Sunday, December 4, 2011

Moving Prep

Moving is a lot of work and I really haven't started any packing.

I did manage to go to two liquor stores and get a car load of boxes. They are small, very sturdy and best of all, free!


Wednesday Was Moms last day at the USDA, she retired. We went to Madisonville to surprise her at lunch. Here's a few pictures.









Mallory got her Little People Nativity from Grammy W : )



Baby Jesus, so cute!



Here's our family picture from Thanksgiving, all 17 of us and 2 dogs!


I got my Secret Santa present from my Preemie Website group, Stephanie from California had my name and she did good : ). Red and Gold glass ornaments and two stemless wine glasses from Crate and Barrel!!






I reserved the Uhaul for our move this week, a 26 footer, but then dad said, for the same money I can get you a 50 foot trailer to use all month. So he went and took it and the Semi to our house, so we now have a huge semi trailer in our driveway and now I have more time to load stuff. And more room than I will ever need!!


Dad and Ben have been working on putting up the new bath surround in the temp house, as I'm calling it. I put up a couple Christmas wreaths on it and we are closer to it being ready for move in on the 17th!

Mallory enjoyed the warm weather by running around the yard:











She "helped" mom and Sue decorate Mom's tree.






And I wrapped a few presents, was pretty impressed with my tulle bows : )


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sunday, November 27, 2011

A Very Kansas Thanksgiving

This year we opted to head to Kansas with Ben's moms side of the family. We haven't all been together like that in probably 5 years or more, so it was a good time.

We headed out Wednesday morning, dropped off Tucker at the pet resort and arrived in Baldwin City Kansas around 7 pm.

Bean did great on the ride and traffic was fine.

We had up to 17 under one roof at Scott and Amy's. Mallory and Eli hit it off well and loved playing with each others toys!

Here's a few pictures of play!


Thanksgiving Day went well.  I started out with a quick run and then we pretty much ate what seemed like the rest of the day!

There were 17 of us total and we had a good time getting to see everyone, most that we hadn't seen in quite a while!

Miss Mallory LOVED the ham and turkey!  She ate well, as did all the rest of us.  

Friday morning started off with not shopping, but a 6:30 am run with Amy at the local High School.  Much less windy that what I had on Thursday!

None of us were really up for fighting Black Friday shopping, so we just had a fairly relaxing Friday.  We went on and exchanged our Christmas presents with this side of the family since we wouldn't get to see them again.  We all got some great stuff!

Friday afternoon we decided to head up the road to Cabela's.  Hopefully by 5 pm it wouldn't be as crazy and it wasn't.  Me, Ben, Blake, Mallory and Ben's Dad all went.  No really great sales, a couple things we picked up for Christmas.

Here's a couple pictures from Cabela's:


Friday, well, we ate more : )  Seems like a trend!

Saturday was a little more active.  It was raining that morning, but it was supposed to clear up, so the boys were heading to hunt quail and the girls were going to hit up Marshalls and Home Goods.

We made a pit stop at this yummy Greek restaurant, Mallory LOVED it!  She was soooo into dipping her cucumbers into the zatzaki sauce!



We had fun shopping, got some more shopping done for Bean and Ben and the boys had fun hunting.

Gertie got to show off her pointing skills (she's Micah's pointing lab) and they got a bunch of quail and a pheasant too.  Here's some pictures:




Here's a few more pictures from Saturday night:




Did I mention we had a house full of dogs?  Pointing Lab, Corgi and a Schnauzer. 

We had a great time!  We took one big family photo with 17 of us and 2 dogs, so as soon as Amy get those to me I'll post that as well.

We got all packed up and headed out early Sunday so we could get back in time to get Tucker at the Pet Resort.  Mallory was good on the ride home and Tucker was VERY happy for us to get him!!

We just ate whatever we had for dinner, Bean and I had Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese, she totally loved it, dipping her grilled cheese in her soup although it was crazy messy!




And tonight in the bath, we had to try out one of her new Christmas presents, a book you can read in the water.  Here she is reading it to me!  Too cute!




