15 months later...

Let's see...where did I leave off all those months ago...

• We made the anticipated trip to move K and a load of stuff.  Spent 2 long crazy days looking at any house that had land available. Made an offer on the house that had been at the top of our list since we started searching online when K got back from his interview.  Had our initial offer accepted outright...no back and forth at all.  I interviewed for the job, despite our laptop crashing the night before and I had not saved the PowerPoint seminar to my USB drive yet (thank goodness for serendipity...soon after the laptop crashed, our realtor called asking if we could swing by her office to sign some papers so we could make our offer the next day..um, yeah, if I can borrow a computer to save the presentation that I had emailed to myself to my USB) 

• Several long drives from Kansas to NC later, including trips at Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years (plus a couple more by Kirk in March and July), we finally got all of the critters (and most of our stuff) moved.

• For the 2nd time in our house-owning years, K got a house for his birthday.  Dad and I flew out for closing, and then I left Dad for a couple of weeks to help get a few things fixed on the house and help K with horse fence.  That was about the only negative on this place was the lack of horse fence, but on the other hand it allowed us to put up what we wanted, which was fence that not only kept the horses in, but the dogs as well.

• I was offered and started my job in late January.   Despite some ups and downs in the company, I have really enjoyed what I do on a day-to-day basis, have learned a lot, and have some great coworkers.  

• K loves his job.   He has rapidly earned the trust and respect of his supervisors (of course) and has been assigned several challenging projects and extra activities that show he is being recognized for his contributions.  One unexpected turn has been some sales travel, but he is a great representative for the company, and I am getting a routine down for holding down the fort while he is gone.

Since it has been a while, I thought I'd start back up with pictures from the move and our first month, and we'll see if I can get back into a routine and get caught up over the next few weeks.

So, on with the show....

Here Henry enjoys the scenery from my lap.  He seemed to be the one most interested in the scenery during the trip...he hardly would sit down and relax, he always had to be looking out a window.  He and Charlie the cat moved on Christmas as they were the ones we trusted the most to be ok left alone in the house for a long weekend while we traveled back to get another load on New Years.  Poor Charlie spent the entire trip drooling under the seat of the truck.  The girl cats moved on the next trip with K in the truck while the pups rode with me in the Subaru.

The dogs, on the other hand, really could have cared less.  They snoozed the whole way, as Bode demonstrates.

Here Charlie shows off his new spot...atop the kitchen cabinets.  He discovered he could get from the counter top to the top of the fridge, and then up to the top of the cabinets.  Thankfully this only lasted a couple of month as I had really hoped to be able to put decorative stuff up there, although for quite some time we did only place non-breakable items there.

This is the view from our front door, although, the trellises are missing now as K wiped one out with one of the moving trucks.  And the trees in the middle area are gone and the flowerbed has been expanded...but that is another set of pictures.  Ardee enjoys sitting here checking out the view.

Three of the horses (AsYou, Streaker and Twister) soon after they arrived checking out the neighbor horses.  We hired an awesome horse hauler who was wonderful, and hauled the ducks in an extra stall space, along with feed and hay that we had left and anything else Dad got thrown in.  Thank goodness I didn't have to listen to 20+ hours of quacking!  He ended up being delayed several days, and so it worked out perfectly that we had to fence almost done by the time they arrived.  We had a dry lot area fenced off, and with tons of grass, it worked well to be able to slowly introduce them to the grass (stuff they hadn't seen in months in KS).

The ducks were glad to get here and stretch their legs after 2.5 days stuck in crates.  They seemed to enjoy green grass and warm weather as much as the horses.

Bode looking into the woods behind the house.  While the pasture was not fenced, luckily the dog yard area had fence on 3 sides, so K was able to finish that off pretty easily (relatively speaking).  The house even came with a small room in the walkout basement with a doggy door, so the pups were all set.  While they may not be thrilled, they pretty easily made the adjustment from full time doggy day care with my parents to being on their own in the yard all day.  It seems that the bunnies and squirrels that they stalk in the woods probably have a lot to do with that.

