Lots of going ons

I probably shouldn’t test my luck with Vegas too often…ha.

I had a great time visiting out west! Some of the highlights of the trip were visiting the Hoover Dam (I had never been there before, and we got to walk over the new bridge!), double date to Phantom of the Opera with Frank, my sister, and her boyfriend, seeing my best friend who I hadn’t seen in 9 months who got engaged recently…and of course, the bachelorette party shenanigans ;).

4 days in Vegas = not much sleep and really sore feet from all the walking…but that’s okay! Note taken: NEVER forget to bring good walking shoes to Vegas, my feet still hurt a week later.

On the way home from Vegas I flew back through Memphis, and saw Air Force One take off while I was waiting for my connecting flight. It was pretty neat, I guess the President was there because of all the flooding…which I was able to see quite a bit of it while we were landing/taking off.

On the 19th, Frank’s sister, her husband, and their 5 kids came to our house to visit for the next week. It’s so fun having people fill up our house! I just wish we had better accommodations since we are still in the middle of a few projects here and there…oh well. While they were here we caravanned to Panama City Beach, FL and enjoyed a Sat. night cook out with some friends of ours who live there. The next day Frank and his brother-in-law went scuba spear-fishing, and Frank’s sister and I took all the kids to the beach. The water was warm and I got a bit of a sunburn…it’s officially summer :).

This past weekend we drove to central Missouri for our friends wedding- it was a fun road trip minus the part where I had some sort of fever/virus/flu, general all around yucky-ness. Luckily it only lasted about 2-3 days so my whole 4 day weekend wasn’t completely shot. On Monday- Memorial Day- Frank and I did some house & yard work and ran a few errands. We finally have a bit of a slow down this week and I’m looking forward to it. We have a lot of little stuff that needs to get done and I feel like I haven’t had a chance to catch up in a while! This weekend there will be a big squadron party for all the pilots/wives/friends of, etc....and I'm really looking forward to it. It's gotta be good if a band called "More Cowbell" will be there...haha.

Here are a few photo's over the past few weeks, I'm going up upload more later...

View from GhostBar in Vegas - fun night!

We shared 7 different deserts at Café Belle Madeleine in Paris..YUMMY

How do you choose!?!?!

Driving through St. Louis on the way to the wedding...never been there before :)

Lately

Some of the stuff we've been up to lately...

Living room furniture delivered - I'll post better pics soon...this one isn't the greatest.

 

This is the mess I was left with after I unpacked about half of the kitchen..yaaay

Frank went to the Hoover Dam

I managed to finish painting the door trim...with the help of my old roommate that came to visit! Also cleaned a bunch of cabinets and unpacked a majority of our kitchen stuff that was still boxed up.

I'm leaving for Vegas tomorrow afternoon, woohoo! Tonight I'm getting my hair cut and colored...it's about time, too! It's grown 2 and a half inches since last time I got it cut...so the highlights are looking pretty yucky right now! It's pretty sad actually. I tried to book an appointment at the salon I normally go to and found out that they shut down right after my last appointment...in OCTOBER...bummer. I'm going to miss it. They gave you mimosas and martinis while they cut your hair. Any salon that gives you yummy free drinks while they do your hair is a winner in my book. That's probably why they went out of business...they lost too much money on the booze!

I'll update again sometime after the Vegas trip. :)

Furniture

This week has been pretty non-eventful. Frank left for Vegas on Sat. morning and I’ve been doing a little work here and there while he’s been gone. Still painting door/window trim. I’m doing about 2 at a time so it’s not so overwhelming. At first I thought I would never finish, but I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel…now that I’m about 3/4^th of the way finished! I’m hoping to have it mostly done by Sunday.

On Friday before Frank left, we FINALLY purchased some furniture- woohoo!! The majority of it is going to be delivered this weekend (the living room furniture and the server that matches our dining room set). However, the dining room table and chairs were backordered- so they won’t be in until around mid-June. Wahhh wahhhhh. I can wait, though. At least we’ll have couches! I wanted to put a rug under the dining room table and also in the living room, but since they are open to each other I’m kind of confused on how I should do this…do I get matching rugs? Or do I just get rugs that compliment each other? Or does it even matter?! Probably not, I just don’t want it to look weird.