Ben retraced our steps yesterday and had to go to St Louis today for a few days.

I'm on a mission to start collecting boxes from the liquor stores so I can start the process of packing.  I've put off the whole idea of moving behind me until Thanksgiving was behind us, now I've got to think of it.  3 weeks.

On a brighter note, I've got all my Christmas cards filled out and ready to go in the mail!

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Our Temporary Home

That's a song isn't it??

We've been working on the few things that needed to be done to the house before we move in, so I thought I'd post a few pictures of the house.

Just a big old two story farm house.  Truthfully it's probably the biggest square footage house we've ever lived in, not counting the basement in Richmond, but we actually will not use all of it because we don't want to heat the whole thing.

It also has a shop and in the one picture you can just make out dads stable and grain bins in the distance. Dad actually farms this farm and it connects to dads so all we have to do is hop on the ranger and head right on over!!

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

So, did you really read through my last post?  It was long, but down at the bottom I finally pass along a little tidbit of info.

We are moving back to the 42220.

Since that isn't 90210, you may not know that zip code, but it's Elkton, Ky, AKA my hometown.

It's exciting and crazy and still freaking me out a bit.  I'm still tired of moving but yet we are looking at a couple more moves.  1 to the house we will be living in while we build.  We will not start building until we sell this house, but hopefully sometime next year we can break ground and get this show on the road.

I'm not so optimistic that I think we will be in it by Christmas next year, but I hope we have at least started by then.

I'm still not ready to make this totally Facebook public yet (if you read this through the FB link it's because I choose you to see it, not everyone can.....feel special, lol)  So, just keep it on the down low for a while longer....I'm sure more people know than I realize, this is Elkton for crying out loud, but still, I'm not going to make a big production out of it.

No job changes will have to occur, Ben and I can both do what we do now from Elkton, so he is happy to be near the farm and hunting ground.  I'm glad to have more friends and help that will just be a quick few miles away and that it actually does get us a hair closer to Sikeston and the drive from Elkton to there is a zillion times easier and more direct.  I really hated that drive from Utica to Sikeston.

So, one day in the next month or two I'll hopefully finish the few minor things we need to do to our house to get it ready to go on the market.  Prayers and fingers crossed it takes less time than our house in Richmond.  This market has never been as bad as it was over there, but you never know.  Although I'm not sure I'm quite mentally ready for the 2 weeks that it took to sell our house in Madisonville.  I'd love about 2-3 months!

We are heading to Kansas City for Thanksgiving and I'm looking forward to it.  We don't get to see that side of Ben's family as often as we all like, so it should be a fun time for everyone.....all 19 of us.....in one house.  There will be lots of wine : )  Wine regardless, but we do have fun when we are all together.

Ben's been hunting, bow and rifle now that season for that opened last weekend.  The 40 mph winds last weekend didn't really give him much chance to shoot much, or hunt much for that matter, but he's at in none the less.  My Brother In Law Nick killed one today, so now the race is on!

Bean has been running around like crazy.  She's finally getting enough hair to really wear some bows.....if you wrap then in rubber bands so they've got some grip, then she's ready for bows : )  She finally leaves these alone for the most part.

She's just growing like a weed and just has the best personality.  She's always laughing and having fun!

Her new favorite thing now is to try to pet Tucker (which he is allowing more and more) and then to feed him.  She will take whatever morsel of food to his snout where he then gently takes it from her hand.  Thankfully we taught him a long time ago not to bite fingers and snap at food, so we are safe.

Tomorrow is Prematurity Awareness Day, and I'll probably blog about it if I have time, we have our local March of Dimes Signature Chef Dinner and Auction tomorrow night to raise money for the March of Dimes and I'll be helping.  So, wear purple if you remember to do so!!

Here's a few pictures of late, and I never put any in the blog from Ashton's photos out at the farm, I'm sure you all saw them on FB but I'll post a few of my fans on here.


Stationery card
View the entire collection of cards.