The state is set

I know I've been away for a few weeks...but lots has been going on around here. Most importantly, we are moving...to North Carolina (for some reason, 'The P's are moving to NC' reminds me of this Simpson's clip). K interviewed there a month ago yesterday, and they called a couple of weeks ago and offered him the job. Very excited, except for the whole starting Nov. 2nd part. Yep, they pretty much want him there immediately. So we are working like crazy to get stuff done around here and things set up there. We will pick up a 26ft rental truck on Tues to haul a load over on Thurs/Fri and unload Sat into a storage building. Sun and Mon we will spend house hunting, and Tues the 1st I have an interview before heading back home on Wed. Yep, I have an interview already! My former supervisor at my previous job moved to NC just over a month ago, to a company I had been looking at jobs at all along. Very nervous as I have to give a seminar, but I'm sure it will go fine...hope so anyway! The only downside of the position is that they also want people to start pretty quickly, so we are really hoping we can find a house soon so that we can be moving in early Dec. Luckily we have a great start on the mortgage process, so closing in a month will potentially be feasible. Have found a place for K to live for the next month+, and have a horse/duck transporter lined up, so things definitely seem to be falling into place. Needless to say, the house is not looking the best, with boxes and furniture being lined up to load on Wed. K and Dad have been moving the farm type stuff to the yard so it is easier to move, and its beginning to look like we are having a farm auction:
Trying to get a few things done before we leave. One important one involving this gorgeous huge oak tree behind the house:
Mom and I have been wanting to climb it for years. Today was the day. Didn't actually go very far up (K and Dad were concerned for our safety) but did have a wonderful time taking pictures of the view, and each other:
My mums are gorgeous this year...providing wonderful color to my flower beds. So excited to see what all I can grow in NC!

A Week to Relax

Ahhh...one week with nothing much going on!

This past week we traveled to New Mexico to assess it as a possible location to relocate to. Crazy short trip trying to pack a lot into essentially 1.5 days. Met with a realtor, explored the area, and had an awesomely fun trip to White Sands National Monument:It's trips like this one that make me so thankful that K and I travel together sooo much better now than we used to. Some of our trips early in our marriage were spent with neither of us in the best of moods. But we've been much better the last several years...and that proved to be a good thing on Thursday. We were headed back to the airport and K was wanting to have lunch. I thought it would be better to just go to the airport and have lunch there so we would get the rental car back in time. Once we got through security, we were headed towards a food court when K's phone rang. It was the company he was interviewing with calling to say that our flight was cancelled, and we were going to now fly to Chicago (instead of DFW) and then back to Wichita, putting us in almost 4 hours late. We decided to go to the gate and see what was up since we had just checked in and had not been told about this cancellation. When we get to the gate, there was a flight leaving at that moment to DFW, and it had empty seats! So, we skipped lunch and got on board. Luckily we had snacks with us and we were quite happy to have waited for lunch!

Back home fall has arrived...
...and we get to enjoy this week of nothing-ness before we are off on another location visit next week..

Home, briefly

I hope K is happy...all of his impatience is quickly being negated by the crazy busy-ness we are in the midst of. He was gone last week for an interview, got home late Thursday night, then we left Friday for OK, got home today and then we both leave early Tuesday for a job interview/area visit. Things are moving along well on the job front though, so not going to complain about that. Just looking forward to being on the other side...moved and settled in!

Another sunrise picture...took lots this week, but several were taken while I was driving, so they didn't come out very clear.
The butterflies have been flocking to my parent sedums this past week.
We had a really nice trip to Wichita/OK. Friday we attended a family friends' memorial service...it was a really wonderful tribute to a wonderful man. Then we headed to another family friends' newly built home for an amazing evening of friendship and food. Yesterday was K's step-dads' 70th birthday party. Had a great time making him worry about how we were going to roast him...but we were pretty darn nice! Was a lot of fun to see friends that we rarely see. So I'll share pictures of a couple of those friends. First up is Todd, showing off spurs that he hand crafted for his wife...what talent! I put in a request for a pair of my own! Too bad my first name isn't Jennifer, or she might have not made it home with this pair!
And we'll end this short post with Glenn. He is a very talented singer...in fact we asked him to sing our first dance song (I Cross My Heart) at our wedding. He was wonderful to listen to as usual...in fact I asked if he'd call me every night and sing me a lullaby as he left last night.

Go Cats!

I'm keeping it fairly short this week...our craziness that I mentioned last week has begun, and I'm hoping that I can keep up with it all and continue to post here...at least a little glimpse into what's going on...over the next few weeks.

First up, changing it up a bit, this week we have a couple of late afternoon/sunset pics. The first is smoke from a fire on fort that drifted all the way to out by our house.


Not much new on the creative front...a lot of things in various stages of completion, but only 1 LO finished, and no picture of it yet.

Our big event for the week was attending the KSU vs. Kent State football game Saturday. I was so excited as we walked into Cat Town to have dinner before the game and there was Willie...so I had to get my picture with him!The new dark purple end zones are awesome looking:
And here are K and I at the stadium:
And the best part of all (well, besides winning!)? We got some much needed rain...that started just as the game was finishing! We went prepared with our rain ponchos, but since they were predicting thunderstorms, we weren't too excited about the idea of a rain delay, but with 45 seconds left in the game, the rain began to fall, and the lightening filled the sky soon afterwards. Woke up this morning to 1.25 inches of rain! Not enough by a long shot, but much appreciated!

Let the craziness begin!

