Javelina!!!

I'm so excited, I just saw Javelina, finally!! Javelina are these wild desert pigs that I've heard all about but had never seen. I always have my eye out when we are driving at night looking through the desert to see if I could spot one. Tonight, we got home around 8:00 and I was changing and Glenn went out to get the mail. He yelled for me to come quick and when I did, there were 5 Javelina right outside! 3 were in front of the house right across the street and two were next to our driveway between our house and the neighbor. We watched them for a couple minutes but once they realized we were there, they wandered off down the street. We've heard that Javelina are very smelly. We didn't smell anything but that's probably a good thing! They were across the driveway from us so pretty close. It's really cold outside so maybe in warmer weather you smell them more? Don't know but I was very excited to see them.

A Great Weekend

Several years ago Glenn and I took a trip to Napa and while we were there, we visited Lamborn Family Vineyards which is the home of my favorite Zinfandel. Glenn had arranged for an appointment at Lamborn since he knew how much I loved their wine. We spent the afternoon with Mike & Terry Lamborn on the deck of their vineyard home overlooking the beautiful Pope Valley. What a gorgeous view! While we were there, I was surprised with a large format bottle that Glenn had ordered some time prior to our visit. It could not be shipped so the Lamborn's had held onto it until we could make the visit and pick it up. I have had the bottle in our cellar since then and very carefully transported it with us when we moved across the country this past summer. I always thought I would open the bottle when a certain group of us (4 couples) were all in the same place. This past weekend, our wonderful friends came to visit and 3 of the 4 couples were here so I decided it was time to open the bottle! Who knows when all of us may be in the same place at the same time! I searched for two weeks for the perfect meal to have with my big bottle and came up with an awesome meal if I do say so myself - it was SO delicious! We had braised short ribs with coffee ancho chile sauce (boneless beef ribs so tender, no knife needed!), served over soft polenta with leeks & parmesan and curly mustard greens sauteed in olive oil and garlic. Yum, yum, yum. And the wine was outstanding! It was a 1998 and I was a little worried that it may have been past its prime but it was the wonderful Zin that I remember from back then with that yummy peppery finish. It was a great evening, good friends, good food, good wine.

Momma

My Mom called me the other day to let me know they weren't floating away in all the terrible flooding going on in the Pacific Northwest. That was good to hear but Mom was sick, she has strep throat. Poor Momma. After I talked to her that day, she boiled some water to fix herself some top ramen. She went back to bed to eat her soup. Mmmmm, warm soup on a sore throat. She put her bowl up to take a sip of broth and the bowl spilled all over her chest. Owwww!!! She called me today after going to the doctor and she has 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree burns. Poor Momma! Send good thoughts her way!!!

Visitors

We have lived here for almost 4 months now. My Mom has been here twice. We visited with Glenn's cousin up in Prescott. Glenn's Uncle came to our place to visit for the day. Our friends Ben & Rececca are coming to visit in a couple weeks. My sister and her boyfriend have tickets to come visit in March. Bob and Beanne will visit in April. My sister in law said they hope to visit in the spring. Tonight we are meeting a friend from PA who happens to be in AZ visiting. We really miss all our friends in PA and hope to stay in touch with everyone and see them again but being able to see our family so often is the reason we wanted to make this move and I gotta say, it's really nice. We have had more visitors in the few months we've been here than we ever had before so what we hoped for has so far, been great! I love being closer to everyone so that we are able to have so many visitors and when things settle down, we can travel to our families places as well. We love having visitors so if any of you want to come visit, we have great guest accomodations!

Thanksgiving Review

I hope everyone had a great Turkey Day. We had Thanksgiving dinner outside which was just awesome! We thought about the chilly temps we usually have on Thanksgiving and it made us enjoy our mid 70's weather even more!!!
Everything was SO good! I am usually a traditionalist when it comes to Thanksgiving but this year I decided to try something different for the pumpkin pie. I made the Barefoot Contessa's Pumpkin Banana Mousse Tart instead. OMG, it was SO good!! When we had dessert, we decided that this is the new pumpkin dessert going forward. There will be no more pumpkin pie, now it will be pumpkin banana mousse tart on Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don't usually do many Barefoot Contessa Recipes because they almost always contain butter and/or heavy cream. The tart has both but what the heck, it's Thanksgiving!