Bought couch and loveseat

Here's the table we bought that extends to 90" (now we have room for our big families that come to visit, hint hint). We also bought 8 chairs and the server that's in the back of the photo

Matching chair for the living room, also got the matching ottoman- it's super comfy

I wish I had a photo of the end table/coffee table and the TV console we purchased, but I can't find it online...I'll be sure to post more photos when the furniture is in the house :)

The tornadoes we had last week were craziness. Luckily it was all about 100 miles north of us…we had a few smaller ones that were probably 15 miles north, but they were nothing in comparison to the ones in Tuscaloosa/Birmingham. My old roommate, Nichole, lives in Tuscaloosa and the tornado was literally across the street from her apartment complex - luckily she was fine. But the buildings all down the street from her apartment are pretty much a total loss…she’s actually coming to Montgomery this weekend to stay with me.

Other than that- not much news! I’m gearing up for my Vegas bachelorette trip next week, which should be fun. I think I might try and drive to the Hoover Dam and check it out while I’m there. Plus, I can’t wait to see my best friend Cathy (who’s engaged now!), and my sister who’s flying out, Frank’s sister who’s getting married in a month…and I guess my husband too. Ha. Plus, I kind of miss the desert in a weird sort of way. I got tired of it pretty quickly when I was in Phoenix during the summer for a few months in 2007…but it’s always nice to go back and visit. I wish I could spend a few weeks out there, but I guess a few days will do.

Stuffed Flank Steak

Last week I made this stuffed flank steak recipe that I found in an old H&G Grilling magazine from last year. It was yummy, the filling was a mixture of feta, spinach, and bacon, along with some spices. It looks kind of fancy but was not really difficult at all. I’ll definitely be making this again sometime soon, maybe when we have company. Frank has been working out at a crossfit gym off and on for about a year so now, and while he’s been doing those workouts we’ve been trying to eat as “paleo” as possible. Which is basically the caveman diet, where you just eat meats, fruits, veggies, nuts, etc. Nothing processed, little to no carbs, and no sugar. We all know I can’t follow those rules! I try to, for dinner at least. And this recipe proved to be a good paleo dinner for us. Not sure if feta cheese falls in the “do not eat” category, if it did then we may have cheated just a tad. Oh well, it was worth it!

yummy yummy

This past weekend was a busy one. We really did not get as much done with the house as we had planned. I have been painting door trim which proves to take a while, especially when you have 22 of them and they all need 2 coats. On Saturday Frank lead a missing-man formation flyover for a funeral  for a Tuskegee Airman who passed away. It was right over a church in downtown Montgomery, I could hear them flying from home that morning, but it was just far away enough that I couldn’t see it. Frank's squadron is the heritage squadron for the Tuskegee Airmen (Tuskegee Airmen History), so it was a pretty neat honor that they got to do this flyover. Here is a slideshow of the photos from the funeral- In photo 14- Frank's flying the jet 2^nd from the left.

Funeral Slideshow

Saturday afternoon we went furniture shopping. We went to three stores but didn’t buy anything, we just can’t decide on what we want! Frank’s sister’s family is coming from MI to visit us in about a month, so we’ll definitely need furniture before then! It’s getting to the point where we will just have to throw down with something and go with it! Saturday night we went to our neighbors house from some home-cookin’. It was very good, as usual, and fun hanging out with all the neighbors.

Sunday we made it to a late morning Easter Mass and then did a little work on the house, not too much! Then that evening we met up with two other couples for our Easter Dinner at the Longhorn Steakhouse. It was good to spend time with some other younger couples and get out of the house for a night. All in all- it was a relaxing weekend for the most part.

