We have moved into the house.

You would think this is GREAT and in a way it is. We have our own place again. We can cook meals - if we want to - need to go grocery shopping for real now. We have room to spread out. Sort of. 

What it is in reality: 

The bed from upstairs - queen. The luggage that is waiting to unpacked.

The closet it goes into (not finished). Monday this will be done. 

The lovely dining room table. 


The stylish living room with the futon from the upstairs room as well. Let’s not even talk about the camp furniture. Fun times!!

What NEEDS to happen now is the flooring guys need to finish my closet then the painter needs to come in and finish the baseboards and will take TWO days. So. Maybe that’s why we don’t feel settled? Everything has to be in the MIDDLE of the rooms to accommodate the painters. I don’t feel like I can unload a lot until that is done then I can put stuff in closets to squirrel it away.  Ideally we will be getting rid of stuff as well. I have some of Sally’s glasses right now that are to go to consignment - BUT before they go there we will use them until ours come in. 

Hopefully the house hold goods will come in soon. That will be most of the good stuff. Bed for the guest room. Desks for offices. Bed for my bedroom and Butch is going to cajole the movers into moving the queen and the futon upstairs. The rest of that set is up there already.  We need some end stands for the living room as well. We don’t have any of those currently. They were sold in Germany. 

Now to see what Butch buys for a TV this weekend. This should be fun. He wants one here: 

I guess that will work. We are old and could lay in the recliners and watch TV and not have to strain to look over our bellies or boobs - hahaha!!

Looks like this is t goi g to happen as we DO use the fireplace and it does get toasty!

There are a few things I miss about Germany BUT I was able to soak in my hot tub today and THAT was awesome!!  I have missed that hot tub for sure!!  Oh, AND take a shower in my lovely HUGE shower with multiple sprayers. Again a plus. 

More to come as we muddle through the transition with our old achy bodies. (The reason the hot tub was SO nice!). I was supposed to go in a retreat with a friend today. I looked at 1 hour 50 minute drive one way (at Columbus) and felt my lower back screaming AND knew I would need to UN pack them REpack to go. I was still willing THEN we opened the outdoor freezer and some worker had put a gigantic can of coke in there and it exploded. ALL. OVER. and there were ice packs in there… and racks. So I spent my afternoon cleaning a freezer. Grrrr. BUT it’s clean now and ready to go!!  And bonus, the wire racks are all clean to take to Sally’s to organize her freezer. She likes to use bags for small size food items. It would be nice if they didn’t avalanche out when you dig!  So I will see if we can’t get three of these in there for veggies and meats and have her freeze items flat then stand them up in the back once they are solid. It’s worth a shot and she won’t have many mystery meals that way ;)

House updates

We knew when we went overseas we would need to redo the flooring read carpet) when we got home as well as paint. We didn’t plan on being OLD and too wore out to paint the thing ourselves. Flooring yeah we kind of knew that want going to be us. We also thought things would go MUCH faster than they have. BUT looking at when we got home (5 November) and today isn’t even the 1st with a few holidays tossed in we made great progress. We chose speed and cost over professionals on paint. That was/is frustrating. We didn’t have the ceilings painted and we should have. The list goes on “should have” things. 

So here is the progress as of today (only because there is no furniture yet. 

Here is the original sample. 

Original paint and floors

Paint done

Paint and floors done. 

I’m surprised the floor reads darker than what it really is. It’s a grayish tone. Looks brown on the hall here. 

This is the ONLY picture That looks like the sample we chose. Weird isn’t it?  Now I question if it’s the same color we chose. Very strange. 

Whomp whomp whomp. They ran out of supplies!!  They had to order two more boxes to make the end of the closet!!  I hope they finish quickly tomorrow. We should be getting out storage stuff tomorrow so it HAD to be done by now. 

Thanksgiving!

This is my kind of food truck!!  I love Waffle House and surprisingly NOT for the waffles. I do, however love IHOP pancakes. Weird trivia for you ;)

Angela had Tuesday through Thursday off work so it was a no brained for me to take leave and head on down to Florida with her. She had no one to watch her kitty either so I said BRING her. OMG. I miss having cats. She was so fun!  Meet Leela. She is a great little traveler as well. 

