Celebrations!

It was a busy weekend!

Friday night Ben and I, along with Stefanie, met with the Detweiler's to go over the blue prints and start to get a quote. It was a good meeting and I'd really hate to think about building a house without your own personal best friend/interior designer/blue print maker/architect's daughter/knows way more about this than Ben or I! She will make this process so much easier!!


We were there for about 1.5 hours, now my homework is to figure out flooring, cabinets, front door and other doors, insulation and trim so he can finalize the cost quote. We basically picked out flooring Sunday, I know what cabinet style I want so I'm going to meet with them this week, pretty much about figured out trim, so just a few other minor things, we should be good to go. Thankfully I know what I like and can make a decision fairly quickly. Now to see how much the house I want to live in for the rest of my life is going to cost!


Saturday I spent cleaning up some while Ben went to one of his customer's Pancake Breakfasts and then Bean and I went for a run. I haven't run with her in the jogging stroller in probably almost 3 months, so I wasn't sure how this was going to go. There's a half marathon I really wanted to do on March 23 but with not running more than about 4 miles tops over the past month or two, how it went on Saturday was dependent on if I thought I could be ready for that one. I was hoping for 7 miles.


I did 5. I could tell it had been a while since I'd run with her, I know she hasn't gotten "that" much heavier in a few months, so it's just me not being used to it, where I used to do every run with her when the weather was nicer, and as I will again. So, I'm not sold that I can do the half on the 23^rd. There's a 10 mile race that same day, I may do that, jump in and do the Nashville Rock and Roll half on April 27 and then my Paducah one on May 11. Yes, I'm really just that crazy : ) Ben even claims he wants to start running. We've got to get him some proper running shoes first. We will see how that goes…..


We headed over to Aunt Sharon's Saturday night, she was having mom's birthday dinner for the whole family, so we ate well. Aunt Sharon doesn't cook often but when she does, she typically does a good job. Everything was yummy and I didn't have to fix a thing!


Sunday we had Bentley's 2^nd birthday party to go to. Bentley is at Tiffany's with Mallory and Lola. Bentley's mom went all out with the farm themed party. The cake was a barn, there were super cute cake pops done to look like farm animals, tractors, hay bales, a pony to ride, baby ducks and chicks to play with, tons of food, it was a great party and the kids had fun. Mallory helped Bentley open his presents and they all ran around and played. I'm pretty sure he got every piece of John Deere equipment out there, except for you know, that one red tractor we gave him ; )


Mallory then promptly fell asleep when we got back from the party around 5:30 and slept until the next morning. She was worn out!


Also of interest on Sunday was the combination effort of Bread Baking between Ben and I. Ben wanted me to try my hand at white bread. I've been making whole wheat, but of course, he will not eat that, so he wanted me to make him white out of one of the bread baking books I'd gotten for Christmas. We settled on the recipe and I mixed up everything and then set it out to rise for 2 hours. That was up right before I was to head to Bentley's party, so I then took the dough and put it in the bread pan so it could then rise another 40 minutes or so with instructions for Ben to call me when he got in so I could tell him the final 2 steps to put it in the oven and bake it. I should have known that was not in the breads best interest.


So he called, said it looked really good, had risen up in the bread pan and looked like a nice loaf. I told him what to preheat the oven to, to take a knife and make several slats across the top of the bread and then just spray it with some olive oil (the recipe actually said melted butter but what's the difference for this purpose.) So Ben followed the recipe, even melted the butter instead of just spraying it with the oil mister and then put it in the oven. Problem being he thought the rack needed to be moved lower. So, instead of taking the pay out of the oven and then moving the rack, he tried to move the rack with the bread pan sitting on the rack. The caused the bread pan to turn over, the dough to plop out, seep through the grates and down onto the burner.


I then get a frantic call that's he's killed my bread. I just told him to flop what he could back in the pan, that I didn't let it sit there for 3 hours for this to happen and we were at least going to see what we got.


It looked pretty, rose again while cooking but it was fairly dense. Maybe from it's little trip thorugh the oven grates, who knows, I'll try again and see if cooking it without that problem will result in a lighter bread. Tasty, just dense.


So, Ben is not allowed to bake bread anymore. Probably. Unless I'm desperate.

Farm Machinery Show Time Again

Thankfully my medicine helped to get my cold under control so we could have a crazy week of travel for the National Farm Machinery Show.

 

Ben left Monday to help set up and get ready for the show to actually start on Wednesday.

 

I went up Tuesday afternoon because I had a Board of Director's meeting and mom and dad kept Mallory.

 

I just stayed up there in Louisville with Ben and walked the show for work on Wednesday to see candidates and clients.

 

I came home Wednesday night, got stuff packed up because Bean and I were heading back to Louisville on Thursday night after work.

 

I had a day in the office on Thursday and then Bean and I headed out after work, Tucker was already still at the Pet Resort, I dropped him off Tuesday.

 

Friday Bean and I walked around the show and Mom and Dad got there around lunchtime, so we then spent the afternoon walking around together and she finally had enough and slept in her stroller!

