Rummage Sale Done!!!!

I forget how tiring the rummage sale is!! I worked the furniture department on my first shift, which wasn't bad, I'll try to do that shift every year! I had to stay and work 2 shifts because I wasn't able to get in any hours pre-sale because of my ABAK meeting, so it made for a long day, I was pooped!!

Ben kept Mallory and made dinner for me last night, he's such a good hubby!

He and Mallory came by the sale for an hour or so after the big rush in the morning so they got to see what we were actually doing. Hopefully we raised a good chunk of money, it all stays in the community for different things we do throughout the year. Typically we raise from $12-$20K, so I guess we will find out the initial estimate at our meeting on Tuesday night.

Friday I met with our local March of Dimes Director and went over a few more things before the Signature Chef Dinner and Fundraiser that we have coming up on Thursday November 18th. We've got some neat auction items and I snagged pictures of these two silent auction items, since I'm such a football fan! If you are interested in bidding on either of these, let me know.

We've got an autographed TN Titans football by Chris Johnson and then a team signed (stamped) ball of the Colts football team. Tons of other great stuff too, if you are interested in going, just let me know!!




Ben headed out to go hunting early Sunday morning since my schedule didn't allow him to go yesterday and again, because of my company function flying him off to Kansas for a company wide Holiday Party next weekend in Kansas, he's going to miss out on opening weekend of gun season.....guess I better be finding some way to make it up to him.....

But, Mallory, Tucker and I had a nice lazy Sunday morning. Even though time fell back an hour, Mallory somehow knew that and slept until 7:45 old time so she was still on her 6:45 schedule. (She normally eats in the am between 6:15 and 6:45) so she stayed on her schedule and I got an extra hour of sleep, which after yesterday's early rise and long day, I was very thankful!!

Here's a few pictures of our lazy morning...we were practicing sitting on the bed...she doesn't quite have that down yet!

Everyone but me napping on the bed....





Here she is trying to sit!




And then just some I put together for 7 Months!





Have a good week everyone! I'm off to Kansas on Thursday am early and Ben's coming in on Saturday....Bean is back with Mom and Dad and Ben's going to just stay down there too until he leaves on Sat morning so he can hunt and see Mallory too. I'm super happy this should be the last travel away from Bean until at least the first of the year!!

Hoping I can find some time to get a few runs in this week, I failed miserably at running last week, but I did get some new running shoes while in Louisville, so maybe there's hope!!

Now I'm planning Thanksgiving at our house...menu is set, I'll be emailing to everyone who will be here soon with your responsibilities!!

Home Again & 7 Months Today!!

I really can’t believe that Mallory is 7 months old today!! I weighed her this morning since I didn’t last week and she is at 15 lb 13 oz, so she’s gained about a pound since last month and that’s right at about what they should gain now. She’s almost quadrupled her birth weight!

I got part of my blog turned into a hard back book so we will have it for Mallory, and us, later on. The internet is great but I’d like to “touch” it as well! It came in this week and I’m really happy with it!! I had it cover from the day I went into the hospital until she came home from the NICU. I’ll probably have another made from the day she came home until her first birthday as well. It really turned out great, I’m sure I’ll drag it around with me for a while so people can see it.

Wow, it’s been a busy week and I was SOOOOOO happy to get down to Elkton and pick up Bean yesterday afternoon! She was sleeping when I got there but she heard me and woke up and gave me a big smile!

Mom and Dad seemed to have a ball with her. Thankfully since she is such a good baby, it makes it more enjoyable than work like for them. I think dad was essentially around home all day yesterday so he could be there to play with her too since he wasn’t working. Makes it easier when you know she’s in good hands. Now, if I didn’t have to go off and do it all again next week I’d be happier but thankfully I don’t think we will have to be away again for a while, although I know it’s good for her too.

