Ridin' the Moto

What I once thought was impossible has now been acheived. John has taken me out on two motorcycle rides in the last week alone! Amazing right? For those who aren't aware, I've been bugging John for a moto ride for quite awhile. In all fairness, his hesitancy to take me out was solely for my own safety. He's only had the bike for a little over a year and isn't quite comfortable driving it himself, let alone with me on the back. I always joke with him that I will save my "wifely allowance" and even buy my own helmet if he will take me. Of course this persistent begging for a moto ride has been in play for a while. It all dates back to when we were first dating...

It was my first trip to Arky and I begged and begged him for a ride on the bike and he consented. I had the ingenious idea that I would be all romantic and all snuggly-like and hold on tight and sit close the whole time. Apparently, I found out ONLY after we were married, that I was nearly suffocating him and making it difficult to steer. Of course at the time he didn't say anything because he was too nice....apparently marriage changes things eh? Anyway, after I found this out, I laughed and promised him I would never do that again.

So fast forward to last Saturday - The first day of my 2nd ride. It was a beautiful day and we were only going to go down the street until he was confident we wouldn't end up in the ditch. I stayed on my best behavior and apparently impressed him enough for our 2nd ride last night. I love going out on night walks, swims, runs, anything...it's just so peaceful and pretty. Well last night's motorcycle ride was a blast. We ended up going to visit Sarah at the last minute and had a great visit. Here's a pic of the motorcycle and here's to hoping we have many more "rides". I'm going to start begging for a long road trip ride next time...wish me luck! (Oh yeah...and for you motorcycle enthusiasts this one is a Honda VTX 1300...from what I'm told.)

Better late than never right?

Well I must apologize, I tend to spend all of my time reading everyone else's blogs and then save very little time/energy for updating our own blog....hence the delay in postings. But, on a sidenote...it seems like I've swayed some family/friends (who shall remain nameless) to start a blog of their own as well! Sweet!!! More reading material! After all I'm convinced everyone elses lives are more exciting than ours since you all have kids that do cute little adorable things. But until then I promise to be better about posting to our blog....as long as you promise to enjoy reading it (or atleast pretend to enjoy reading it). And I absolutely LOVE when people comment on my blog (hint hint)- cause it's proof that I'm not doing this endless typing in vain :D

Well I just finished reading my sister-in-law's blog and saw some adorable pics of my neices. Colton & Michelle are the best picture takers around so I tend to bum pictures off of them (er steal them from their blogs) and use them for my own selfish purposes...hahaha. This is a cute pic of John and Ashlyn and Kayley playing in a gift bag from our reception in Willard. Random, I'm aware but it's cute and thus has been posted.

Catching up...

Well after looking through our pictures, I've realized I've neglected to blog about a few momentous occasions and other fun stuff we've been doing. So this is a miscellaneous blog to do just that.

Some of you may be aware, John and I were temporary puppy parents for two weeks and as much as we adored the pups we sadly had to send them on to better homes than our own. It's a long story that I'd rather not dredge up on the blog simply because it's embarassing and most of you already received the play-by-play in person. Lets simply say that we were two 30+ year old adults who got caught up in the moment and made a few impulse decisions that were realized after the fact. I joked with John that we need to perfect this before we actually have kids who get caught up in the moment. We must learn to be adults! A few things we learned in the puppy debacle...

• One must avoid purchasing "litter-mates" (in our case a brother and sister) simply because they begin to respect and bond to each other instead of the owner and thus are terrible to train.
• If you have only one dog, they must be included in every facet of your human existence in order to receive the amount of attention they need and desire. (Something John and I definitely weren't willing to do).
• Do your research BEFORE not after purchasing cute little adorable squeezy puppies.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of the cute little pups. They went on to good homes and we get updates on how they are doing. We miss them but definitely don't miss the poop and hyperactivity. The girl pup is Shadow and the boy pup was named Panzer. We had them long enough to purchase, immunize, feed, and build a dog house for them. Money lost due to the tuition of us learning a life lesson. They are adorable though aren't they?














And here are some other random pics of John and I. The first few are of John and I perfecting our shooting skills while down in Willard visiting my Mom. John looks a bit more experienced than I. No worries, I wasn't going postal...I was in shocking pain from the kick of the shotgun. The next picture is when we went down to Springdale and went ice skating. This is John showing off his skills. We were very sore after a short 45 minutes.















And lastly, this is on our way to the ice skating I believe. Don't we look excited?

A sasquatch at a baseball game?....Naturally!

Well for those who aren't aware....Arkansas has a minor league baseball team called "The Naturals" and the mascot of said baseball team is none other than a "Sasquatch". Imagine the laughter as I witnessed this mascot for the first time. Initially it took me a few moments to figure out what exactly a "sasquatch" is but according to webster:

Sas·quatch: a hairy creature like a human being reported to exist in the northwestern United States and western Canada and said to be a primate between 6 and 15 feet (1.8 and 4.6 meters) tall —called also big foot.

Here is a pic of the little fellow. Unproportional and hairy and rather disturbing looking.

I realize mascots are typically a bit out there but this was quite an interesting site for me. Anyway, I digress....