Angie and I drove down and Butch drove his truck as we gave Liz’s car back to her. She and Angela then drove back to Macon on Thursday evening so Angela could go to workFriday morning. It all worked out perfectly!

We had Out feast on Wednesday instead of Thursday just because of that. 



We had Turkey, ham, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, cornbread dressing, rolls, cranberry (two types) and of course olives (only green as we didn’t think about black) and pickles. Ooooh and gravy!  Can’t forget the gravy. 

Butch did the prep on the Turkey and ham and we girls did the rest if the fixings. Angela did the mashed potatoes as that is her favorite. Liz did the green bean casserole and forgot to drain the beans so that was kind of funny. It worked out just fine in the end. I made the sweet potato casserole and I had thrown together the stuffing as it was stovetop and used some broth to make it super yummy. We did our typical Cajun butter injection on the Turkey and it was delicious as always!

Over the weekend we helped Sally with some cleaning, organizing and putting up her tree. 


The. Angela sent me pictures of Leela stressing on the way home. Ha!  That cat couldnt be more chill in the car!


Sally’s Christmas cactus was trying to bloom but never quite got there. 


MY Camilla (sasanqua) was blooming and looked great with a lot more blooms on the way!!  Southern snow is Camilla’s and/or cotton. 



And with that Thanksgiving was over and Butch and I headed home. 

One of the trio gets married

Claire got married!  First of the tri to get married. She married Ian at Wakulla Springs Florida. We chose to drive down and back in the same day. 3.5 hrs there and the same back. It wasn’t a bad drive as we have Butchs brand new luxury truck. Very Cush!!

Jazmines Dad Tim was in attendance as well it was great to see him!

Guess who caught the bouquet?  Yep. Lizzie. Will she be next or Jazmine?

Veterans day weekend

We had plans to go to Fort Walton over veterans day weekend to take care of the washer fiasco. A washer was ordered. Was to be shipped and they kept lying to us that it was in the warehouse and it was on its way. TWICE. After that I cancelled the order and said I would deal with it in person. So off to Hime Depot I go and find out it has t been refunded yet and I was NOT happy. I told the lady nicely this WILL be elevated and I know it’s not her but we were not happy and we wanted a return to a order AND this specific washer that was in stock IN the store to be delivers that weekend. To Home Depot’s credit they did just that but it got a little iffy when we found out they used a different delivery service that want associated to the store either. Fun times. 

So while we purchased the washer we got home and the laundry room was flooded. The hot water heater gave up the ghost and died!  Water everywhere and holiday weekend means more money tk get someone out quickly. We found a place. Buds Plumbing. Did a good job for a pretty penny. 

No pictures of the new pretty one. These pictures were on my phone for the plumber to prep lab his trip out!

Then the neighbor came over with one of her feral babies. I want to take them all and socialize them. There are four. (This has NOT happened)

Then we had the dryer go out in the last day there as well. Fun times. The belt broke and although we replaced it, it wasn’t tossing the clothes around. We opted to fix it in the NEXT run to FWB as we knew it was coming soon!!

Farewell to Europe

Fall leaves outside the BX to crouch through on my way to work. 

Dinner and I had to laugh at the Avocado tartare I ordered

THESE are pumpkin soups. One with apples and mushroom, one with pepper and normal and I can’t remember with the other had in it. The apples and mushrooms was my favorite!

And just like that we are leaving Germany 



We had our own two set of seats to Amsterdam!  Nice!







The rainbows coming into Amsterdam were amazing!!

We ended up being able to split again!

I got to kick his seat the whole trip. Ha!  Kidding. I didn’t kick him (much)





I see the USA down there!!

On the ground in Atlanta. This was challenging as we landed them sat in the tarmac for 45 minutes. This wouldn’t be bad, however we had a 90 minute lead to get luggage, get OUT of the airport, onto a shuttle and to the domestic side to catch Groome. Yeah. Then there was the most luggage. Butch’s golf clubs didn’t come out. So we waited and time ticked on. So I called and swapped our shuttle to 8pm. We made it over to domestic  15 minutes before our shuttle arrived. The. We got out at Macon and had Liz pick us up there and take her car from there and drop her off. Having her car has been a HUGE blessing!!  Rentals are non-existent in small towns. They’re pricey if you find them at airports!!

At least the sunset was pretty ;)