Gobble Gobble

I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy your family and friends and all the yummy food! We will be spending the holiday with our friends Duane & Stephanie. We thought we would have a couple more people but that fell through so it will just be the four of us which is just fine. We will have a great day! I made Cranberry Orange Walnut Sauce and I am going to make a Pumpkin Banana Mousse Tart. I also bought a bag of potatoes, Brussels Sprouts (for those of you that say Ewww, if you've never tried tried them roasted, you must do so. They are SO good), and we will take a couple bottles of wine. We are hoping to have dinner outside as the weather is supposed to be mid 70's. Nice! Enjoy.

I'm a Slacker

My Sister in law recently wrote to me and asked if we had been out of town because it's been so long since I posted anything. Nope, I'm just a slacker! I've also had a horrible cold so I'll use that as an excuse too! Last weekend, I had no voice at all. I've never lost my voice like that before. I would open my mouth to talk and only a whisper would come out. I'm doing much better now but Glenn is now fighting a cold. It's that time of year I guess, even in the desert. Here is a couple pictures I took a few weeks ago. The previous weekend, we had turned a corner near our house and I counted 13 balloons. It was so pretty and wished I had my camera with me. I keep watching for them to take off from that field again so I can get a picture of the sky full of balloons but in the meantime, I'll post what I have.

My "Office"

Here is a picture of my "office". Yes, I'm still working in the kitchen. We have someone building some shelving and work spaces for the office and until that is done, this is where I work. The person we hired was supposed to install last weekend but that didn't work out so is supposed to be here this weekend. It's actually a nice workspace as it's open to the rest of the house but I am really looking forward to having the kitchen be a kitchen and not always have a computer and work stuff all over. My phone sits on the counter next to the computer and the cords hang across the walkway between that counter and the refrigerator. It's an accident waiting to happen! I tripped once or twice stepping over the cords but I am usually very careful. At the end of the day, I usually move the phone and headset etc over to the other counter so it's not a hazard!! So, when you people at work call me, this is where I am!! More pics to come......

Fun! Fun! Fun!

I just went to get the "boring mail" and take the garbage out, blah, blah, blah. I came back in to go through the boring mail and it wasn't so boring today! What's that in that orange envelope? I had not one but TWO halloween cards! How fun is that?!! Thank you, thank you for the halloween fun. What a surprise - I love it!!
I took pictures over the weekend to post since many have asked for pictures. I'll get them up soon, I promise!
Yesterday, we went to a birds of the night presentation at a local park and I learned that the nighttime birds I keep seeing are most likely a sort of nighthawk. We also got to see the release of a great horned owl. It was really cool. We were up high on a hill and they opened the crate and the owl hesitated a moment and then he took off and flew down, down, down the hill off into nature where he was meant to be.

It's Tuesday

Yep, nothing special - just Tuesday. I just went to get the mail and don't you always go to the mailbox with a sense of anticipation. I wonder what will be there you think to yourself. But there's nothing exciting in the mail. Realy, hardly ever is it fun. It's junk or bills. I want some fun mail!
Ok, gotta go now. We are supposed to have "pool school" tonight. The guy from the pool company comes out and teaches us how to take care of it etc. He isn't here yet but should be any minute.

Batty Birds

I posted about the wildlife a few posts ago and how I love to watch the bats fly around at night. After watching them closer, I don't think they are bats. They are too bird like. I'm trying to figure out what they are and am not very successful. Nighthawks maybe? Don't know. This is probably not terribly interesting to y'all but it's what's on my mind. I've been searching the internet trying to identify the birds/bats. It's hard because they are always flying. The pictures on the internet are always of birds sitting still. If any of you are bird people, let me know what they might be!

Splash!

We took a swim in the pool for the first time tonight - woo hoo! We were so excited to FINALLY get to go swimming. It was pretty cold but we got in and once we were used to it, it wasn't so bad. We swam around for 30 minutes or so. The heater should be hooked up in the next few days which will make it nicer soon. We took pictures but they are all stupid so I need to take some more and will post one soon, I promise!

I Love This Song!!!

Have y'all heard the new CD from Queen Latifah? She has done a cover of the old Phoebe Snow song from the 70's "Poetry Man", remember that song? I first heard it on our local smooth jazz station and LOVED it. If you haven't heard it, go to the internet and find it and listen to it. Let me know what you think! I just bought the CD today and have listened to about half of it and am really liking it. I want to go get a martini, turn that CD on and mellow out.......

