry me alone, or me and the boys, or me and my husband to new cities, states, environments and adventures along the way…it means something for it to be on our property and to be accepted into our adventure lifestyle. I will take care of it and get it fixed up to the glory i envision and in turn, it will get us to where we want to go safely all the while allowing us to make incredible memories along the way.

So, today as I am working on lesson plans, my tattoo on my wrist was facing up on my desk and it hit me…I realized…who cares if others think the van’s name is cliché or generic…the name means something to us as a family and I am not converting this van for anyone other than for us. I immediately texted the boys and my husband asking what they thought about my idea and they all agreed that it was the best name.

But since the theme of our family adventures have been ‘Embrace the Journey’, hence my tattoo design you can see on my home page, we would like to introduce the newest member of our family…….