January Wrapped up with a Bang

My previous post was eaten by my computer, so I’m just going to combine weekends.

 

We “celebrated” MLK weekend with Ben’s parents visiting.  We celebrated by looking all over Clarksville, TN for 9 mm ammo for my conceal carry class that I was going to need.  Thanks Obama.  Oh and of course all we heard about was the inauguration, blah blah blah.  4 more years of pain and torture.  I’ve already had enough.

 

But, Ben’s parents came over Saturday morning.  I had Bunco Friday night and Ben didn’t get back from Phoenix until late on Friday so they came over Saturday morning.

 

Over all a pretty uneventful weekend.  Made our way to Springfield, TN to eat at the Depot which was very small but very good.  Church and the ammo hunt on Sunday, did shoot a magazine in the 9 mm with mom for practice before our conceal carry class on the 26^th.  I did fine, I have a laser, it’s pretty dummy proof!

 

Monday it was back to work for me, back to Sikeston for Ben’s parents and off to Indianapolis for the week for Ben.  He’s never home this time of year!

 

Several threats of ice the past 2 weeks, thankfully none of it amounted to much. 

 

I started coming down with a cold on Wednesday and have been fairly miserable since.  Today (Monday) I’m finally feeling better, but yesterday was pretty low key.

 

Ben got back from Indianapolis early because of them impending ice/snow they were calling for, so he got in Thursday night, so he got to be home Friday and he and Bean spent Friday morning together instead of her going to Tiffany’s since she really hasn’t seen him much the past 2 weeks.

 

I got all my stuff ready for the conceal carry class on Saturday morning, it was going to be a long day!

 

Ben, Mallory and I met Gerald up at the community room at 7 am to set up the projector and computer and to put the final touches on everything.  I was feeling awful but pushed through the best I could.  We had 2 of the 40 who were out sick, so the class was to be 38 women, still a great class!

 

I finally got to feeling better, my meds kicked in, Ben and Mallory headed off to McDonald’s for some breakfast before he had to drop her off at Aunt Sharon’s so he could go catch his flight to Kansas City where he was going to be for the next few days.

 

Our class went well, the movie was the worst part, just like everyone said but Gerald made the rest of the class fun.

 

We all headed out to his house where his range was so we could do the shooting portion and his wife had coffee, tea and sausage balls ready for us.

 

Everyone was most worried about the shooting part but we all did well, even the couple who had never even shot a gun before, he made sure to really work with them and get them comfortable.  He really is a great teacher!

 

So, in about 3-4 months, because of the back log, we should finally get our documents back to get our license! 

 

After class I headed over to Aunt Sharon’s to pick up Bean, visited with them for a while and then we just came home a crashed.

 

Sunday I had a million things I needed to do, none of which I felt like doing but mom called and offered to watch Mallory so I could go get part of what I needed done in Clarksville for Tiffany’s shower this next weekend and then they would head over around 5 and we’d meet for dinner.

 

So I got to hit up Target and Babies R Us alone, it’s amazing how much easier shopping is that way!

 

So finally I’m feeling better from my cold, hopefully tomorrow will be pretty much 100%, tonight I’m tackling the disaster of a house and trying to get the final stuff done for the baby shower.

 

Ben get’s back Tuesday night, so we will actually see him for 2 days before me, Mallory and Mom turn around and head to Ohio, lol.

 

That’s just how we roll.

 

 

2 Things I've Never Done Before

This weekend just happened to be full of new adventures!

First being that Saturday morning we went to my first every Baby Gender Reveal Party!

Tiffany, our babysitter/friend/pippie, is having another baby!  She's due at the end of May and just found out on Wednesday what they were having so insteady of telling close friends and family asap she decided to have a little brunch to let everyone know.

So we had some food and punch, had a little game of guess the gender and then finally via a pink center in cupcakes found out she's having another girl!  Shelton will be her name!

After that I met up with Kristy and we hit the sidewalks in Elkton for a 4 mile run.

Then it was home to shower for new thing #2 for the weekend, Mallory went Rollersakating!

Zaylei's birthday was the 6th and so they had her birthday party at the Roller Dome in Hopkinsville so Mallory got to try her hand at skating!  Her little skates were so cute!