Resolution

If you read the long previous post about the pool issues, I think we have at long last come to a resolution. "They" were out today and are going to put a thin travertine tile on the patio. There will be a small gap between the patio and the travertine decking that will have crushed rock for water drainage. I think it will be fine and I'm very happy to finally have a resolution. We've been back and forth with them and escalating to the next higher levels for several weeks. They are also going to pay for it which is great. They also said we would be swimming by this weekend! Woo Hoo - Finally!!!

Pool Issues and a picture!!!!

A regular question I get is how are you enjoying the pool? And, post more pictures!! Well, the pool is not done but it wasn't supposed to be done until mid October and we've run into problems so don't know if that will happen or not and I'm not holding my breath. This is a very sore subject with me. This is a long post so be prepared!! We've had many problems along the way but we seem to be at a major stumbling block. This pool company we are working with has horrible customer service. I've never built a pool before but I have to hope that other pool companies are better than this one. Let's see, they installed the pool equipment wrong, put the re-bar in wrong, built the concrete in the spa incorrectly, built the columns at the wrong height, didn't build the columns evenly apart, didn't put the irrigation sleeves in the columns when they were built, laid the travertine tile on the deck area crooked. There are a several more but you get the point. All of these things have been fixed but the pool company didn't catch a single one. We had to call them each time and tell them they did it wrong. Hello, shouldn't the project manager check once in a while to be sure their contractors are doing things according to the plan? And another big gripe with me is these contractors work all day in my backyard so they bring their breakfast and lunch and eat in the backyard which is fine but then they put all their garbage in a pile in my backyard!!! Gross!!!!! I swear every bird in the neighborhood loves my backyard. Emily has had quite a show with all the birds back there. We complained and most of it was picked up so it's not so bad now but for a while there, I was concerned about other critters showing up for the feast. So, the big issue now is that they didn't lay the travertine on our patio. Our request and the pictures we were shown, had the travertine laid on our patio and it extended out to surround the pool. That was always our plan from day 1 and it's what we asked for and it's what we were shown in the pool design phase but it's not what they put in the contract. If they had planned on including the patio it would have been a separate line item on the contract. Since it wasn't a separate line item and we didn't catch that (and how would we know that it was supposed to be a separate line item?) they now say it wasn't part of the contract and we didn't pay for it so they aren't going to do anything about it. We say we asked for it, we have friends who were there during the design process that can vouch for that, they designed it and showed us computer generated images with the patio covered so we believed that they drew up the contract according to what we agreed upon. It's not so simple as just ordering more travertine and covering the patio. It's all supposed to be one level so you could be on the patio and walk straight out onto the pool decking area with no change in level. It is currently built so that the pool decking area comes up even with the patio. If you laid tile on the patio now, it would be higher than the rest of the decking. We want them to fix it, they don't want to fix it. I have a feeling we're screwed since it's apparently not in the contract. I feel very cheated and taken advantage of and it's driving me crazy! I want this resolved and finished so we can get on with using and enjoying our backyard. I'll keep you posted on our progress and here is a picture - finally! It's going to be really nice someday!!

October 3rd

October 3rd is a special day for me and Glenn - it's our anniversary! This year we celebrate being married 9 years. Wow, time flies by doesn't it? It sure doesn't seem like it's been that long. It has been a great 9 years and there will be many more to come! Love you darling!!!

Wildlife

A few night's ago we pulled off the road on the way home to watch the bats. Yep, every time I'm driving home at night I look for the bats around the streetlights. There is one particular spot where there are usually several flying around. It's at a spot where traffic is basically non-existent which is probably why they like it. We pulled off the road and watched 5 of them flying around and around. It was cool! A couple weeks ago, we saw a coyote in the desert fairly close to the road. I originally missed him but Glenn stopped and pulled back a little bit and there he was! I rolled down my window to talk to him and he ran away. Yes, I know they are wild animals and are dangerous and I would never approach one. I've told this story and people tell me to be careful, don't go near them etc - yes, I know! I was in the safety of the car and he was a little ways away from me-sheesh! I just wanted to say hi but he didn't want to hear me. There is also a place near the entrance to our development that I hear there is a coyote regularly. Right across the street behind a cinder block wall there is a couple of dogs that love to bark at the coyote. There is a large rock in the backyard of this house and the dogs climb up on top of the rock which puts them at the same height as the top of the cinder block wall. They stand up there and bark and bark at the desert across the street. Maybe they are calling the coyote? It's hilarious to see the little dog some little chihuahua type barking for all he's worth. Little does he know, he is coyote food and he should enjoy the safety of his backyard!!