John and I got tickets to The Naturals Kick-Off game this past Friday evening (thanks to his work) and were elated to find out we got great seats just left of home plate. I always like attending sporting events just because it means spring is here and summer is not far behind. Granted I don't like participating in sporting events...merely watching others do so. His sister and her husband enjoyed the festivities with us and besides the less-than-desirable concessions, it was a great game! The Naturals won....naturally! They played against the San Antonio Missions and the final score was 11:4. There were quite a few good plays in the last inning so it got really exciting to watch. I was only familiar with attending Columbia's minor league games (which always made for a good 9 inning nap) so I came to this one with low expectations. However, the field and stadium were brand new and rather nice for a little ole minor league team. And John was a very good sport putting up with my incessant questions about the game. I'm not much of an athlete but I do like to know about sports that other people play. Hopefully John will be playing in a city league through his work and I'll be able to brush up on my sport watching abilities.

Things I learned about baseball and minor league teams:

• Did you know that each minor league team is associated to a major league team? In this case the Arkansas Naturals are associated with the Kansas City Royals.
• When a player is "traded-up" that means they are good enough to go from their minor league team to the major league team...thus the term usage of "up".
• The home team is typically in white uniforms and the away team is in grey.
• They don't play the bottom of the ninth inning if the home team is ahead.
• The "seventh inning stretch" is really just that.....everyone gets up and stretches. I just about laughed out loud at this bit of info...all this time I assumed it was just a really long drawn out part of the game.

I learned a lot more besides this so if you are interested in talking sports hit me up. All those who know me are probably laughing their heads off at this post. I'm not much of a sports nut but I'm curious and learning.....so leave me known!

Here is a pic of Sarah (John's sister) and I enjoying ourselves at the game. It was freezing cold.

A mini-reunion of sorts...

Well unbeknownst to us, due to a death in the distant family, we ended up having a brief reunion in Willard over the conference weekend. My cousin/best-friend Jared's beloved Grandma Marian passed away. She was like an adopted grandma to the rest of us since she's been attending every family function/holiday since I can remember. She was a sweet woman and hilarious as well....Jared gives a perfect impersonation of her that always leaves me in stitches.

One of my fondest memories of her was when Jared and I decided to help her and her finances out by replacing her alternator ..... for FREE!! Granted it was a good deal, but she was either very trusting or very desperate considering Jared and I had no clue what we were doing. Luckily my dad had a few junk cars at my grandparents house that were Marian's same make and model. With everyone's consent, we removed the alternator from the junk car and took special note as to how it was installed, and duplicated our efforts in Marian's car. Halfway through the process we had hit a snag and couldn't get the dang thing around the air conditioning belt. Jared presented this problem to his grandmother who agreed that we could just snip the air conditioning belt since her air conditioner didn't work anyway. (Again I remind you, our car knowledge was very minimal and we were working for free) Yay we were soon on our way to finishing our project. It was a success and the car lasted her for many more years to come.

Anyway, back to our Willard reunion.... It was a fun weekend to spend seeing family we hadn't seen in quite a while. I even got to meet my nephew Preston for the first time....right outside of Lambert's. He was adorable and so tiny. I hung out with my soon to be new sister-in-law, Natalie, saw each of my siblings and their spouses and family and played a ton with my little neices, Kayley, Ashlyn and Cora. So much has changed with everyone's families but it's always so nice to catch up with each other once in awhile. The funeral was on Tuesday following the weekend and it was a really great service. Everyone seemed very happy for Marian who finally got to join her husband on the other side....he had died 16 years earlier than her I believe. I could hardly believe how she had the strength to continue on without him all those years. I had only spent 2 1/2 days away from John during the weekend and I was going through major withdrawals.

It was a great weekend spent with family and fun and any of you that have pictures from it (i.e. siblings) please let me know so I can post some on the blog. Here is John taking advantage of a picture perfect moment after returning from the funeral. My Mom recently remodeled her bathroom and now has officially acheived "white trash" status with the placement of the old toilet in her garage. I pray it has been removed next time we visit.

Happy Birthday To Me!

Well I've patiently waited for John to post the follow-up to "un puten duex" but alas I've given up on the waiting and will continue to catch everyone up on our latest happenings. (those wanting to hear more about the "rise of the machine" .... please standby.)

As some of you may know, I turned the big 3-0 on March 25th. I was kind of dreading it but luckily I didn't spend it as a lonely old single woman. That would have been a much harder pill to swallow. Instead I spent it as a newlywed of 3 months. So, my birthday was loverly thanks to my wondefuh husband. He had been working on my present for the whole weekend and I didn't have a clue what it was. I love to be surprised but I hate not knowing things so it's a difficult thing for me. Tuesday morning, I awoke to this...

Yep, that's right....after months of John hearing about how I wanted to learn to play the piano and hearing me pluck away at my garage sale keyboard that you have to hold just right to avoid the plug-in shorting out, he decided to go for the gusto and get me this cool digital keyboard. Up to this point, I've managed to teach myself the church hymns with one hand only. Now I'm in search of a teacher to help me learn the proper way of playing. Wish me luck!

After opening my present, John mentioned he'd taken the day off work and made me breakfast in bed. We spent the day in Fayetteville shopping and also managed to "hit a bucket" on our way back. For those not in the golfing know, hitting a bucket simply means going to the driving range and whacking golf balls. I'm not too terribly good at this but it was something that John and I did on our first date....apparently my skills have deteriorated since then. The balls I hit only floated a few feet in front of us and sharply off to the right. I convinced John to finish the bucket since he actually knows what he's doing. I was better at being a supportive wife than a golf player that's for sure. (I'll continue to hone my skill in that area instead).

So, the birthday was a success and very relaxing. After the day o fun, we stopped by the local butcher shop and bought some nice steaks and John grilled dinner for us. He's a grilling officianado and I was content with my day of birth and hitting the 30 year mark. Now heading to 40 may be another story.