My meeting went well. It was nice to actually get to have Ben at one of these meetings with me. Now that he’s in his new role, his customers are all those in my membership of the AgriBusiness Association of Kentucky, so he goes too! It was a good meeting, probably the best attended that we’ve had in a long time. I think the location was good and we had good speakers.

I was kept so busy running around doing my Presidential duties that I didn’t have the time to dwell on missing Mallory. It also gave Ben and I the time and excuse to go out to eat, TWICE, just the two of us. Nice, but still seemed weird without Mallory!

Tucker went off to the Pet Resort, his home away from home. It makes me feel good too that I know we are leaving him in good hands there too. He’s been there so much over the past 5 years or so that he’s basically like their family and as soon as you walk in with him they are all like, awwww, we love Tucker!! He’s our favorite dog! So, I don’t know that Tucker enjoys it, but regardless, you know he’s being well taken care of.

It was nice to have everyone back under one roof last night even if it will be for less than a week.

I guess for right now I only have one picture from this past week, one Susan took and put on Facebook for me Tuesday night so I could see Mallory. I think Mom took some others but she will have to send those to me.

Other than the rummage sale for Junior League on Saturday, I hope that the rest of my weekend is pretty uneventful and relaxing and will just spend some time with the family before we are off again next weekend…..

Happy Hallow"bean"

Happy Hallow”bean”



That’s what we were calling it this weekend, LOL. I guess it could have been Happy “Mallo”ween as well, but either way, we had a lot of fun with Mallory’s first Halloween. I’m not sure what she thought about it all….most of the pictures of her in her cow costume she looks a little confused or bewildered at what in the world we are doing to her, but overall she was a good sport!!

She’s just so darn cute as a little cow! I’m sure we would have thought she was cute in whatever we put her in, but regardless!

Our Halloween weekend started with us heading to Elkton Friday night. Saturday morning Susan and I made a quick trip to Bowling Green before coming back to ice the rest of the sugar cookies from Wednesday’s baking extravaganza. Then Mallory and I headed over to Mrs. Carol’s, Stefanie’s mom’s house, so they could see Bean and we could see Zaylei all dressed up. Here’s some cute pictures of them at Mrs. Carol’s.






Then back to Mom and Dad’s to put together the chicken noodle soup for dinner for everyone. Susan, Nick, Aunt Sharon, Mike and Memaw all came over and had dinner so they could see Mallory all dressed up. So that was a fun evening, here are the pictures taken at Mom and Dad’s.






Sunday was more uneventful. We went for a walk in the jogging stroller and her fleece outfit to knock of the chill in the air. She apparently stayed snug as a bug, she was napping well and even after we got back, I just let her sleep for a bit.




And lastly for the weekend, Ben went up to Uncle Lee's and got Mallory her first Camo outfit, LOL! It's supposed to be a 6 - 12 months, but I don't think she's going to get much more than another month wear out of that one, but it made for a good photo opp:



Have a good week everyone! This week will be the first week that I’ve had to leave Mallory overnight. Ben and I have the AgriBusiness Association of Kentucky meeting in Louisville Tuesday night and Wednesday night. I’m sure Mallory will be fine and could care less…..me, that’s a different story, but I’m sure we will all make it just fine.

WWW - What to do with all that Halloween Candy!

Ok, so I've failed at my WWW posts the past week and a half....oh well, I will attempt to do better : )

I saw this post and thought it gave some pretty good ideas on what to do with all that Halloween Candy.

We will not be trick-or-treating this year since Mallory is only 6 months old unless someone knows of a house that will be handing out soy baby formula.....but for those of you who have kiddos that are and need some ideas other than the perpetual sugar high that might occur for the next 2 weeks, I thought this link had some good ideas!

Don't Throw It Away! Tips For Using Up Halloween Candy

You can see the entire story by clicking on the link but some I liked best were:

Trade it in. Offer your tot the option of trading in the bulk of their loot for a toy he's been wanting.

Buy it. Teach your kids the value of a dollar by buying back the lil one's sweets (for a reasonable price).