Reader Poll

I was out to dinner a couple weeks ago with a friend of mine (and a few other people). A friend of hers came along who I did not know prior to going to dinner (we will call her stranger friend). Stranger friend also brought along her daughter. So I don't know stranger friend and daughter prior to this dinner. We chatted and they seemed like very nice people. When our food came out, everyone was sharing so we could taste the other dishes which I love to do so you can get a little sample of everything! I had a soup that I offered for everyone to try. Stranger friend and daughter both wanted to try it so I passed it on down. They both picked up their used spoons and put them in my soup! There were addtional clean spoons on the table so I was not pleased that they put their used spoons in my soup! Not sure why because I didn't used to be this way but if I know you, I don't mind so much eating after you. If I don't know you, I don't want to eat after you. Skeeves me out. How about y'all out there? Do you mind eating after other people or am I just weird?

Mom's Visit

Well, we took my Mom to the airport today and she is headed home. She was here visiting for 10 days and it was so nice having her here. We did a couple of "touristy" things but mostly, we just hung out and ran around doing errands and it was great! I loved exploring the area a bit more and having Mom with me to do it. I was able to find my way around pretty darn well! It had been a very long time since just me and Mom have had the opportunity to just hang out together and I really enjoyed it. I hated to see her go but she will be back again soon, she bought tickets while she was here for her and her husband to come back the first week of November!

How Cute is This???

We make latte's every weekend at home and Emily knows the sound of the latte machine when it's steaming milk. She comes running and she gets foam from the top of the milk. On our drive from PA to AZ, we were happy to find a Starbucks right off the highway. Glenn went in for latte's while I stayed in the car with kitty. When he came out, he had two latte's and a little sample cup full of foam for Emily. How cute is she drinking her Starbucks?!! Good kitty.

Windows

We need window coverings on all our windows and can't make a decision. I am so not good at this kind of thing! Almost any home decorating type of thing, I need help with. I have decided on things in the past that after getting them, I didn't like. I have a hard time imagining a little swatch sample in the big picture. So I think I want blinds which sounds easy right? No. Real wood for feux wood? White or off white? How wide do I want them? I think I want white but then I need to paint all my trim and doors white (they are now off white) which I would love but do I want to commit to that? Window coverings are also quite pricey so I must make the right decision! Oh the pressure! We are really bad at making a decision so for now, we have the oh so lovely paper blinds on the windows that need them and the rest are bare. We really need to figure this out not only for privacy but to keep the sun from heating up the house so much!

Surprise!

I just love surprises and I got one tonight! Stephanie called me this afternoon and said that she and Duane wanted to go this place for happy hour. Sounds good to me, I'm always up for happy hour! She offered to come pick me up and we would meet the boys there after they got off work. Again, sounds good to me! We do this often where we touch base in the afternoon and then meet somewhere for dinner or whatever but it's usually very casual and we figure it out as we go. She tells me that she is putting on a skirt because it's so hot outside and this place is casual. So, I follow suit and get ready and put on a casual skirt and top etc. We head down to the restaurant and when we go in, there is nowhere to sit in the bar but it was a really cool bar! Steph went to the restroom and while she was gone, I scoped out the bar for places to hang out. She came back and we were waiting for the boys to arrive. I was telling her a good spot in the bar and wanted to head in and get a drink while we waited but then, the boys arrived - yay! As they walked in, Glenn and Duane shook hands with this man outside and they all headed in. Who the heck is he? No one told me we had someone joining us. As they walk in, we are being led into the restaurant. What the f? It was then that Steph told me it was a surprise for me! It was a welcome to town party and there were a bunch of people invited! What a fun night! We had appetizers and margarita's and we all chatted and had a wonderful time! We ordered dinner and I was so full from everything else that I have a wonderful lunch for tomorrow! Anyway, I met some great people that I hope to see again and had a lovely, lovely evening!!!

