Atlanta/Jack Daniels Distillery

We were finally able to take off for Atlanta last Friday after a slight delay. By Thursday afternoon Tommy had spent the previous day, night, and that morning throwing up. I took him to the vet and they gave him fluids and an anti nausea shot but thought someone should keep on eye on him that night. I really didn't want to leave him with the vet in some strange place for the night so we waited till the AM to leave. We had a wonderful, relaxing trip with Kirstin and Nathan. We did the usual hanging out, eating, and drinking. The weather only wanted to cooperate on Sunday so we headed out to the Inman Park Festival that afternoon. There were tons of vendors set up to walk around and look at and food to eat, and it was packed! It was great to see Kirstin and Nathan again and are so thankful for them letting us come and stay and taking such good care of us! :)



First evening there eating out

Inman Park Festival

Joe keeping an eye on the grill

On the way home we made a stop in Lynchberg, Tennessee. Every time we go to visit Kirstin we see the signs for the Jack Daniel's Distillery and talk about stopping, so we finally made time to do it. They offer free tours everyday- it was really neat. Interestingly the distillery is in a dry county, so the only alcohol they are allowed to sell is commemorative bottles of Jack Daniels. We also aren't able to get any samples on the tour, but they did let us get a few whiffs of the whiskey at 140 proof before it is filtered... wow! Unfortunately they don't allow you to take any pictures inside the buildings.

The stream they use the water from to make the whiskey

Statue of Mr. Jack Daniels

Joe with a picture of Mr. Daniels in his office

These are the only 7 Master-distillers the distillery has ever had. They have the important job of tasting the whiskey and deciding it's perfect age to be bottled. Joe and I wondered what happened if he burnt his tongue or had a cold?!?! I thought it was really interesting that the whiskey is clear when it is put in the barrels, and after a few years it develops it's color and flavor.

Joe with his newly purchased commemorative bottle of Jack! :)

After the tour we stopped in "Historic Lynchberg", which is basically a square of shoppes and restaurants all selling Jack Daniels items with a courthouse in the middle- it was really cute! We were able to buy a few items as well as some Jack Daniels fudge, which was very tastey! :)

This could be a looong game.....

As long as work schedules will allow we will head to Tampa in about 3 weeks to visit Ash and Keaton.... hoping for some nice weather and some beach time!

For our last day of vacation today we put in our garden!! Wahoo! Hopefully everything survives through the upcoming storms and we have some yummy vegetables in a few weeks!

Hope everyone is happy and healthy and enjoying their spring!!

March

Man, another month has gone by.... So hard to believe, but so glad that the winter seems to be going quickly! The last few warm days have been a tease. Its been so nice to get out and run and get some yard work done. I can't wait for the warm weather to stick. It is definately a mood booster to get out in the sun after a cold, dark winter on night shift.

In about a month we will leave for a few days for Atlanta....wahoo!!! I cannot wait to see my sister and Nathan and spend a few days with them. I think Ash and Keaton may drive up from Tampa while we are there too! And then a month after that we are working on plans for another Florida trip to visit Ash and hopefully get in some much needed beach time! Its nice to have a couple trips on the calander to have something to look forward to.

I got a nice quick trip in to see my Dad last week and a few days later we went up to Wolcott to see Joes parents for the evening. Its nice that we're close enough to be able to decide last minute to have dinner with them.

Of course I have some pics of our children (kitties) to share.... :)

Tommy lounging on the bed.. doesn't look very comfortable to me

Of course I had all the sheets off the bed to wash them and threw one fleeze coat on there... they both snuggled up to it for a nap...they look desperate for something warm and soft! :)

If there is sun shining in the front windows, you'll find Parker sun-bathing there :)

Well I hope everyone is enjoying the end of winter and start of spring! Looking forward to the summer and lots of get togethers again to see everyone!

Still alive

We are still alive! Hasn't been too much excitement here lately. We have both been keeping busy with work. Work is going great... I love being home in the evenings with Joe- even though it has meant me trying to figure out something for dinner before he gets home (which also has included learning to cook! :) - and being able to watch some shows in the evening (The Bachelor, Big Loser, and Ameircan Idol :)

This was a little bit of a tough week. Wednesday was the three year anniversary of my mom's death. I thought it'd be a day like any other, but it definitely brings back all the memories and emotions of that time three years ago. We miss her so much.

It was also finalized that my little sis will be moving to Tampa!!! I am so happy for her and know this has been a dream of her's for so long, but I can't even imagine how much I'm going to miss her. Life will be very different without either of my sisters close by.

We of course started another project- re-tiling the bathroom shower- so we try to work on that when we are both free for a large chunk of time. We decided to tear down the existing tile and shower, re-tile, and make the shower just a tad bit larger by removing the separating wall. Of course it's become a bigger and longer project than we hoped! :) But things are moving along and hopefully we'll be finished soon! I'm looking forward to having our bathroom back and not having to shower upstairs every day! We've learned so much so far and hopefull this won't be our last tiling job!

Here are a couple pics from right before we bought the house.

Once we started removing tiles we discovered they had tiled right to the drywall and it was impossible to remove them without damaging the wall. So we had to remove them by cutting them out and replacing the wall with some backerboard.

Here you can see, other than me displaying my beautiful tile work, that we made the dividing wall smaller- we will tile it and include it in the shower.