As of yesterday Frank is now an F-16 IP (instructor pilot). He’s the youngest pilot at their base who is certified to do what he’s doing, which is kinda neat. I know he is very relieved to be done with the instructor course (he’s been working on it since Dec.). It’s a huge weight off his shoulders. He’ll be leaving for Vegas this weekend for 2 weeks (for "work", of course!), and I’ll be out there the 2^nd weekend of May for his sister's bachelorette party – fun! :)

22 Doors

We painted 22 doors last weekend. It doesn’t seem like it would take a whole lot of time and effort to paint 22 doors at first. But we have found out that everything that we don’t think will take THAT long…will take that long…or longer. Probably a lot longer.

My old roommate Nichole came to visit us this past weekend from Tuscaloosa and helped out a ton. She got to our house on Fri. night just before a big storm system blew through. It was mostly north of us, so we didn’t really see much rain at all. We seem to have storms rolling through every couple of days lately- typical spring weather for the southeast!

During all these storms on Friday evening, Frank decided he was going to try and fix a clogged French drain in our backyard. It was a drain that was carrying water from one of the downspouts off the roof of the carport to the drainage ditch behind the fence in our backyard. We had noticed that after the last big storm, our carport had a few inches of water standing around and we were worried that it would flood enough to get into the house. While we were digging up the drain the tornado sirens started going off, and it was super windy. Frank called his friend to bring over a pressure washer to try and use that to force the blockage out of the drain tube. Ha. We are geniuses, let me tell ya. This was after we tried everything possible, so it was our last resort. Our friend makes it over with the pressure washer, and here we are in the midst of a severe weather warning with tornado sirens going off trying to clean out this drain. Our next-door neighbor, who’s basically our neighborhood mom, yelled at us saying “this is momma tellin’ you that you better get inside!”...as Frank waved around a pressure sprayer (which is pretty much a 3 foot metal pole), while standing in a big puddle of water, under a big tree, while it was lightening like crazy. Ok, ok, it sounds a lot worse than it actually was. The lightening was far away, and the “tornado warnings” in Alabama are more like Watches. It was just kind of funny at the time. Needless to say, the bad part of the storm ended up missing us and we didn't get much rain at all.

We found out had a broken drainage pipe that the previous owner tried to duct tape back together…yeeeahh. So the pressure sprayer didn’t work. We ended up digging up the whole pipe from the broken spot on and replacing it. At least we don’t have to worry about our house flooding anytime soon.

Other than the drainage issues, we just painted 22 doors and replaced just as many door knobs and door hardware. Yipee! Our doors look awesome now. It’s amazing what a coat or two of paint can do sometimes. This weekend we are going to concentrate on painting interior door and window trim.

This is only about half the doors we painted!

The past few days I’ve been doing a thorough cleaning of the kitchen cabinets, and finally unpacking some of the kitchen wedding gifts that we haven’t even taken out of the box yet. Frank has been studying hard for his pilot instructor course he’s going through right now at work. I think he as about 3 or 4 rides left before he is done with it. He’s hoping he’ll be done by the end of this month, but it could be sometime in May. We’ve also been watching a TON of hockey now that the playoffs are here. Might as well be the middle of football season in our household! The next few weeks/months we have a lot of stuff going on- weddings, parties, trips. Should be a fun & busy couple of months ahead of us.

Sometimes I forget how green it is here! I really noticed it when I first moved here, but I guess I’ve gotten used to it. While I was driving to work this morning it hit me again, though- it’s super green and there are trees everywhere! That’s one thing that I do not miss about Texas, lack of trees…and green-ness. I do miss my family, though!

My drive to work- it's all trees and green!

 This is my Friday since I'm off work on Good Friday. Hope everyone has a wonderful Easter weekend. This will be the first holiday that Frank and I are celebrating by ourselves instead of traveling to see family.

Breaking and Entering

Desperate times call for desperate measures. 

With all the added house expenses lately…we’ve been sucked dry. We’ve been discussing purchasing a truck, which would help us out immensely with the house projects. Unfortunately we couldn’t really find a way we could afford to buy one right now…so we just decided to break into one and steal it instead. 