Baby It's Hot Outside

I was on the phone today with someone and they said that they had seen it was 110 degrees here and wow, that was hot huh?! Yep, it's pretty dang hot! I heard on the news the other day that there was some sort of record broken for the most consecutive days at 110 degrees or more. Lucky us to move at just the right time huh?! We just got home at 9pm this evening and it is 100 degrees outside. We appear to have gotten home just in time as it is pouring rain and thunder and lightning out there now. Sure will be nice when we can escape the heat in our pool..... It is coming along. The tile was placed around the top edge today. I'm hoping in a couple weeks we will be swimming!!!
So the long weekend is coming up. Yay, three days to sleep in! We don't have any big plans. More organizing in the house because it just needs to be organized and because my Momma is coming to visit the following weekend - YAY!!! I'm very excited for her visit. So what are y'all doing this long weekend - any big plans?

Home Show

We went to the Home Show yesterday. I've never been to one, it was kinda fun. We thought there would be more home decor kind of stuff but we got some good contacts from going to the show. A landscaper, a window covering person (I have an appointment tomorrow) and an exterminator. I also got a free toilet plunger. Don't laugh, you never know when you're going to need one and we don't have one here! After the show, we went to find lunch and found a funky mexican place. It was set up like a garage with cases of beer stacked all over. It looked like it would be a crazy place on a weekend night. No air conditioning but a fun place. There were lots of people sitting outsid in the 105 degree day. Crazy I tell ya!
Many have asked for more pictures which I will do, I promise! We still don't have the home computers hooked up which is how I load my pictures. I have relied on Glenn to load them on his work machine and then e-mail them to me so I'll get him to do a couple more until we get the home computer set up one of these days.

Better Off Dead

Friday night's are pizza, wine and movie night! So last night we watched Better Off Dead. Love it! It's one of those old 80's movies that we love to watch every so often. John Cusack and David Ogden Stiers are so very young!! It's fun, if you haven't seen it - go watch it. It's a mindless just having fun kinda movie. And John Cusack is in it so it's gotta be good, right?
On the unpacking front, the main part of the house is close to being organized. We just loaded up my car with boxes and are headed to take them to recycle. The kitchen is actually functional now. Everything is pretty much put away and I even remember where I put stuff! There is still lots to do and hopefully we can get a chunk done this weekend.
Have a great weekend everyone!

I've been busy but I'm back!

Lots to report!! This is a long one so hang in there!
Our stuff arrived on Monday so I've been busy, busy, busy trying to get semi-organized. What a mess of boxes and paper we have! I have most of the major stuff in the kitchen unpacked and our clothes are unpacked so the essentials are now available - yay! There is still stuff sitting all over the place but it will find a home all in due time.
Monday was also my birthday. The movers didn't leave until around 5:00 but after they left we showered and headed out to dinner and I had a wonderful meal! Salmon topped with crab served with chorizo mashed potatoes and mango avocado salsa - yum!! We also discovered a great new wine called Opolo Zinfandel. I love Zin's! Deep dark red exploding with fruit, it was delicious. I chose a restaurant we had been to before as I liked it and it wasn't too far of a drive. After I decided on the restaurant, we found out that Monday is also half price wine night! Bonus!!
This morning the pool people sprayed on the "shockcrete" which is the basic lining of the pool. It actually looks like a pool now and not a dirt hole with rebar and pipes sticking out! We have to water the shockcrete 5 times a day for a week and then they will come back and put the pool coating on. It's coming along!
I had a stressful morning today. I'm on the phone talking to someone at work and I see a bug. Gotta go so I can get the bug. You gotta get them right away so that they don't disappear and then you don't know where they are. So I get my handy dandy bug catcher and go to catch the bug and see that it's a scorpion!!! EWWWWWWWW!!! I put my bug catcher over it and went to get Glenn. He was in the shower but got out to come see once I told him there was a freaking scorpion in the kitchen! He got it into the bug catcher and flushed it down the toilet. Ick, ick, ick. I was so happy because I hadn't seen any but now I know they are around here. It was a little tiny guy but I'm sure his family is somewhere nearby. I'm hoping it was a flukey thing. There were guys in the backyard making a huge ruckus spraying the pool and Glenn had been out and in several times so hopefully that was why and this wont' be a regular thing. After the scorpion incident, I find several ants in the corner near Emily's food dish. Criminy, first a scorpion and now I have ants?!! I'm not scared of the ants, they're just a pain in the butt. I wipe them up and a few more appear and I wipe them up and a few more appear. This went on 4 or 5 times. I then saw where they were coming in. A few days ago I had HGTV on and they had a little tip about ants and said that they won't cross coffee grounds. So we put coffee grounds in front of where they were entering and I haven't seen any since. Damn, what a morning! Glenn is going to buy some bug spray on this way home tonight and spray the perimeter of the house. We will also get an exterminator service at some point.
Ok, that's all. I told you this was a long one!!!

