Vacation's O-V-E-R!

Well, I supposed yet again you all are wondering why the sudden lapse in blogging. Well, the truth of the matter is , it was EXTREMELY hard to come back from vacation and pretty much since we got back we have been thrown headfirst back into the busy world of working and bill paying...bleh. Recap of recent events:

Sunday we made it to Sturgeon without any problems, thank goodness! Allen's friends Nike (pronounced Nick...don't ask...), his wife Erin, and Chris came over and we sat outside talking until 3:00 a.m.! It was really good to get to see them. They are very good people and they have always meant alot to Allen, and still do, we just don't get to see them very often at all. The mosquitoes feasted on us, even though we had bug spray and a citronella candle burning.

Monday Matt and Nicole came over and we had a BBQ. Phil made BBQ brisket which was AMAZING! We played a good game of poker, and Matt won. It was really great to get to see them. It was too bad Dustin and Jessica couldn't come by, but it's understandable when they live about 3 and 1/2 hours away from Sturgeon, that's quite a drive for one dinner.

Matt and Nicole are looking at buying a house. Our friends Kate and Seth closed on their house...and we are admittedly a little jealous! (Not in a mean jealous way, more a of a happy for them, but wishing we were doing the same, kind of jealous.) We just are not at that point yet to be able to buy, but we will be; just give us some time! :)

Tuesday was a day of doing NOTHING! It was sooooo wonderful!

P.S. I did not wear socks from Saturday morning clear through Thursday morning! YAY! :)

We ate this really great fried chicken from some place in Columbia, but then at 5 am on Wednesday I was SICK! I seriously thought I was dying. I was the only one to get sick, so I must have been the lucky one to get the one piece of bad chicken, LOL! I survived and recovered very quickly, thank goodness!

Wednesday we went with Brenda and Phil to see Star Trek at the Columbia movie theatre. GREAT MOVIE! :) We all really liked it a lot. Pretty amazing the simlarities in the characters they chose for this new film and the original characters.

P.S. Columbia movie theatre is 50 times nicer, and bigger than ours here in Quincy!

Then we ate dinner at the Golden Corral and let me tell you what, if the movie theatre is 50 times nicer than the ones her in Quincy, Columbia's Golden Corral is 500 times better than the one we have in Hannibal. I just could not get over it!

Thursday it was back to the grindstone, just as if a vacation had never taken place! It was horrible to come back. We really enjoyed all the time we got to spend with Brenda and Phil, out there in the country away from work and Quincy; but we knew it had to end sometime! Thank you again Brenda and Phil for letting us escape to your little piece of heaven in Central-Mo!

Friday night we ate dinner with Josh and went to Grandma and PopPop's to pick up the recliner they gave to us. It's a really comfy chair and we love it alot! Grandma also gave me this really awesome decorative humidifier. I LOVE IT! Thank you again, Grandma and Pop Pop! :)

Saturday night we went to Mom and Dad's. I hung out with Mom for a while, and Allen went fishing with Josh and Caleb. They were gone for about 3 hours and came back with 24 fish! NOT BAD! :) They have to keep it up though because we're gonna need all that fish for the 4th of July!

Today, Allen is at work. I baked a Cherry Cola Cake for PopPop's birthday. He is having a small party tonight, so as soon as Allen gets home from work, that's what we'll be doing. Then tomorrow......back to work as normal! BLEH!

Ok, so those are all the not so exciting details of what we have been up to for the past week. If you are still reading this, bless you!

I just wanted to take a minute to let all of our friends and family who read this and those who don't read this blog know how much we love you all. How happy we find ourselves in these scary times of economic crisis is a direct result of having a great family and wonderful friends. You guys are the BEST! :)

V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N!!!!!!

Well at 4:30p.m. CST on Friday our vacation together officially started! I'm so glad that we both get to take the time off and get paid for it! Neither of us have to be at work until Thursday. So today we are packing up and heading to Sturgeon, we just hope the car will make it. Both of our cars are giving us trouble right now. We are taking mine, which is giving the least amount of trouble at the moment. Allen's car would probably blow up before we made it through Palmyra! We are going to take it to a local mechanic when we get back to have him look at it because it might just be a busted hose or something and we could spend that money and still get quite a few miles out of Allen's car, but it might not be something fixable, or it could be expensive, something that is not worth fixing. In that case we will start looking for a new one.

It's going to be a lot of fun and relaxing to be in Sturgeon. Hopefully the weather will stay nice! We only have three days, and we are going to try to squeeze in visiting as many people as possible.

Congtatulations to Tonya and Derrick! They we married yesterday and are going to Las Vegas for their honeymoon! How awesome is that! Tonya is a friend I graduated with and we are VERY happy for them.

My grandpa and grandma were on their way home from Minnesota yesterday! PopPop is going to be ok, and they ended up having a good experience. I'm really glad!

We aren't going to be blogging again until Thursday! Until then, we love you all!

Back by popular demand...

Well, it has been brought to our attention by more than one person that we have been slacking in the blog dept for the last week. Yes, it has been an entire week since we last blogged. Our friend Tonya thought we'd fallen off the face of the earth, and my little sister sent me a text today saying, and I quote, "What the poo is up with this no bloggn deal?" . Well the deal is we have been pretty busy. UGH! Not busy with anything super worthy of backtrack blogging. Except maybe one really big thing.

