A week with Mom and Dad

We have been waiting a long time for Mom and Dad to come visit us again. We last saw them in January after our trip to Jamaica when we helped Drew get his house ready to sell. As of last Wednesday we had another reason to be excited for them to get here... We had some news that we wanted to tell them in person and had to keep it a secret until they got here!!!!

(you can pause the music at the bottom of the page to hear the video)

You can't imagine how excited we are and Mom and Dad weren't too far behind. We are expecting in January, probably around the 15th to the 20th. We are still pretty early in the pregnancy but way too excited to keep it a secret!!! I will be 6 weeks tomorrow. I still have a long way to go but am ready for the adventure. I am not sure it has really sunk in with Tom or me yet. I think we really need to get to the appointment on June 12th first to see the ultrasound and hear the heart beat. This has been a long journey for both Tom and myself and now we are glad that we have finally made it to the next step. The many doctor's appointments and blood tests, the laproscopy, the complete change in my diet and exercise routine and finally after 15 months, we did it!!!

After this news, of course we hadn't told anyone else yet, so we spent about an hour on the phone telling our close relatives... Tom's mom, my Grandma Kaufman and my Grandma and Granpa Kennedy, Alan, Drew and Kendra. Tom decided to wait until the next day to tell his brothers. (Kimmy and Ashley already knew, I am horrible at keeping secrets!)

The rest of the night we spent talking about the baby-to-be and we had a nice dinner to celebrate. I think Mom and Dad could have just done this and been satisfied with the trip... Oh, they were just sooooo excited and happy. We are going to have one spoiled baby!!!

Monday Adventures...

Today Tom had to go into school to work in the lab for a little while, so after breakfast Dad, Mom and me decided to head over to Old Time Pottery. I have wanted to go there since we moved here and they saw it in one of their visitor's guides so we thought, why not! Mom actually found a lot of stuff. She got some seat cushions and pillows for her outside patio furniture. She also got a cute picture to hang in her sun porch and Dad got a little frog statue of a boy and girl frog sittin' together, how cute!!!


After Old Time Pottery we decided to go get some traditional Southern BBQ. Since Tom doesn't like BBQ we thought it would be a perfect opportunity to go out to lucnch without him since he wouldn't be missing out on anything anyway. Tom got done with school early and called during lunch... He was going home to cut the grass and clean up the yard. Thanks Tom!

After lunch we decided to go to Lowes and Wal Mart to pick up some flowers to plant around the house. I am not the best person to pick out flowers so I thought since I have the best person here visiting me I should get her to help me. Mom picked out some really pretty ones, so hopefully I will be able to keep them alive!!! Some day I plan on being as good at her and Dad in the garden!


When we got home it was pretty hot outside and poor little Riley was just miserable. We had put it off long enough, it was time for the shave!!!! She does a good job of standing still and just letting me do it, but by the end she gets a little sick of it and ready to get out of there. This was when we just started... you should have seen all the hair that we ended up with when she was done. We could have made a puppy hair sweater!!!

She was a much happier, cooler dog when she was done. She was especially happy that her Grandpa took her down in the back yard to try to teach her tricks with the treats. We are working on the down and bang, your dead move. It seems that no dog will ever be as good at it as the Sally dog that I grew up with! (side bar) Sally was also one of the best dogs ever... she had a little routine: she did "army dog" where she crawled on her belly, then we told her "the enemies are coming, retreat, retreat!!!" and she started doing her army dog backward, then we pointed our finger at her like a gun and shouted "bang" and she rolled over into dead dog!! I mean, how cool is that! Too bad we never thought to get that on video tape. I think we would have won $10,000 on AFV!

After the doggy shave we thought, hey since we're already dirty and the backyard is starting to get some shade, why not plant my herb garden. I got that old wooden tool box free at a garage sale and have wanted to turn it into an herb garden ever since. Mom and Dad do such a good job planting stuff, they volunteered to put it together with me. I actually did help though even though I am not in the picture!! :)

It turned out better than I even imagined it would. I can't wait to cook with it. We now have fresh basil, oregano, rosemary and celantro. YUMMY!!!

after dinner fire

After a long day of shopping and hard work we ended the night by the fire.


Riley looks so much different after her haircut. She looks like she just lost 20lbs. I can tell she feels so much better though. It has been getting so hot and all that extra hair cannot be comforatable. But, all of her cute curls are gone now :(

I think we have Mom and Dad convinced that they need to build a fire pit in their backyard. It's very peaceful to sit out in the backyard by a fire once the sun goes down. Tonight it was a little chilly so Mom and I had the sweats on but I guess Dad and Tom were too tough for that!

Tom loves to act goofy for the camera!!!

working day!

I had to work for a little while in the morning and while I was gone, Tom and Dad cut shelves to make extra ones for my cabinets in the kitchen. By the time I got home from lunch Mom and the guys had the kitchen tore apart! I wanted to take everything out of the drawers and cabinets and start over. I never really did a very good of putting the kitchen together when we moved in so I thought it was very organized. Mom is the best kitchen organizer I know so I was so glad that she agreed to help me. We put 3 extra shelves in and moved around some things, and my goodness I have so much more space now, I can hardly believe it. I am sooooo happy at the way it worked out. She even got the rest of my shelf paper in that I started 2 years ago! Thanks Mom!!!


After the kitchen fiasco we decided to conquor the flower beds. Dad and Tom got mulch and then we went to town with the planting. In front of the mailbox we went back to the petunias like I did last year. Last year I planted red, white and blue. This year I decided to celebrate the good news with some pink, white and blue!!! I know it's corny but I like it and that's all that matters! There aren't too many of the blue ones blooming yet but in a couple of weeks, its going to look fantastic!