Relaxing by the pool!!

A few people have asked if I'm (we're) enjoying hanging out at the pool in this warm weather. So, we took a picture of me by the pool yesterday enjoying a Corona!! No diving!!!

TGIF!!!!

Yay, it's Friday! I have been so tired the last couple days. I am looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow! And, it's birthday princess weekend! My birthday is Monday so this weekend I say I get to do anything I want! Darling, are you reading this??

The truck is supposed to be here Monday with all our stuff. Perfect birthday huh, lots of boxes to open!!! It will be nice to have our furniture and housewares! I have to hand it to our friends Duane & Stephanie. If not for them, we would really be roughing it! They lent us chairs to sit in at our kitchen counter, a coffee maker, a cutting board, knife, glasses, a pan, a wine opener among other things. All these things have made it so much easier!

Have a good weekend everyone! A few people have asked for more pictures. Stay tuned!

So, who is there??

Ok, who is out there reading my blog? I'm just curious. I get a couple comments here and there and once in a while someone tells me they are reading it but I'm curious who is out there reading?

WooHoo!

No our stuff isn't here yet. But I just have to say how nice it's going to be to buy wine, beer and any other alcoholic beverage in any grocery store! Even at Sam's Club & Costco!! We were in Sam's Club with our friends over the weekend and they have a whole aisle of vodka, gin, tequila, whiskey etc not to mention a fine selection of wine and beer! How nice is that?!! For those of you out there not familiar with the PA laws, you have to go to a state store for wine and hard alcohol. Some of the state stores were specialty stores and had a better wine selection than the "regular" state stores. If you want beer, you have to go to a special beverage store that sells beer and soda and when you go to one of these special beer stores, you can only buy a case of beer. You cannot buy a six pack/12 pack etc. If you want a six pack, you have to go to a restaurant that sells beer and there are no alcoholic beverages in the grocery store. It's workable, you just have to know the rules but I like the rules here better!!!

Running Around

It's the weekend and our first chance to really spend some time running around and getting errands done. Every time we run out, we drive my car so that I can get used to finding my way around and so I can get used to driving my new car which I am loving! We have also been exploring the local shopping strips to see what stores are nearby. There is a decent selection of places to run errands but there are a few stores that I would love to have nearby. It's a big area of new development so I think more shopping can't be far behind. I am also really hoping for a better grocery store. We bought some paint samples today to test out on the walls to see if we like the colors so we are off to paint now.

Getting Settled - Or Not!

So here we are in our new house. Our empty new house. It's kind of weird to be living in an empty house. We thought the movers would be here today or tomorrow but they are now saying it will be sometime between Saturday and Monday :-( We have a bed to sleep in because we bought a new bed and we have a chair that a friend lent to us which is at our kitchen counter and that's it. I want my stuff!! I know it will here soon enough but I'm sure getting anxious.

Wow, what a ride!

We have arrived! It was a looonngg drive which I will fill you in on but first, I have to say thank you to all my friends in PA for the wonderful send off's that we had last week. I didn't have access to my computer on Friday or I would have posted earlier!! On Thursday night, our neighbors had a going away party for us which was wonderful. Like I've said many times, I lived in a really great neighborhood. The people are what made it so great and I don't know if we will ever find such a great group of neighbors again. We miss you guys! On Friday at work, there was a lot of great food that many people brought in for a farewell to me. Thank you again to everyone, it was wonderful and very much appreciated. Lots of goodbyes but as I kept saying, I would not say good bye, but only see you later! We will miss our friends in PA and hope to see you again!