Another late summer week, another batch of sunrise pictures. Sorry if it gets boring...but it is what I'm seeing a lot of these days...that and ragweed, and I promise the sunrises are much prettier than the ragweed and my allergic eyes & nose!

Here are 3 of my favorites from this past week.

And here is something a bit different...tonight's moonrise. So pretty with the clouds and the barn and the field...
Let's see...on the crafty side of life, I completed a bunch of scrapbook kits this week. I admit that they don't stretch my creativity like designing my own layouts, but they are super easy to get done, and it's an easy way to get things scrapped. I tend to use my own designs more when I'm wanting to tell more of a story, or a more important story...I never feel that kits 1. give you enough room for long journaling, and 2. feel personal enough for the important things. But, they are a fast and easy way to scrap every day pictures that might otherwise just sit in the photo albums but never be seen by anyone. I also finished up a couple more Prima Live projects, but I don't have pictures of them...have to remember to do it when I have good outside light to use or they come out pretty yellowed in the light indoors.

Mom and Dad came out this weekend, and while Dad and K rode the horses and I worked on kits, Mom worked on a couple small and relatively simple quilts she has been wanting to try. They aren't finished, but they are super adorable so far, so can't wait to see how they turn out. Much like when I was working on my rag quilt last weekend, she got tons of help from the pups...Lucky being the most helpful:
And he wouldn't move. She ended up leaving him there for ~30 minutes and doing something else until he decided to relocate. Not that he's spoiled or anything! Actually he just celebrated his 14th birthday last Friday (9/9, the same day as grandpa Ron's), so he can get away with most anything these days. I am about a 5th of the way through getting my rag quilt edges snipped...and we even got to try it out unfinished after having a kitty accident in bed at ~11pm Saturday night. Slow and steady is my mantra for getting it finished, but I am getting rather excited to have a blanket on the bed that still covers me even with dogs in the middle weighing it down (seriously, if you have never slept with 50-70lb dog blanket-weights on blankets that barely go down the sides of the bed to begin with, especially on cold winter nights, you don't know what kind of frozen body parts you are missing!)

And did I mention crazy? This weekend we'll be headed to a KSU football game with G&J (GO CATS!), then K has his next interview next Wed/Thurs., followed by a trip to Wichita/OK for a friends' memorial service and K's step-fathers' 70th birthday party at the end of the week. Then the next week we are working to schedule trips for both of us to visit the two places he interviewed with a couple of weeks ago to determine if we think we can live there (completely different climate and lifestyle than what we are used to). He keeps complaining about how impatient he is to move on to an exciting new job, and I keep saying that when things start rolling, we are going to be going crazy with everything that we have to get done. I think he's starting to see my point with the schedule that is lining up to take us through the rest of September.

I am excited about what the future holds for us, but I know once I'm away I'll miss KS again...the changing farmland with the seasons, seeing for miles and miles (including all of those wonderful sunrises), the ragweed, er, no no no, not the ragweed, and, especially at this time of year...the sunflowers...

Whooooosh

Yep, that was the sound of a long weekend flying past! I live for these 3-day weekends, but never seem to get done all that is on my to-do list. I say we should have 3-day weekends every week...either that or I shouldn't have to work at all!

So, more sunrises this week.
And just one of the many deer we see on our way to work. It drives the pups nuts when they go jumping out of the fields and across the road in front of us. There are a couple spots where they tend to cross, so we have at least learned to be on the look-out for them to avoid having a collision. In one spot there are a couple of does with fawns (one has twins) who still have their adorable spots who we see quite often, and in the other there are several bucks and does that cross. This is one of the does, but her fawn took off and I didn't get a picture of him.
K was at interviews this week. They went really well, and we expect follow-up to be coming soon. While he was away, I was home sweating in the heat and humidity doing chores alone. My parents were awesome and kept Bode & Lucky, so that Ardee & I hung out on the farm together. He is so good and easy to deal with (i.e. he eats well and doesn't run off), and I feel a bit more secure having him here...heck, he barked at the horses one night when I was trying to defend Chelse (the old horse) so she could eat all of her feed. He seemed to enjoy the special attention of getting to run the place on his own...he didn't even seem to care when K got home, while the other 2 smothered him. Poor middle child needed the extra attention! Here we are on our way into town one morning.
K has been letting the horses graze the lower field below the barn on weekends. They like the plentiful green grass, and it has slowed their hay eating a bit. Plus Chelse usually doesn't join them, and that means she gets to graze and drink and do whatever she pleases without them bothering her. When they get bored, then they start acting like goof balls...which ranges from running all over bucking and snorting, to exploring, and this is the indication that they need to be rounded up and returned to the fenced in pasture. Thus K usually sits out to watch over them, but this can be quite boring if they are behaving, because they may graze happily for hours. Saturday he decided to mow while he waited, since he'd still be able to monitor them. I was working on projects when he taps on the door and tells me I need to come outside. I walk out the walk-out basement, and look up the hill to find this:Yep, they had decided to explore the back yard. Now mind you that if you were riding or trying to lead them through the gates into said yard, they would have a fit! They left precious little 'piles' and then headed back on out and continued to explore until K finished the mowing.