 

We then headed back to the hotel for a quick rest to then catch up with Mom and Dad to go out to dinner for Mom's Birthday. Since our hotel didn't have a swimming pool, we were taking our stuff to Mom and Dad's so Mallory and I could swim there after dinner. Of course she loved that, she's such a little water bug!

 

She was cracking me up because all she could talk about was going to the pool and going to the farm show to see "daddy's friends" aka co-workers. She just thought they were great : )

 

Saturday Mallory and I opted to skip out on the Farm Show again and we headed out to the Science Museum. We used to go as a kid while at the farm show and I wanted to take Mallory too. They have one big section that is really geared for 7 and under and she loved it. They had a big water table and I wasn't sure I was going to get her out of that section! So we played around in that area until it was time to try the Imax show about Butterflies. I thought "maybe" she would like it and want to watch since it was such a big screen. We made it about half way through. Oh well. Then back to the rest of the museum to run around and 1 last stop at the under 7 area again. Needless to say, we will be going back there again soon!

 

Then it was off to Oxmoor Mall so we could have lunch at California Pizza Kitchen and I could go to Sephora and Bean could go to Club Tabby. Club Tabby is this store we found last year that is like a salon/boutique/dress up place for little girls. So we found some cute tutu's on sale for $5 each and a tiara and necklace, since I didn't get her a necklace for Valentines' that's all I heard about was wanting a necklace! By the time we did all that and headed back to the hotel it was almost 5 pm and Bean had finally fallen asleep in her car seat so we went back to the hotel to nap while Ben finished up the show and then started to tear down.

 

Sunday morning we headed back home, overall a good show. Ben went and got Tucker on the way back and I stopped at the grocery and then we pretty much did nothing but rest the remainder of Sunday!!

 

On my way to Louisville on Tuesday I stopped off at one of the Private Schools in Hopkinsville that has preschool. It's the same one Stefanie's daughter goes to and several other friends kids. There are no options for preschool in Todd County, which is sad. Well there is but only for the very low income, otherwise you can't even go to the public school preschool. So we have to look at surrounding areas for preschool. I like what I saw, we turned in our application and will go to the new parent open house in mid March, so hopefully this will be good for her. And we can do some carpooling with Stefanie as well since it is like 25 miles away.

 

Baby Showers & Head Colds

Well, I've felt like crap off and on for over 2 weeks now. I had a cold prior to our conceal carry class, it was really bad that morning but I rebounded somewhat but never quite kicked in and now 2+ weeks later, I still have it. I really need to go back to my regimen of Airborne every day during the winter, I really dislike being sick.

 

It finally got worse yesterday to the point that at 5:30 am, I got up to take a hot bath with Eucalyptus Oil to try to clear my head. I was so stopped up I could literally not even smell the Eucalyptus oil sniffing it straight from the bottle. Ben said he could just walk past the bathroom and smell it but me, nope, couldn't smell a thing, so it really didn't help me much.

 

I went back to bed and slept to about 8:45 and determined I needed to get to urgent care and get some Antibiotics so I'd hopefully feel better to make my way around at the farm show later this week. Urgent care didn't open until 1pm, so I had a while to get motivation up to just get on something other than PJ's.

 

I'm not sure why they call them urgent care because there's really nothing urgent about them. I waiting an hour or so in the waiting room with a bunch of others that sounded like me, finally got in a room, waiting another 50 minutes or so for the nurse practitioner to get to me to tell me what I already knew, Sinus Infection. Now to just hope Walgreens wasn't too backed up, I didn't want to wait another hour for my meds!

 

Thankfully the drugstore was not backed up and I was finally able to get some meds and get home by about 4:15. Thankfully I did sleep better last night and feel somewhat better, but still stopped up, coughing and sound awful, it's tough to talk, which isn't useful when you talk all day for a living. Maybe Tuesday will be better once the antibiotics have had 24 hours in my system.

 

So my weekend that I was looking so forward to because I had nothing planned ended up being a weekend of just trying to feel better. Glad I had nothing much to do other than do laundry for Ben so he could pack to head to the National Farm Machinery Show today.

 

Now let's go back to last weekend. Tiffany is having a baby girl mid March, so exciting!!!! And we had a baby shower for her on Feb 2^nd. Mom and Mallory went with me and we left out Friday around noon to head up to Ohio. Mallory was great during the 7 hour drive and thankfully I wasn't feeling too bad that weekend. Weird how it goes and comes.

 

We battled through nonstop snow in Ohio on Saturday, and it did affect the attendance of those who had planned on coming to the shower because the roads were getting slick, but we had a good turnout and had a great time. Can't wait to meet little Miss Pattison! I think this was Tiffany's last planned shower, so she's got the bulk of everything she needs, the nursery is ready, Mallory taught Bella and Bernie about little people and all are ready for her arrival!

 

While we were gone, Daddy and Ben got to work burning the 30 foot tall brush pile at the house site. Thankfully that was far less of an issue that we thought. I think we were thinking blazing inferno and were afraid we'd burn down all the woods, but it just smoldered down, flames never really got high and by the end of the day it was actually almost totally burned. With a few pushes of the loader, it was pushed back up and the last of it burned down. For something that we were really dreading, it wasn't too bad! Hopefully on to building soon!