Just thought I'd give a little preview of our Christmas Cards!

Friday, November 11, 2011

November Craziness!

I'm a little behind on blogging. November is always a crazy month for us and this one isn't disappointing.

After Ben's parents left the morning of the 31st, I went into get ready for meetings mode.

This week would be Ben's first week ever staying at home with Mallory overnight and being soley responsible for her for multiple days in a row. Tuesday night through Friday evening to be precise.

I wanted to get everything I could possibly think of together and laid out and in one spot for him so it was as easy as possible. But, of course there had to be a wrench thrown into all that.....Mallory started coughing.

I hate coughing more than anything! It's the first time she's really been sickish since she had RSV in Feb. She's had some sniffles and cough from teething but you could tell this wasn't teething, mainly because she gave it to me too : )

It didn't seem like it was developing into much more than a cold so I restocked her medicine for breathing treatments and started those twice a day to help prevent it from getting any worse, left specific directions with Ben and left him to deal with it all.

After I got her in bed Tuesday night at 8 pm I headed out to Nashville. My flight left at 6:30 Wednesday morning and I didn't want to get up at 3 am to make it to Nashville, so I opted to stay near the airport.

Flights on Wednesday were actually on time. Normal flight from Nashville to Memphis and then on to Wichita. Got there and headed to Hesston for meetings.

Ben's first night with Mallory seemed to go fairly well but she was a little warm when he picked her up from Mrs Carole's so he gave her some infant motrin, but other than that it wasn't seeming to get any worse.

Thursday morning he was worried she was getting worse so I had him just call the Dr and take her in. Nothing appeared to be too off and her lungs still sounded pretty clear so it was just more of the same with the breathing treatments. So the good daddy that he is, he stayed home with her the rest of the day Thursday.

By Friday she was feeling more like herself and she went back to Mrs Carole's and I was excited to get home and meet them at Mom and Dad's Friday evening early.

I had forgotten that my flight home was not through Memphis like normal, I had to book through Atlanat, which I like flying through about as much as Chicago.

My flight that should have left Wichita at 12:30 was delayed until almost 2 which meant I would have missed the connection in Atlanta to Nashville so I ended up just changing flights all together which instead of getting into Nashville around 4:30 was now going to be 8 pm. Yuck.

So I got to Atlanta on the "new" flight on time and found my way to the next gate, which I found it odd that there was a flying ear of corn over the waiting area:


We were supposed to leave Atlanta at like 8 pm Eastern and get to Nashville by 8 pm Central. We got on the plane on time but then they had to work on the brakes on the landing gear, so we sat on the plane for a good 30 or 40 minutes before they deemed it working and sent us on the way.

The actual flight time from Atlanta to Nashville was only 37 minutes, so we had already taken longer to leave than it was going to take us to get there.

So the pilot comes on and says the "get ready to descend into Nashville" and normally in like 5-10 minutes you are on the ground. You could tell we had descended but were still probably 5000 feet for so and not going any lower. We were circling around Nashville. Which was odd, this isn't THAT busy of an airport. I know somethings up because this just isn't "normal" flight routine. The pilot finally comes on and says something about there's been a delay and we we should be able to land in around 10 more minutes. Well another 20 or so pass, still hovering somewhere above Nashville flying around. Then he comes on again and says we will circle around again and land. I don't remember how much longer we circled around but we FINALLY landed. It was now around 10:15 pm.

Once we landed the pilot told us only then that there was some problem with one of the wing flaps and they were trying to figure that out and Nashville wanted us on the long run way because obviously the flaps are important for landing and it gave the fire trucks and ambulances plenty of time to line up along the long run way. Real comforting. Thankfully we averted disaster. I think I'll pass on flying for a little while.

So, there was no seeing Mallory when I got home since she was long since asleep and I felt like crap from the cold she had given me. Which is still lingering a week later.....