Me stealing a truck in broad daylight in the airport parking lot. We figured if we were going to do it, we'd hit up someplace with a large selection. We preferred one that was Barney purple...

All joking aside- our friend generously lets us borrow his truck anytime we need it. This weekend, however, the keys were locked inside, so I had to break in the back window to get them out.

This was probably one of our more productive weekends. I could go on a long spiel about all the stuff we did…it is a looooonnnggg list. But I’ll spare the details. The two biggest jobs we accomplished this weekend were fixing electrical issues, and blowing insulation in our attic. The prepping of the attic took much longer than the time we spent actually blowing insulation. Did I mention the highs were in the high 80’s this weekend, and our attic had to be 100 degrees! YUCK! Nevertheless, Frank did a great job and spent hours fixing the wiring in our attic, and we both learned a lot about electricity. And we’re both alive! That’s probably the biggest success. I’ve really come a long way, I wouldn’t even touch electrical wires if the breaker was off, that’s how deathly afraid of electricity I was. Now I’m helping Frank with electrical problems and I feel like I’m actually learning something useful. Now that I understand it better, it doesn't freak me out as much.

It’s amazing what we have learned in just a few months. We’ve gone from being somewhat clueless about home repair, to actually kind of knowledgeable (about certain issues, at least). Of course we still have a lot more to learn! One other thing I have learned is when you are at Home Depot or Lowes and you have a somewhat in depth question about something home repair related, look for the oldest dude that works there and ask him. Not all of the time, but most of the time they are usually the only ones that know anything. 95% of the people that work there have probably never picked up a paint brush or power tool in their life. Google has also been a serious life saver. If we didn't have google, I'm not sure how anything would ever get done because we'd have no clue how to go about doing it.

Anywho- on to the insulation photos. That’s really all I took pictures of this weekend. I’m sure you would get bored looking at photos of me painting baseboards, spreading fertilizer around our yard, or Frank hanging light fixtures.

It's hot up here!

Frank blowing insulation

We rented this at Home Depot and it is highly recommended! We had absolutely no issues and we covered our 2400 sq. ft attic in about 1.5 hrs.

8 bags and the machine...we had to go back for 4 more bags.

And here's a random photo I took of Frank hooking up our new pool timer (old one broke).

 Also- we have rose bush in our backyard! I didn't even notice it until it started blooming. We have about 12 roses so far...pretty :)

We spent some time yesterday evening looking at dining room furniture at World Market. I am so ready to not have to eat on a camping chair with a plate in my lap! Haha. Hopefully we can buy some furniture soon...

Armed and ready for the weekly weekend booty kicking

Well…I didn’t get the laundry room painted, but the baseboards are caulked and the pool pump is working! So tempting to go swimming, but it’s still just a little too cold. I probably could have gotten more accomplished last weekend, but I spent some time hanging out with friends on Sat. night. So…the laundry room took the back burner :).

The other night we were watching TV and Frank pulled up my blog on his phone and started reading it to me…so irritating! It's like watching a video of yourself or hearing yourself talk. I hate hearing what I write, haha! He secretly likes my blog, I know it.

This week has been good- Frank got home from Vermont a day late on Wednesday, and it’s been really nice having him home. His first night back I made this really, really DELISH lemon chicken dish for dinner:

I had every intention of taking a picture of it before we started eating, but it smelled so good that it didn't least 2 seconds before we started digging in. So this photo is stolen from the website!

It makes me very happy that I can cook again. We still don't have all the kitchen stuff unpacked, but I have enough for the basics. This was super easy to make and very yummy. I used about 5 thin sliced chicken breasts and we had no leftovers! We’re a bunch of oinkers!

So, so glad it's Friday, even though that just means that we're about to get our booties kicked by the house this weekend. We have big plans for blowing insulation in the attic, along with some electrical work and a few other small jobs. Wish us luck...