On Sunday my little sister graduated high school. Can you believe it? My little 18 year old sister heading out into the world beyond that K-12 building. I'm so proud of her! She's an amazing girl who is turning out to be an amazing woman. It scares me to even use the word "woman", but she's definately not a little girl any more. It was pretty wierd to sit there in that gym watching a class full of young adults graduate and to have to think about that fact that it has been 6 years since I marched across that stage. It brought a lot of mixed emotions out of me. The biggest emotion of course was pride for my little sister, but right behind that was how lucky and blessed I am to be where I am six years later. I remember all the plans that everyone, including myself had for me after graduation. I've pretty much stuck to zero of those plans and I am ten times more happy than I ever thought I could be. In Charlotte's graduation card I wrote that my biggest piece of advice was to remember that family is most important and that no matter what happens after graduation you can always count on your family to love you. The other huge thing I would have to say, is remember to be flexible with the great big plans and dreams that you have for yourself; God's ways are not always our ways. Things that we want and things we think we are going to do, may not be the things that we get or what we are supposed to do. Also sometimes the things that we think we want end up being much less fullfilling than we had thought they would be, especially when we realize that there is something much better than our own plans. Don't get caught up in the small things, the things that 6 years from now, or even 6 months from now won't matter. It's impossible to keep things in perspective yourself, too. It's always very important to have people in your life that you trust to help give you that perspective. You can always count on your family to be the honest ones and keep you grounded.

There are soooo many many things that I have learned in the past 6 years since my graduation that I would love to be able to share with my little sister and anyone else just getting ready to face the world head-on; but I can't. These are things that cannot be told, or taught, they have to be lived. As a big sister, this scares me because I want to shield her and protect her from all the things that she might have to face. I want to warn her and tell her what to do and what not do, but I can't. We can pray, and we will always be here for her. Allen looks at Charlotte as his little sister too. We want nothing but the best in the world for her.

Charlotte we love you!

Bzzzzz!

Tonight Penny ate a bumble bee, and then she ate a bunch of grass, and then she puked...ALOT. She's ok, the carpet's ok, bumble bee is not. That is all.

(P.S. Allen is the one that killed the bumble bee, but Penny is the one that decided to eat it.)

Mother's Day Weekend

This weekend was a busy weekend. Friday night we finally broke down and made a trip to Wal-Mart. Saturday Allen had to work, so I stayed home with Penny in the morning. We went on a walk around the neighborhood. Our next door neighbors were having a garage sale so Penny and I stopped by to say hi, but they were pretty much only selling baby clothes...something Allen and I don't need for a while anyways. Then Mom and Caleb picked me and we went shopping for plants and baseball pants. When I got home I hooked Penny up to her cord outside and got busy sanding and painting things for the living room. It was ALOT harder work than I thought it was going to be, but I got quite a bit accomplished. We have decided against the garden for this year. :( We have at one point in time counted twelve rabbits between our yard and our two neighbors' yard. We are afraid that we will plant something only to have it demolished by hungry rabbits. Mom and Dad have told us if we want to purchase a few plants we can put them in their garden in Missouri, so we are going to do that. On Mother's Day we went and visited my parents , but we were thinking of Brenda, Allen's mom too. We wish we could be everywhere all at once! I helped mom plant the rose plant we bought her for mother's day, helped her plant red onions and picked up grass clumps out of the yard with Dad. Allen spent the day fishing with Josh and Caleb. Then we all headed to Grandma Downing's for dinner. It was really nice to get to see everyone. Grandma and Popop gave us a four seat outdoor table and chair set, which is AWESOME! We REALLY REALLY were wanting something like that! It's so funny because we were just talking about how we needed to get something to eat on outside and then the very next day we have a table and chairs given to us.

We both are really grateful for everything our moms and grandmas have done for us. These ladies are the ladies who have helped us to become the people we are today. We love them very very very much!

Hope everyone else had a great weekend and that this week at work flies by for everyone.

Time Flies...

When you have a week full of crazy days at work! Allen and I have both had a rough week. It's been stressful...to say the very least. People seriously need to start at least acting like they care about something other than themselves. I don't care if it's true. They can pretend...just as long as we don't have to deal with their grumpy butts!

Oh, and I found out something new about myself today. Did you know that as a customer service rep, not only must I bring my magic wand to work every day, but I must also for each and every caller exercise my amazing telepathic skills. That's right! I am a mind reader, or at least that's what I was told by my very first caller of the day, in several more screaming words than just "mind reader". "YOU PEOPLE (I just love it when someone uses that line...it makes me feel all warm and special inside because it means I am no long me, I become the collective, multiple persons all at one time, people!) , YOU PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN! YOU CAN'T TELL ME YOU DIDN'T KNOW! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DIDN'T KNOW THAT!"