Stuff it. Pack a piñata with candy and bring it out during your next kid-filled celebration.

And there's several more good ideas on the page! I'll just remember all this stuff for next year!

Synagis Denial.....

Well we got our denial letter yesterday….no synagis shots for Bean….at least not unless someone wants to cough up an additional $10K for buying them out right. So we just continue to do all we can to keep her from getting sick. It’s frustrating because she’s not “sick” enough or overall “unhealthy” enough that Blue Cross and Blue Shield feels the need to approve us, which I’m thankful for but she is more susceptible than “regular” kids. Yet when we were in the hospital in June it cost them $26K for that stay. I think I might give them a little reminder that their $10K investment now in my child’s health could save them an additional $16K in hospital bills later on. I highly doubt that BCBS would actually have enough common sense to see it that way, but I will still try!

As much as I dislike BCBS right now, in the grand scheme of things, they were out a total of $146K with Mallory in the NICU and the other week stay in June and they never once caused me any problems. They paid for everything other than the dedicutible....but I still want them to pay for the shots....

Otherwise, again, if you are sick, keep away from my child until April : )

One good thing from the storms on Tuesday was that it blew the one dead tree we had in the yard down and the wind was nice enough to blow it down on our property but yet not on the house, which was kinda tough! So yeah, we don't have to pay someone to cut it down for us because we were too worried it would hit the house! Thank you mother nature.


Mallory’s Halloween Party at Mrs Carole’s is tomorrow. They aren’t going to dress up in their costumes, just wear a Halloween outfit, so she will be back in her “Daddy’s under my spell” outfit with the Bib that Mrs Carole got her with a cute little witch on it. We will have to wait to get her in her cow outfit until Saturday!

I have dug down deep and found my inner Martha Stewart, who was so far buried I had to move Mr. Clean out of the way, because he NEVER gets used, to find her, LOL! So, I’m tackling making homemade cut out Halloween sugar cookies with icing for the kiddo’s at the Empty Nest. Granted Mallory cannot partake in them yet, but since the recipe makes like 5 dozen, many will go home to Elkton for the weekend down there. So, I whipped up the dough last night and stuck it in the fridge for baking this evening. Should be interesting….I’m not sure what I’m more concerned about, my crazy oven screwing up the cookies or my attempt at icing them. I am actually fairly crafty and creative, I just don’t use it much but I’m sure with baby in the house the crafty gene will get utilized more often now.

The dough was tasty when I tried it last night!


So this is a two day to write blog, lol! So here's a picture of the cookies after baking. Not too bad.


And here they are after the icing. The icing wasn't quite as easy as I was hoping for but they are good enough and tasty, so that's all that matters!




Here's Mallory this morning before the party!


The party seemed to be a success, Mrs Carole took tons of pictures and I'll post the ones of Bean and one of Puddin, Mrs Carole's right hand pooch, here! Enjoy!!

There's a Monster Under My Bed

This is a line I'm sure I'll probably hear from Mallory at some point in time but there's a couple reasons why I title today's blog "There's a Monster under my Bed."

First is the obvious, it's close to Halloween time, but really it has nothing to do with Halloween.

Today on the ride home from Mrs Carole's I had on Tales2Go, which if you haven't heard me talking about this before, it's an iPhone app that has a ton of children's books in audio format, so the books are read through the speakers. The first book that came up was the story "Alicia and the Little Monster" which is a cute story about a little girl and the monster under her bed. That got me thinking about the "monster" under the bed this weekend....

We went to Ben's parents in Sikeston, MO this past weekend. We always bring our dog Tucker and then they have Schultz, a Schnauzer and then Gertie, Ben's brother's Black Lab, so we have a house full of critters. Thankfully, for the most part, they are all well behaved and have been around each other so much it's no big deal.