Here is a pic of the tub from my phone- still hasn't been grouted

We added a little cutout in the wall for storage... which will be a total pain in the butt to try and tile!

Well.... I don't want Joe to feel left out of this post too much..... :)

Hope everyone is doing well and keeping warm!!!

Last couple weeks

We've had a pretty busy last few weeks. Two weekends ago was the Worley Christmas in Wolcott. We had a great time and loved seeing everyone and eating some great food. White elephant gift exchanges are always fun! :)

Sue with the girls opening their gifts

Bob and the Christmas tie Maddie picked out for him! :) I didn't get one of Glenda with her earings!

Last weekend was another project at our house (really just for Joe, I mostly watched! :) We purchased a new dishwasher and above the range microwave to match our other new stainless appliances. Everything went pretty smoothly with the dishwasher, but then we pulled off the existing hood above the oven and found a mess of wires. This picture is of Joe working on installing a new outlet in the cabinet for the microwave, just before he said, "I think I hit the gas line".... ahhhh..... So we had to call the gas company and decide whether or not to go stand on the curb in the cold while we waited for someone to come check it. We were pretty sure it was ok, but started laughing about the open house going on next door and picturing fire trucks showing up. Everything turned out to be ok and Joe finished the job! ;)

This past weekend Joe had the opportunity to buy playoff tickets from someone at work who had won them and wasn't able to go. We debated whether or not to go since I had to work at 7am, but in the end decided we just couldn't turn them down. It was an awesome game! I'm so glad we went. We had great seats because no one was sitting behind us so we didnt have to worry about sitting down, and we were in the isle so no one was in front of us! We had a lot of fun. We have decided we will probably join the waiting list for season tickets, but realize it will be years before we get them.

I just finished all of my day shifts and start back on nights tomorrow night. I'm a little sad because it was nice to be on the same schedule as Joe and going to bed when he was, but getting up early sure was torture!! I'm sure if and when I ever have a day job I'll get used to the hours though. But it was a struggle to switch back and forth for these few weeks. I'm excited to see how the new schedule works out for us.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season! I can't believe how soon Christmas came and went this year! It feels like it was just Thanksgiving last week! We had a pretty quiet Christmas. Somehow we both had Christmas Eve and Christmas off this year. For Christmas Eve we drove up to Fort Wayne with Ash to see Dad and have a nice Christmas Eve dinner with him. We spent Christmas Day together. Joe's big gift this year was a toolbox we bought during Thanksgiving Day sales. I made him wait till Christmas to take them out of the box and put it together so he ran out to the garage as soon as we were done opening gifts! :) I got an additional Christmas gift when he cleaned out the garage and arranged it to find the perfect spot for his tools! :)

The kitties have loved the Christmas tree as well as all the ornaments and rattling them around :)

We realized we had been so busy that by the time we were stopping to get food for Christmas Day on Christmas Eve that all of the stores were closed! I was so disappointed that night... but we made the best of it and had some wonderful sushi for dinner...mmm! :) I think we could make it a tradition! :) I was suprised at the amout of people out searching for food on Christmas.

We also decided to go see Avatar in 3D after we'd heard so many good things about it. It was a great movie and fun to see it at the IMAX theatre. The place was packed! Sorry for the bad pictures... they are all from my iPhone since I forgot to charge my camera battery.

Saturday morning Joe had to go back to work but that evening we went over to Mark and Cindi's to see the whole Ketcham crowd. It was great to see family I hadn't see in a long time. I'm glad Uncle Dan, Aunt Kathy, Hannah and Rebecca made the drive out here! I hadn't seen my cousins for years!

This weekend we will see Joe's family for Christmas! Yay!

The new job is going well. I'm still doing orientation on day shift. It's been nice feeling halfway normal again, but it's hard to get things done around here with us both doing full time day shift. I'm actually looking forward a little to going back to night shift! (I know, I can't believe I just said that!)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Thanksgiving

Thursday we had a great afternoon in Fort Wayne with Joe's side of the family at Steve and Sue's. I wish I had gotten my camera out to actually take some pictures there! We had a full house at our house on Friday for Thanksgiving. Dad and Grandma & Grandpa came down from Fort Wayne and Kirstin and Nathan came up for the weekend from Atlanta. It worked out great. Everyone pitched in for food and it was all wonderful! Good enough we are still even eating the leftovers!! MMmmmm... We even got to Skype with the Drakes in Colorado... despite a few problems with the microphone it was still great to "see" them! :) I definitely have a lot of things to be thankful for this year. Here are a few pics from the afternoon.

Kirstin and Nathan brought Marley (their dog) so this is where Parker spent the weekend hiding in our bathroom....

Joe has been working on the Christmas lights. Its fun to finally have a house to put things up in and decorate! So far we are only the second house in the neighborhood to have any colored lights up.... hopefully the neighbors don't all think it looks tacky! Joe's been up on the roof multiple times now which seems to be scaring all of our older neighbors. They have come over a few times to help "hold the ladder" once they see him up there. This weekend I was on the driveway while Joe was climbing up there to hang the wreath and I heard the older lady across the street come out her front door and yell to her husband, "Jaaaaackkkk... he's on the roof again!!!". LOL... at least they are watching out for him.