In the bed under the cedar trees we went for some random flowers that I can't remember the names of but Mom said that they would do well in the sun and are hard to kill so they are perfect for me. They also looked real pretty! We also picked up a little metal statue yesterday at the Old Time Pottery that just goes perfect out there. It was a lot of work but Dad and Tom dug the holes and Mom and I put the flowers in. It looks so much better now with a little life added to the spot.

After flowers and getting cleaned up all of my workers earned some nice cocktails! Tom had his usual Southern Comfort and Sprite, Dad had his 7 and 7 and I invented this fun cocktail for Mom which I had the non-alcholic version for myself... You should try it, its yummy. 1/2 cranberry-pomagrant juice, 1/2 sprite with a splash of orange juice and for Mom, a shot of vodka.

We barbequed some hamburgers and hotdogs and sat by the fire for a couple of hours. It was a nice evening and a good end to a very productive day!

Tourist Day

We got up early and decided to start the day at the Factory in Franklin. I had never been there and didn't know what to expect but it sounded cool so why not. Mom found a place to paint your own pottery so we went over there to do that. When we got there we found out it was more like a place to go with kids and it was painting your own ceramics and not really what we expected so we opted out of that and just decided to walk around and look at art and the other little shops inside.

We found a big chair and took turns getting our picture taken in it. How fun!

After the Factory in Franklin and walking around the shops in the square we had lunch with Tom at Mcreary's Irish pub and then headed down to the plantation in Franklin. This was the home of a very wealthy family in the early 1800's who allowed the confederates to use their house for a hospital in one of the bloodiest battles in the Civil War.

After the war the family decided to raise money around town to gather up the bodies of the soldier, both Union and Confederate and use 2 acres of their land as a cemetery. We walked through the cemetery with almost 1,500 soldiers buried there, many of which are still unidentified.

We walked through the McGavock's garden which is magnificent. This is the grape vine hallway!! It's so beautiful, when I have my acrage, Tom is going to have to build me one of these because I just love it. We also toured the house but were unable to take pictures in there. I was a very similar place as the Hermitage that we went to with Patrick and Soumya. This was better though because you got to go into the rooms so you could see stuff a lot better. The only problem was it was very dusty and hard to breath in there.

This is a male version of a hedge apple tree (didn't know there was a difference). This one is original with the house and the male's grow thorns instead of apples and they used these like barbed wire fence. kind of cool, huh!

The tree was huge!!! I found a nice little place in there to take a seat :)

After the tour of the plantation everyone was tired and ready to go home. We got the the house and hung out outside with the dogs and had a real light dinner. After dinner we just sat around in the living room chatting and because we were so tired, headed to bed early to get rested up for our next day.

32 years and counting!!!

Thursday was Mom and Dad's 32nd Wedding Anniversary!!! Go Mom and Dad!




I had to work again in the morning and today I had a meeting early so had to leave the house by 6:30 and had to stay a little late as well so didn't get home until almost 1:00. By that time everyone was starving and we had a nice left-overs lunch. After lunch we got in the car and headed over the the Southeast Salvage store... A huge store down here that has all sorts of home "stuff" a lot cheaper than you can get in other stores. Tom and I bought cabinet hardware there several months ago for 2 handles for $1.85 so Mom wanted to go check it out for her kitchen... Unfortunately, there was no cheap ones there. It seems everything that Mom thought was neat was the only stuff in the store that was actually expensive. Last time they came down they got the oriental rug in their dining room for like $100. Oh well, can't win them all...

We then went across the street to the Sears Outlet store and my Dad scored big with a new gas chain saw for $87 that was originally $200!! That's my kind of shopping!! After the big shopping day we went back the house and had a nice relaxing couple of hours before we went out to dinner.

Since it was Mom and Dad's Anniversary, Tom and I wanted to take them out for a real nice dinner. We took them to Maggiano's for family style Italian. We definately ate our weight in food. For anyone who's never been there it's a kind of fancy resteraunt but you can order family style so they keep bringing you seconds when you finish and you get to box up and take home any of the leftovers. When dinner was over they brought our dessert out with a pink and blue candle in the cheesecake and 4 glasses of champainge. (I gave mine to Tom :) The pink candle blew out before it got to the table so Tom thinks that is a sign... maybe it will be a little boy?

I of course made Mom and Dad toast to their anniversary and kiss but my camera was slow and didn't get the kiss... but this is cute too!

Here is Tom carrying out all of our leftovers, I think the one bag weighed about 5lbs!!! He ate a whole teirmassue by himself and then talked the waitress into bringing a third piece over to the table for him to take home... We had a great time and a great dinner and I am sure that Mom and Dad agree. It was a tough drive home having to sit in the car with a seatbelt on with that full of a belly, but we got home and changed into comfy clothes and watched some Law and Order before we all went to bed in a food coma.

All good things must come to an end...

Mom and Dad had to leave to go home today... Tom got up early to go to the gym so he said good-bye to them last night before bed. I got up with Tom and made his lunch for school and then decided to make my famous breakfast casserole for Dad for breakfast. We had breakfast then tried to fix the window in the Monte Carlo but we didn't have the right kind of screw driver so Tom will have to do that when he gets home today. Other than that Mom packed the bags and we loaded up the Explorer (it was packed full of Mom's treasures that she found this week) :) and they were on their way out of town :(

They decided to spend the weekend having an adventure for their anniversary. They are going to make a few adventure stops on the way today, find a hotel tonight, have a fun day together tomorrow and make it home Sunday night so they can spend Memorial Day back in Iowa.

We had such a great time having Mom and Dad here... It's too bad that we don't get to see them more often. Hopefully in the next few years we will be able to move back to the midwest so that we can be closer to both our families. It was so hard to see them go today but at least I know that we will see them again at the end of June for our trip to Wisconsin. Love you Mom and Dad... xoxo :)