Saturday night Ben is finishing up watching the Mizzou game in the living room and I go into the guest bedroom where Mallory is in her pack and play snoozing away for like 2 hours now at this point. I had downloaded a book on my iphone, so I just left the lights off, crawled in bed and continued reading on my iPhone.

I thought I had heard a dog come into the room, but normally Tucker comes back there with me anyway, so I was entrenched into my book and really didn't pay it a lot of attention. Then a few minutes later I hear something moving around under the bed. I thought, oh that's just Tucker scratching around the edge of the bed making a "nest" as he likes to do. Then I heard it again, and I turned on the light and Tucker did not appear to be in the room. I looked towards the bed but didn't get down on all 4's to look, so I went in the living room to see if Tucker was in there....he was so it wasn't Tucker. So I told Ben there was something under the bed and he grabbed the flashlight.

So once Ben got down on all four's with the flashlight he found a black lab's butt in his face! Gertie, who never comes in that room nor strays too far from Micah or his room, had wiggled her way under the bed and had gotten stuck. Ben's mom had those plastic storage containers under the bed, so she had found the only spot she could wiggle in, but she couldn't wiggle her but backwards and there was no where else to go forward. She never wimpered or made a sound other than rattling of paper under the bed....so I guess I was expecting a mouse or something....not Gertie! Thankfully Mallory continued to sleep through all of this without a peep.

So, perhaps there really are monsters under the bed, LOL!

Other than the dog incident, it was a typical weekend in Sikeston....which includes a trip to the Carter's outlet store and the outlet mall! So, now I think Mallory should be well clothed through the 9-12 month period!

Mallory wasn't exactly her normal charming little self, she was crabby to say the least. I think it was primarily because she wouldn't nap longer than about 30 minutes at a time. She normally naps much longer than that. But, when she was happy she was her normal little self! I was worried she might be teething or have problems with her ears, but Mrs Carole said today she was her typical good self. Oh well, I'll chalk it up to crappy naps = crabby baby.

Also, since we left early for Sikeston on Friday, I didn't get to weigh her until tonight, up to 15 lb 9 oz!

Here's quite a few pictures from the weekend or that I took since my last post. We took her Halloween outfit so they could see her all dressed up and took some pictures in front of the fall scene at the church.

October 20th

Today will always be Grandaddy's birthday to me. He would have been 82 today, we miss you Grandaddy!! It's been not quite 2 years since he passed away. He was an amazing man and taught me more than I can remember.....

Here's a few pictures......





On the home front, all is well. Bean has a touch of runny nose, but, fingers crossed, it doesn't appear to be getting any worse. I know RSV is already rearing it's ugly head down in Texas.....we still haven't heard from the synagis shots....I'm hoping in the next week or so. They said they would not start giving them here until November. I've had several people call to confirm various things, so maybe, just maybe....

Yesterday was a busy day for me. I decided to volunteer with the March of Dimes and we had a lunch meeting on Tuesday. We are getting ready for the Dinner/Fundraiser that's coming up on November 18th and I'm going to get to help volunteer and the dinner as well as provide "then and now" photos of Mallory. They will have around 20 or so "then and now" pictures of preemies their organization has touched over the years.

We had our Junior League meeting last night, got to unveil our project where I was asked to lead 1 of the 4 teams for our "project runway" event. Basically each team gets work with the Children's Museum in town and help make several of the big displays more appealing for the kids and develop games or other things that the kids can do to interact with the display. Our team got the Coal Mine display, which I've heard is pretty neat. We will be meeting at the museum next month, so we can take a look at everything and brainstorm some ideas. Should be a lot of fun and then al 4 teams get to present their display/props/games at our Feb meeting and then a winner is chosen. All 4 teams designs will be implemented, but the best gets some kind of prize. The other 3 displays that the other teams are working on are Caves, Riverboats and Symphony Conductor.....I'm so glad we didn't get the symphony....I know NOTHING about that, LOL!!

We are off to Sikeston on Friday afternoon.....

Here's a few pictures Mom took of Mallory this past weekend.