So, the drive was pretty uneventful which is a good thing! We drove very long days in order to make it here in 3 days. We left much later than we had planned on Saturday, we didn't head out until almost 11:00am but we drove for 9 hours and made it to the other side of Indianapolis where we stayed the night. We were up early the next day and had a very long day of driving and made it into Texas that night and then the next day we drove to our house - yay! We travelled along a highway that followed the old Route 66. I wish we could have driven along Route 66 for a little bit of the time but we were high tailing it to get here and we had kitty in the car so we couldn't stop to do anything anyway. I was singing Get Your Kicks on Route 66 several times along the way as we kept going through the cities in the song! Anyway, I told many of you that I wasn't looking forward to the drive because Emily our cat hates being in the car and it was going to be a long drive with her meowing all the way. Well, she completely surprised us and was great in the car! We put her carrier (which she won't go anywhere near normally) in the backseat and when we started pulling out of the neighborhood, she ran back to the carrier and sat in there and that pretty much where she stayed the rest of the trip! It took her a day to relax and realize it was ok to lay down and relax and she would come up and visit us every two or three hours but then back in her carrier. Who would have guessed?!! Anyway, we are glad to finally be here and look forward to our belongings arriving in a couple days.

More Moving Tales

I stopped by some friends house after work for a quick drink (or two or maybe three. ok, two and a half). We chatted about stuff, ya know and hung out. Love these guys! When it was time to leave I got ready to head out and darn it all, the tears they started a coming. I've been doing really well and I thought maybe I could avoid the tears but I don't think so. I keep saying that I really hope it's not goodbye but see you later. I want to see these people again so hopefully we will make that happen.

The movers came today to pack up the house. Holy cow, moving is a pain the ass. I really really hope we love our new home because I don't want to move again for a very long time. There are boxes everywhere and so many things to do and I'm tired and just want to go to bed. I did get some stuff done tonight and everything else will get done in due time I suppose - or not. I am sad to leave my friends here in PA but because we are in between living here and moving there, I am just ready for it to be done and be settled again.

Emily

We took Emily, our cat to the vet on Saturday to get caught up with her shots, talk to him about tranquilizers for the drive across country etc. She hates riding in the car so I have been a bit nervous about how she will do riding across country. After the vet, we decided to take a little drive on the highway to see how she did. She was doing fairly well, letting out a little meow every so often but not too bad. I was thinking maybe she would be ok after getting used to it. So we continue driving and we are almost home and I smell something nasty. Turns out she pooped and pee'd in her carrier! She has never done that or gone to the bathroom anywhere but in her litter box. I never even considered that would be something we needed to be concerned about with her in the car. We will take her for a ride a couple more times this week and see how she does. I hate to do it but we may just have to drug her for a few days. The vet gave us the kitty equivalent of valium and another drug. Poor kitty.....

Pool Progress

Here is a picture of our pool!

Yeah, it's a big dirt hole right now but keep checking back and soon (I hope it's soon) it will be a lovely pool with beautiful blue water just waiting for me to jump in!!!

Happy Hour

I just returned from Happy Hour to say farewell to me. Thank you to those that came and shared a nice evening. Had a few drinks, shared some stories - nice night.


And.....
I haven't sent this blog address to very many people yet as I'm still getting used to how everything works. Thanks to you guys that have left comments. Keep em coming, I like it! And I just changed it so that I will get e-mail notification when I receive a comment. So now, when I log into my personal e-mail, I will have your comments in my e-mail as well. Cool!

The First

We said our first good-byes this evening. One of our neighbors had us over for dinner. We had a wonderful dinner and then we sat after dinner and finished our wine and chatted. When it was time to head out I realized that I would not see this person again before we leave (she is headed out of town on Thursday and won't be back before we leave). How weird! I know we've been planning this move for months but now that it is finally close, it seems surreal. Our dinner tonight was with a neighbor/friend that I wish I could hang out with some more! She happens to travel out our way on occasion and we hope to see again down the road. We have met many people that have business or family or friends out West and hopefully our paths will cross again. We have been in this great neighborhood for 9 years and it's the best. There will by more good byes to come and I feel like as the move date gets closer, it's going to get harder!

I am going to attemp to post a picture, stand by! Hey, I did it! This is our new house. There is no landscaping yet so I'll post an updated one at some point in time down the road. And another picture of the kitchen and down the hall to the guest room that is just waiting for people to come visit!

Moving West

We are very excited to be headed West and be closer to our family. My Mom already has tickets to come down and we're hoping additional family and friends follow suit. Many people have told me to keep in touch, send pictures etc. I have toyed with the idea of starting a blog in the past and this seems the perfect opportunity. I can post info about our new adventure and those that are interested can tune in. So check back regularly and I'll try to be good about posting updates and pictures etc. Oh, and be sure to reply to my posts every now and then so I know you're out there!

Testing

I set up a blog on blogger. This is my first test post.