So back to what whoooshing sound...there was a whole slew of projects I wanted to at least work on this weekend, but it just didn't happen. Luckily I scrapped Friday night, and I hope to work on a few more things tonight. But the project that I told myself I would spend exactly 1 day on? Well, it ended up consuming my entire weekend. Not that that is a bad thing...its almost done, but that means a whole lot of other things didn't get done. And this big project? My massive 120" x 120" rag quilt. I was thinking it would be a bit of motivation...I would spend 1 day working on it, hoping that I would get to strips of 4 squares at most, but then I would spend the other 2 days doing scrappy stuff. So I started Saturday morning, and by that night I had progressed until I had strips of 8 squares! Then yesterday I got up and decided that with 1 more day of work, I could probably have it all sewn together. And I would have too if the electric wouldn't have gone off at 10pm last night! But with a couple hours work this morning, it is all assembled. From the best I can tell, it's really pretty too! Now comes the oh so fun task of snipping all of the edges so that they will fray when it is washed. Guessing that one might take a few weeks...a person's hand gets rather tired snipping all of that fabric.

I set out with 14 different fabrics, and was hoping that I could, by random arrangement (I didn't want to have to plan it), end up with no 2 alike squares touching. After a whole lot of arranging and rearranging yesterday afternoon, I think I achieved that goal...at least close enough. I know I have some diagonal matching squares, but I'm pretty sure that would have required mapping them out from the beginning to avoid. Anywho, no finished pictures (since its not finished!), but here is one of the sets of 2 squares laid out so I could decide what combinations to put together for my strips of 4.And here is my helper this morning as I finished sewing the last of the rows on...I guess it has Serine's seal of approval!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Yep, it was my birthday on Wed. But, when you get old enough, they're just not as exciting as they were when you were a kid. Had to go to work, and since I was sick on Tuesday, had a lot to get caught up on. Did have a wonderful dinner with my parents, and then opened my gifts before heading home. Another sign you are getting old? Useful gifts are fun! My parents gave me all kinds of sewing things...like a rotary blade sharpener...and I was totally excited about that! Here's a pic of me and my haul (although you can't really see what I got except for the moose family)
The big bummer is that the days are becoming noticeably shorter. Hate the thought that soon we will hardly get to see the sun during the week. But, I am getting some nice sunrise pictures.
The neighbors had cows out a few mornings this week...the dogs went crazy as we drove past them.
Did work on a few layouts, and watched some more Prima live classes...so have lots of ideas swirling in my head. But of course, despite all the supplies I have, I don't have the critical things needed...like specific colors of embossing powder. But I have all kinds of ideas for Christmas presents now...hmmm...how long do I have to get them done before Christmas?? Since we are planning to be moving this fall, I'm hoping to get a lot of things done now, as I expect that I won't have much free time leading up to the holidays this year.

Speaking of moving, K has 2 interviews this week, and will likely be hearing from another company to schedule a 3rd. Keeping our fingers crossed that we will have 3 (or more) spectacular job offers to have to pick from. Then the fun begins...NOT! Too bad we can't just teleport all our stuff to a new house.

So a final couple of pictures of some of our cuties to end the post. First off is Charlie 'helping' with the laundry...or, maybe not so much helping as I really did need to use the laundry basket to get the clothes off the line.
And the cuties in the backseat...Bode and Ardee on our way into work. Ardee usually growls at Bode and won't let the little one touch him...just like human siblings! But sometimes when everyone is rather sleepy, we can all snuggle together!

I'm a KU fan!

Nope, I have not changed college allegiances...but I do like Keith Urban! We attended his concert on Friday, and someone in the crowd had a sign that said something about how he was the only KU they liked, and I found it quite amusing. He does put on quite a show though...really shows his appreciation for the fans. So here's a couple of photos from the night...
On Thursday, the women from my department went out to lunch at Umi to celebrate the August birthdays. It was a total blast. I had never been to a Japanese steakhouse where they prepare your food in front of you before...too fun! And super yummy too! The two of us present who had August birthdays even got serenaded twice...once by our chef with a little flaming onion 'cake', and then again by our waitress with fried bananas and ice cream with a candle on top.

Today while I was out doing laundry I heard a plane flying low. Couldn't see it at first through the trees, but finally caught a glimpse of it and realized it was a crop duster. Haven't seen one of those since I was growing up in Goodland. Cool. We stood out and watched it make several passes, and of course got a few pictures as well.