Dads 90th, family get together, Utah fun

It was a short LONG weekend jam packed with family, family and more family!!

It was a SUPER rainy ride north. I MISS well marked German roads. See there were a few GOOD things the Germans had!!  Either way we made it. Even though I apparently have the bladder of a 9 year old and had to stop and pee. 

I also got to watch Christmas stories on the flight!  Fun!!  I watched a Candace Cameron Burke show. It was cute. 

We also had a few spare pilots ON the flight. Bonus for us!  ;)

Utah was snowy!!



I saw Santa!!!  It looked better when he had his hand up and you could see his plush suit and white gloves. Lovely. He was a GOOD Santa too. I hollered “SANTA, SANTA, SANTA! I know him!!!”  Ha!!


THIS IS Martin and Marilyn with their grands and great grands that we’re able to attend. As Linda points out a LOT were missing from this picture!  They have a BUNCH of greats and a BUNCH of great grands!!

Cousin love!!

My how tall you’ve grown Mike!!

After the get together at Sandi’s we drove down to Cedar Vitg and visited with mom and dad and Linda. 

This is my moms old wedding dress. It was originally Aunt Flo’s dress as well as Carolyn Koenig’s as well. We just came across my wedding dress in storage. It’s in the garage currently :). Guess I should move it!



After a dinner on Monday night. In order if height - purely by accident. 

In chronological order. 

And just like that we were headed to Vegas to fly out. 

Vegas valley. A big dusty. 


Flying out. Until next time. 

Art with Liz

How it started….

How it ended. So cute!!

And just like that…

Our flooring was finished late last night and baseboards took all day but they are done. The house, she is done!  Now to unpack more!!

But before that’s done Butch pulled out some baseboard in the kids bath that had rotted. Well, it did more than rotted. There was evidence of a past termite infestation. Yikes!!  The good news it was PAST infestation and they are all dead without evidence of anything still occurring. The best news is But h has replaced the baseboards in that bath. Yay!

This morning there was an odd red light in the west. Wait a minute. The sun rises in the east…. Weird. My guess is it is/was a very tall thunderhead that was catching the first rays of the sun and glowing through it as there were storms most of the day today. 

This evening was cat care time. I went and dumped litter boxes and fed kitties. I got to give them some wet feed so Ash tolerated me petting her while she ate and didn’t skitter off too fast when I talked to her. Salem crawled into the bed frame and wallowed in chin and neck scratching however would not come down to sit with/near me. As I had to grab some stuff before I could head home I gave up and said my goodbyes and gave a final scratch and was on my way. 

Oh and this weekend after Liz’s. Well actually during Lizzie’s I relaxed and lazed around. I want the ladder girl and I didn’t traipse through the backyard as they were making plans for the terracing. I went inside talked to Salem and relaxed in the couch :). Ah the life. 

Sunday had us going to Best Buy, Walmart and the commissary. Well we got to Best Buy. We shopped TVs and picked one on sale. It looked like it would be a good size in the living room. So we ordered it. It wasn’t available in our store for weeks. We opted to drive to McDonough as, well quite frankly, we have nothing better to do. So off we went. We drove in, picked up, drove out. That simple. We got it home and holy crap it’s HUGE!!!

Here it is in movie theater mode. 

And in the light of day. 

Overkill?  Maybe big big is it nice not having to watch shows on an iPad or a phone. The post it’s on the wall mark out the half way and edges of the placement on the wall. Yeah. It’s huge. But it’s ours now. 

And the week marches on. Work is coming together slowly. Still waiting on some access so I’m not stepping in fully yet. The guys who work under me are very much introverts. I’m becoming one. Sigh. I have another job offer… waiting for it to come through to see what the money would be. I need to talk to that supervisor to see what it would be to work with/under him. Not sure it’s worth the stress. The debate rages on. Take a stressful job or muddle through with this one?

Helping Liz with Christmas lights

Her house is so cute and the picture I took of Liz climbing the ladder were on her phone. dang it!!  Oh no well. 

Her house has the East side along a park. Very nice!!

Looking “down” her street towards downtown Macon. It’s a short walk to most of the town!

Looking up her street. 

It was nice to spend time helping and watching her work ;). She has a very cute but very OLD house. I blame myself for my dream houses. She takes after me in that respect. 

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.