Her and Ben make their way around the rink quite a few times.  They locked the wheels on her skates and then we had them unlock the fronts, so she did pretty good but we didn't try with both wheels unlocked yet.

She had a ball skating, bouncing in the bouncy house, playing in the ball pit, running around to all the games, eating cake, etc.  It was a good time!

Then we met up with Mom, Dad, Susan and Nick at the Horseshoe and had some dinner after the party.

Sunday was a miserable day.  Rain non stop.  Ben had to catch a plane to Phoenix at 7 pm but other than that we literally did nothing all day!

A Whirlwind Trip to Dalls and Packing Heat : )

With Christmas and New Year's behind us, everyone feeling a bit better, it was then time for me to board a plane and head to Dallas on the 3rd for our company's annual meeting and 10 year Anniversary celebration.

I had meetings Thursday afternoon and Friday and Ben was flying out Friday afternoon to join us for the company/spouse dinner Friday night and then we got the option to stay and extra day and do whatever we wanted on Saturday.

Mom and Dad kept Bean and Ben and I decided to make the most of our time in Dallas!  Neither of us had spent any time in the actual city (airport doesn't count!) so we had quite a few things on the list to accomplish in 1 day!

Saturday morning started out a little slow, a little too much bourbon for me the night before!  But once we were up we just decided to rent a car for the day, that was going to be way cheaper than taking a taxi everywhere we wanted to go and there was a rental car place in our hotel, so a Toyota Camry was our chariot for the next 24 hours!

First was a trip up north of town to tour Southfork Ranch, the ranch that parts of the old and new Dallas were filmed at.  It was fun to see the house, get the tour and take pictures of the very 1980's decor of big floral prints and more wallpaper than I think I've ever seen in one house! 

After our tour of Southfork, it was lunch time, Ben was determined to get some famous Texas beef bbq, preferably something from one of the Food Network shows, so we settled on Sonny Bryan's and found the closest one and let the gps on my phone direct us there.

I am not a huge BBQ fan, or more just not a fan of BBQ sauce but I knew it was a big deal to Ben, so off we went.  I got pulled chicken (new to me) and Ben got brisket and two types of smoked sausage.  Needless to say that was some of the yummiest chicken I've ever had and one of their sauces was even really good.  Ben said it was a spiritual moment for him, lol, needless to say it was good and we recommend Sonny Bryant's!

After that we wanted to hit up a western wear store.  I found one I thought I'd heard of before, Pink's, so we tried it.  Fine but didn't have enough jean options for what I was looking for so we decided to just head to Shepler's, we knew they had a ton.  So I found some 38" inseam Wrangler's on sale and Ben found 2 pair of the Wrangler Khaki's in his size that I couldn't find again on the Shepler's website or Wrangler website, so we were both happy.

It was now late afternoon but we still had time to get to Dealey Plaza to go to the Sixth Floor Musuem which is the floor from the building that JFK was shot from.  We drove downtown and easily found the plaza off Elm Street and made our way to the museum.  They have a nice audio tour and it walks you through his election, the presidency and then the events of that day, the days after and then the conspiracy theories.  Very interesting place.  We also got the outdoor tour via your cell phone where you could get further details on all the buildings and plaza from an outside perspective.  There's also "panhandlers" as I'll call them that like to corner you, give you their version of the story and then ask for $10.  It was interested what the guy that talked to us about his theory, but not really $10 intersting, oh well, I know to avoid them next time, lol!

Now we were creeping up on 5:30 pm, so back to the hotel to freshen up and head to Ft Worth down to the old stockyard area.  We wanted to try to go to Billy Bob's and find a good steakhouse.

Through some internet research we landed on H3 steakhouse there in the Stockyards and the only availble reservation was at 9:30 pm, so we got dressed and headed the 35 miles over there.  It was a really neat atmosphere.  There was a rodeo going on at the Cowboy Colliseum, horses were walking around, it smelled like a rodeo, a smell I love!

We wandered around, saw some of the sights, went in a few stores and got our very own Lone Star beer to walk around with.  Finally around 9 I thought lets just go on to H3 and see if we can get in and they took us right back.  Really yummy steak and nachos for an appitizer, def somewhere I'd go back to!

When we finished eating there we walked over to Billy Bobs, it was packed with a zillion people standing at the door.  They were sold out for the night and we couldn't get in, so we walked by Billy Bobs!  We tried.  By that point i was tired and we just made our way back to the hotel, by the time we were back we had been sight seeing pretty much non stop for 13+ hours, I was ready for bed!

A pretty non eventful flight back to Nashville and it was back to Mom and Dad's to get Bean!  I miss my munchkin!

We are also making more progress on the land.  Logging was done in like 3 days and then we got a guy to come in and dig up and bury stumps and pile/clear all the area where the house is going to sit, so now we have a probalby 30 foot tile pile of limbs that needs to be burned before we can even think about getting started!  Hopefully that will happen sometime in the next month or so.

I'm also putting together a conceal carry class for just women in the area.  It started out being for a few freinds and family and has grown into 40 women taking the class on Jan 26th, should be fun!  Don't mess with Todd County Women : )

A Christmas Parade and Opryland!

Elkton had it's first Christmas parade in apparently 30 years on December 7^th. I do not ever remember a Christmas parade, but if I went to one when I was 5 or younger, I just don't remember it.


I actually haven't been to many Christmas parades to compare, but for Elkton, I thought it was pretty good. I always tell the story of the Christmas parade that I went to in Tifton, GA (don't ask) and will always remember the Cadillac convertible in the parade that was being driven by a live horse. I'll always remember that and have yet to figure out how. And no I was not drunk and I was probably 22 at the time, so yes I remember it clearly, it was a live horse.


Moving on. We camped out on the town square with our camp chairs so we would have comfy (ish) seating. For reasons unknown to me, we were apparently the only people who thought to bring camp chairs to the parade. Everyone else was standing or sitting on a damp concrete ledge. I didn't think it was that novel of an idea to have camp chairs, but apparently we were the only ones thinking that way!


Mallory enjoyed it, she like the drums and she especially liked Santa at the end. Oh and I found it interesting that we got more candy from the Christmas parade by sitting in one spot than when we walked over a mile trick or treating. Perhaps we need a Halloween parade as well!!


Right before the parade got started, Ben's parents arrived for the weekend, so once the parade was finished we walked down to the Community House and got in line to have Bean's picture made with Santa and Mrs. Clause.


I've been asking Bean all week what she wanted for Christmas from Santa and her answer has always been the same: ELEPHANTS! Not sure where this infatuation with elephants has come from (perhaps a youtube video Aunt Brenda has posted on FB that we watched) but regardless she wants elephants. We waited in line, she happily went to be with Santa and Mrs. Clause and she told them she wanted Elephants. Fairly painless!


Here's those pictures, nothing great, but we got them for free none the less.

After that we headed home to a crock pot of chili that I had made earlier in the day.


Saturday we had the day planned in Nashville. We headed out after lunch (Ben and his dad went deer hunting that morning) and we were going to Oprymills, to eat at Cock of the Walk and then go see the lights at Opryland Hotel.


Obviously Ten thousand or more other people had the same idea, but we had no set time we had to be anywhere, so I didn't let the traffic bother me, we just slowly made our way from the offramp to Opry Mills Mall. We did a bit of shopping, Santa shopped for Elephants at the Rainforest Café, we got Bean her Christmas dress, lots of people, but not just maddening.


We worked our way out to the side of Opry Mills to go across the street to Cock of the Walk. I'm not even really sure how to describe this restaurant other than it's yummy. It's a take from like the Huck Finn days and being on the river (the Cumberland River is near by) and the waiters and waitresses are dressed kinda like that era and with the funny hats. It's a catfish restaurant and man they have yummy catfish and fixings. They have a few other things to eat other than catfish, but I don't know anyone who has ever ordered anything else, lol.


Next was the Opryland Hotel. It was packed. We waited in line for what seemed like an eternity, probably 30 minutes to park. They parked us in some far off lot and we had to walk a good half mile to the actual hotel. Of course it was raining by this point but I had 2 umbrellas and we had Bean's umbrella stroller, so we all made out fine. We wandered around the hotel and saw the lights, wasn't as many as I remember, but we had a good time and found the kid town area where M got to ride the train, with mommy! She loved it.


Overall she was really good. She had one little meltdown the whole day while we were at the hotel but other than that, she was a real trooper!


Here's a few pictures!!




Now in other exciting news, a bit of progress has been made on the lot where we are going to build.


We got bids, well a bid but that's a long story I'm not going to bore you with the details of some incompetent folks who tried to give me their bid after the deadline, to cut the selected timber off the lot and in the area where the house was going to go. So we met with him Monday afternoon, signed the contract, they got moved in and starting cutting on Tuesday and were done by Friday. Now that's my kind of people! So now you can really see where the house will be and although there's still a lot of woods and trees, it's much easier to get through the woods and we have a driveway, albeit mud : )

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Sorry my blogs have been somewhat sporadic, I've successfully run out of picture space and I have to do a work around until I figure out how I want to handle the blog and it's pictures, soooo, I've been a little slower to post.


2013 has arrived, seems crazy, 2012 went by way too fast!


Christmas was much more exciting for Mallory this year, she knew exactly what she wanted, an Elephant. You ask her and that's exactly what she said. She ended up with several and really hasn't seem that attached to any of them, but when you ask her what she got for Christmas, she says with much excitement, Elephants, so who knows!


We left for Sikeston early to surprise Ben's mom and go to her school musical that she does every year and that we've never seen. She didn't think we were coming till Friday night, so that was a good surprise; somehow everyone managed to keep it a secret!


The musical was good although Mallory wanted to dance around, which wasn't a big deal, but the calling out for Mimi and not understanding why she couldn't be up front with her during the performance was a challenge for a 2.5 year old!


Mallory had been fighting a cough for well over a week and our pedi said it was allergies and to take allergy meds. Well, those weren't working so we made another trip to the urgent care in Sikeston where they basically told us the same thing but at least gave us some prescription meds to try. Getting Mallory to take the medicine has been a war all it's own. Let's just say her stubbornness and lack of reasoning with this child has made it very difficult!


We had the traditional Christmas gathering with family friends in Sikeston. Got to meet Nathan's girlfriend Jennifer, great girl! Mallory was always the center of attention as normal!


Mallory loved opening presents and would happy open any present that you would let her, so she opened the majority of presents for everyone!


We headed back to Elkton late Christmas morning so Mallory could see what Santa brought her at home and then to go over to my parents for Christmas. We had to postpone Memaw's because Aunt Sharon had the flu, that would wait until Saturday night.


More fun for Mallory opening presents at Mom and Dads and playing with all her stuff from Santa….now I had to figure out where to put all this stuff!


The day after Christmas we went back to our Pedi. Mallory really wasn't getting any better and her snot was now green, I know you really wanted to know that, lol! Sinus Infection was this times diagnosis and antibiotics was prescribed. We've finally, after much trial and error, determined that putting medicine in her favorite drink, orange or red Gatorade, is about the only way to get the child to take it. So that's what we do and she's finally feeling better!


Of course then I started to not feel so well around the 29^th, not sure but that had me feeling kinda puny through New Year's Day and now I'm finally feeling better as well.


Looking forward to an eventful 2013!!

My Half Marathon and a quick family trip....

I've been prepping for months and it has finally come and gone.

  Thanks to all of you who helped me raise money for St Jude's, it was an amazing experience and I'm ready to sign up for my next one, it's pretty addictive for those of you who are not runners.  At least it is for my personality type, you just want to do better the next time, always work towards being better until it's easy and then you move on to the next challenge.

Mallory spent Friday night with Mom and Dad and Kristy and I headed out around 8:30 on Friday morning and headed to Memphis.  Ben and her fiance Kyle (who Ben knows because he's a Service Manager for one of his dealerships he calls on) were going to head out when Kyle got off work.

We got to Memphis after lunch, got checked into our hotel and then headed downtown to the Cook Expo center to pick up our race bibs, shirts and check out the expo goodies!



I was bib number #13175, they did them based on last name as opposed to when you registered, not that it mattered but between the 5K, the half and the full marathon, there were 18,000 runners there on Saturday!!

We got checked in, got our long sleeve technical race shirts and then browsed around the expo, lots and lots of race/running goodies!

Thankfully I was able to exchange my Hero's singlet, they gave everyone who raised money a special singlet to wear that showed you were at "St Jude's Hero" as they call you.  I had plugged in M for shirt because that's what i want in a man's but women's technical shirts like that run small, so I was able to exchange it for a large so it wasn't so tight! 

We then had a few hours to kill before the Hero's Pasta Dinner so we hopped on the trolley and took the loop around downtown Memphis.  We got off at Beal Street and walked around and then had to have some BBQ Nacho's at BB Kings.









We then headed back to the Expo and grabbed some pasta and then headed back to the hotel.  We then worked on getting all our gear together and all laid out so we would be good to go early in the morning!



Ben and Kyle finally got there around 10 pm and then decided to grab beer and talk down by the pool until like 1 am.  Which considering we needed to be up by 5:45 wasn't really the best idea for them, but I got my sleep!

Kristy and I got up and going early, headed down for some breakfast with plans on leaving the hotel by 6:30 to allow for plenty of time to get downtown and find our places, etc.  Well Ben wasn't moving too swift, or at all really, so we didn't leave until almost 7 am and the race starts at 8!

But, we did get there fine, they dropped us off, we found the porta potties and our "corral" as they call them.  That's where you start with people who run at roughly the same pace as you so faster people aren't having to pass slower people.  We were in corral 12 so we didn't cross the start line until around 8:22 but the first group did start while we were still in line for the porta potties.

I was all nerves for some reason, I think because I knew I trained better and really wanted to try to come in a 2 hours 40 minutes or below and I knew if all went well I could.  But, once I got running I was fine, the nerves subsided thankfully!

The first part of the race was great, we ran down by the river, past the pyramid, through Beale Street and then at mile 5 we went through St Jude's campus.  Everyone warned me that was going to be really emotional and I figured I'd cry.  The families were out there really cheering you on, especially those who had on their singlets, they knew those were the one's raising money.  My eyes welled up but I didn't cry, so we plugged on.

Right after that though my hip started hurting.  I wasn't expecting hip pain, I'd had no hip issues through any of my training.  My groin muscle had been giving me problems and I figured it would start bugging me around mile 8 but my hip never crossed my mind.  I was like great, 8 more miles while my hip is killing me.

I couldn't figure out why my hip was hurting and then it finally occured to me, the roads there in Memphis are really graded at a pretty good slope so unless you are running on the center line, you are running on an uneven surface and ever since I broke my tailbone in college running or walking on an uneven surface really bugs my hip, hence it was now really hurting.

But you plug on.  I knew it was going to slow me down and that pissed me off, but what do you do?  I kept with my run/walk plan as much as I could.  (we ran 5K straight then walked 2 minutes, ran 1 K, walked 1 min, ran 1 K, walked 2 min, ran 1k, walked 1min, etc the rest of the way) so by about mile 9 or 10 I was having to walk a bit longer and take a walk break during my run part sometimes just because it hurt.  So I didn't think I'd be able to make my 2:40:00 goal but I knew I'd still be much better than my first.

Right at mile 13 before we entered the baseball stadium where the finish line was, Ben and Kyle had found them a spot and were holding up the signs we made for them at the Expo, so that was fun to see and Ben got a picture!



I crossed the finish line right at 2:45:00, so 5 minutes slower than I had hoped, but I was still happy!  with all that pain and walking I was only 5 minutes over my goal so I know I can be closer to 2:30:00  so now I've got to do another one, lol.

Here we are after the race with our medals!  Kristy finished about 2:32, she did awesome too!!



I chugged water, put on my compression socks and grabbed some chocolate milk (my typical long run drink of choice afterwards) and recovered the best we could.  I was tired but not hungry yet and I was somewhat limping because of my stupid hip but I knew once I got back to even surfaces it would be fine again.



We walked over to Rendevous and I watched the others eat, I just couldn't eat yet!  I had a roll, I don't like ribs anyway.  I changed clothes and then we headed out. 

My quads and hamstrings were tight but that was pretty much my only issue, other than the hip that would also work itself out.

We got back to Elkton at about 7:30 Saturday night and I was ready to get Bean and crash!

By Monday or Tuesday I was feeling back to 100%, all soreness/tightness was gone and my hip was fine, which was good because I had to go to a Certified Crop Advisor's Board of Director's Meeting!

Lola ended up being sick so my initial plans would not work, so I ended up taking M with me and then Ben meeting us there at French Lick, IN after being at his dealer in IN on Monday.  So Ben and Bean got to go swimming while I was in my board of director's meeting. 

Then we walked around the hotel, which was decorated for Christmas, hit up the pizza parlor down by the arcades and then played some games with Bean.  She had a ball! 





















Then we went up to the room and Ben hit up the Casino for an hour or so, he even had a little luck.
Tuesday I went to my meeting and got some credits while Ben and Bean bummed around, so we all had a good time!!

Thanksgiving!!

Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving!!

We had a nice low key Thanksgiving here in Elkton.

Ben's parents were headed to Kansas to our cousins there but since we did that last year we were not ready for that 7+ hour trek again yet.

Ben wanted the opportunity to hunt, so he hunted and I cooked!

Mom and Dad went to Alabama and Mississippi from Tuesday through Saturday, so they were not around so me being the next prodominat cook in the family, I spear headed Thanksgiving.

We had it at Aunt Sharon's house and had all the traditional goodies. 

For Brunch I made Cream Brulee French Toast Casserole and Smoked Sausage and it was very yummy!

It was a mild day, I didn't actually take many pictures but we spent some time out on the deck with Aunt Sharon showing Mallory how to twirl a baton.  She wasn't too bad for a 2.5 year old!

Everything was yummy and after dinner I got everything packed up and met up with Tiffany and Katherine and we hit the early openings of Black Friday Shopping!

We devised a plan and execuited, lol.  It was actually pretty fun.  We hit up target at 8:30 pm, got in line for the store to open at 9, we all went our seperate ways, got what we wanted and then met up in line.  We were in and out in 30 minutes!

Next we killed time at Kmart waiting on Kohls and Dicks Sporting Goods to open.  That was awful!  We were just going to buy some odds and ends just to pass the time but after standing in line for like an hour we just left.  The line hardly moved.

I dropped Tiffany and Katherine off at Kohls and they got in line a littel after 11 and I headed across the street to Dick's.

Sitting on the cold concrete I actually ordred Ben's Christmas present from Dick's while sitting there.  I realized there was free shipping, the online sale had already started and I wouldn't have to pay TN taxes, score!

So I then booked back to Kohl's where I had a coupon that I'd forgotten to give Tiffany to use on what she was going to pick up for me for Mallory.  Worked out great, they were done shopping an in line, they found the doll house I wanted for M and I got to use my coupon for even more of a sale : )

After that we were pooped.  Stopped at Chick-Fil-A for some middle of the night snack and headed back to Elkton.  I was home just before 2, crawled in bed and Mallory let me sleep until 8 am!!

I did not leave the house on Friday until I went to Hot Yoga at 5:15!  Then afterwards I picked up Dairy Dip and we watched The Christmas Story 2 on Pay Per View, and you know, I actually thought it was pretty good.  Ben said it was OK but he's the one that is such a fan of the origional.  I'd watch it again in rotation with the other one.

I haven't done any running this past week.  After our 10.5 miles the other day my groin muscle has been bothering me, so I've just been letting it rest in preparation for our half marathon on December 1st, I'm sooooo excited!!!  I'm ready for it and I'm sure my groin will bug me late in the race but at this point I don't think it will bug me to the point that I can't finish.

Saturday we headed to Bowling Green with Ben to get him some new work boots.  That was about it other than getting me a new seat for my bike.  The one that came with it was seriously uncomfortable for me, my whole butt would fall asleep, this one is much cushier.

Sunday I did go for a 2 mile run just to test it out.  My groin didn't bother me while running but it did bother me a bit on Monday.  Who knows.  Then I did 2 miles on the bike just to test out my new seat and it is sooooo much better!!

Sunday night we headed to mom and dad's to eat dinner for Dad's birthday.  Just more food.  It was all good but I'm ready for normal food.  I did make a pretty killer Turkey Pot Pie with our Turkey leftovers and the rest of the ham is going in ham and beans tomorrow : )

Wish me luck in my half, I'm sure the next blog post will be totally devoted to all the details of my half marathon!!!