Just to make matters a tiny bit worse, my luggage didn't come out at Nashville. So I and about 3 others got in line at the baggage are of Delta behind these other 2 non-english speaking families who were obviously not getting anywhere fast with their luggage. I probably stood in line for a good 30 minutes with no one moving with this lovely man from Delta came walking up rolling my suitcase. It had been lost somewhere in the depths of the plane or airport, or who knows, it could have fallen off the conveyor belt, but he found it and that meant I could finally get in my vehicle and drive the hour home.

I arrive home, sick, tired and mentally drained around midnight. I spent roughly 14 hours traveling to try to get home from Wichita. To drive, it would have only been about 9, maybe 10 hours. I did read the new Nicholas Sparks book, the whole thing, during the trip. Not a bad book, but none of his are bad.

I was supposed to go to Owensboro for the Junior League Rummage Sale on Saturday for my 9:30 am shift, but between this trip from hell and feeling awful, I just opted to not go. I felt bad about it, it's the biggest fund raiser we have, but I would have been pretty useless the way I felt, so I napped.

Back to Owensboro on Sunday to get ready for another week of travel for me and Ben.

Ben left out Monday for Springfield, MO for a regional meeting and I left Tuesday for Louisville for my last meeting as President of the Agribusiness Association of Kentucky meeting. Mom picked up Mallory from Mrs Carole's Tuesday afternoon and they headed to Elkton for the next few days.

My meeting went well and I happily headed to Mom and Dad's Thursday afternoon to pick up munchkin. She was napping when I arrived and I don't know if she didn't sleep long enough but she was about as crabby as I had ever seen her Thursday afternoon! Thankfully once we started home in the vehicle she was fine, but man oh man did she wake up on the wrong side of the pack and play!!

So now we are getting ready for another upcoming weekend, it's opening weekend for gun/deer season, so another trip to Elkton is in store for us.

And here's a nugget of information, we will see if you guys actually read my entire blog or just dig for pictures, but it's official now, we are moving back to Elkton and sooner than any of us anticiapted.

I got a PO Box when I was there Thursday, we have a place to live while we build, we closed on some land a couple weeks ago that is very near Mom and Dad and we look to actually be back by mid December. We will put our house up sometime in December or first of the year and will not build until it sells but we've been given a cheap place to live so we do not have to wait to sell the house before moving back. It's all very exciting, and sad at the same time. I think the only thing I will really miss is Mrs. Carole, she's been so great with Mallory and I had all intentions of her being there until she was 3 and ready for pre-school. I never thought we would move this quickly. But, we've all cried about it, and hate that part, but there's so much other good that goes with moving, we will just have to come visit Mrs Carole as much as possible!

I'll get into more "moving" details in another post, but for us, we've moved so much, what's another time or two. The moving of actual stuff will be a slow progression, we will just have what we need and leave the house "staged" as much as possible for show/selling purposes......which tells me we have way too much crap that we can once again just leave it. I guess we are just weird like that.

So, we will soon be back in Todd County. Seems a little werid, I feel like I've been gone since High School, and that was 16 years ago, but I will be quite happy to not have to drive up and down Hwy 181 and 431 so much!!

Thursday, November 10, 2011

My Bootiful little ghost!

Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

Ben's parents came in for the weekend and we celebrated Halloween at Boo at the Zoo Saturday night.

Friday night was pretty calm and Saturday we ran to Khol's, did a little wine tasting at Owensboro's Winery (who knew we had one?? ) and then hit up Chick Fil a for lunch.



Back home for Bean's nap, then off to Evansville so we could get to the Zoo a little before 5pm.

Bean had a ball. She could have cared less about the candy (Ben enjoyed that) but she just loved the fact that she got to walk/run and dance the entire time.

She was a ghost on the move, and a cute one at that!







She konked out on the way home and we were all tired too!

Sunday was more of a relaxing day and Ben's parents left Monday morning.

I'm currently in the Nashville airport to fly to Wichita for a few days. Ben is keeping Mallory for the first time overnight for multiple days, so pray that all goes well, she's had a touch of a cold and I'm hoping it doesn't get any worse!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone