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!

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 : )