"Ma'am, you are absolutely right. I am so sorry that I didn't know that when you asked me this question, you were really asking me exactly the opposite and three other questions at the same time. You know, I truly do apologize. See when I first get to work in the morning, my telepathic abilities aren't fully warmed up. You really should trying calling in after lunch. If you wait til then , you won't even have to ask your questions. I will just give you all the answers. Or better yet, on a really good day, you won't even have to call, because sometimes my amazing mind reading skills are SOOOO strong, I can anticipate your very phone call before you pick up the phone . Heck, I'll call you!"

PSHHHH!!!!!! "YOU PEOPLE" COME ON, AND GET REAL! NO ONE IN CUSTOMER SERVICE IS A MIND READER! (Granted is our jobs to anticipate your questions and give you as much information as possible, I feel do a very good job "reading people's minds" but regretably we are still human. If you NEED to know something that is so important to you , then you'd better darn well ask the question! And if you don't, and something doesn't work out for you, don't call me screaming!)

Or how bout this one from Allen: Car wash door is shut, sign says, "CAR WASH OUT OF ORDER", man says, "You're car wash isn't working?" Allen says, "No, it's not." Man turns to Allen's co-worker and says, "Really?" (As if his coworkers magic wand works better than Allen's.)

What Allen should have said was, "No, we have just decided to play a joke on all of our customers today. It's really working...go right ahead. Oh, and smile for the hidden camera."

BIG DEEP BREATH......whooooooo....tomorrow is Friday. Thank goodness!

A must see...

Tonight we watched "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" , the newly released Brad Pitt film. Allen and I both love it. It's a very long movie, 2 hours and 46 minutes, but definately worth it, a story about a man who grew old backwards. The concept of the film is a big one, and we were both wondering how it would play out on the screen; but it was handled with amazing skill. The acting was fantastic and the story line was even better. It's a profound film that causes you to really look at big topics, such as each of our own impermanence in this world, and the true meaning of love. Not just the true meaning of love, but the different facets of love; love between mother and child, friends, and lovers. Great movie!

Other than that...nothing else to report!

Love you all!

No news...

Tonight was American Idol night. We ate homemade pizza while we watched. Of course Adam rocked, literally, tonight was rock night. It's going to be sad after the finale, whatever will Allen and I do with our Tuesday and Wednesday nights! Ummm....so yeah...that's really all we did besides dishes and put out the trash. OH WAIT, not true...Allen had to mow again and he is SUNBURNED!

Oh yeah, and we didn't go to Wal-Mart. We bought the dog food and the toilet paper at Hy-Vee. We aren't going to be able to avoid the devil place much longer, but we did put it off at least one more day! We actually ended up breaking even as far as cost goes. The dog food was a little bit more than Wal-Mart's price, but the toilet paper was on sale.

That's all for now!

Blog of Randomness/Complaining/Are you sure you want to read this?

Sorry for our lapse in blogs. You didn't miss much, though. Allen had to work. I did alot of dishes. We didn't get to the store to pick up anything for the garden. We are going to be doing it this Saturday. Friday is pay day , so we can pick up a few of the tools we need. We are also going to buy some paint for me to paint the things for the living room. I hope that paint isn't too expensive because I would REALLY like to get the living room in complete order.

We really , really love our neighborhood. It is SO nice to have neighbors that we feel comfortable enough to stop and talk to on our walks with Penny. It's a very friendly neighborhood.

So, we just found out we missed Caleb and Charlotte's spring concert that was tonight. Neither one of them said anything about it to remind us. :( I'm sure they did a really good job, but it's pretty upsetting to miss it. We didn't get to go to the Christmas concert either.

It's not a full moon, but Penny has been running around crazy like it is.

It's not a full moon, but people are complaining and being jerks like it is.

Allen's favorite flavor of sunflower seeds are the BBQ kind.

Tomorrow is Cinco De Mayo, and there is a carry in at work. I made a non-alcoholic Margarita punch. I'm excited. Hope it's a hit. It's wierd but there's a lot of office place politics involved in a carry-in, so you have to put thought into what you bring.

Cinco De Mayo is a stupid excuse to for people to drink in the middle of the week. It's a Mexican holiday. All year people complain about the Mexicans, except for one night of the year, when everyone pretends to be one so they can steal their holiday! PSHH! I'm pretty sure that in Mexico City the Fourth of July is NOT an excuse to drink, well maybe...who knows. BLEH.

Thursday night we ate the most awesome meatloaf I've ever had. Spicy Buffalo Sauce Meatloaf. If you want the recipe email me, because I don't have a link to it, this one actually came out of a cook book. It was amazing.

Because I changed my mailing address for my Better Homes and Gardens Magazine at the beginning of April, I'm not getting my May issue, AND I even got a letter in the mail from them saying Congratulations on your move , but you're not getting this month's issue. PSHH!

We need a new broom.

Penny needs more dog food.

AND we need toilet paper. So that means tomorrow we have to take the dreaded trip to Wal-Mart. YUCK! I know this going to make me sound old, but I seriously do not like to go to Wal-Mart any more. I used to love it, any more it's just a hastle. There's always 9 million people there, and 8.5 million of them are rude and inconsiderate. SIGH!

Well, that's enough randomness/complaining for today. Hope everyone else had a great weekend. Love you all!