Saturday, June 03, 2017

April 2017 - Bees and Planting the Garden

In April we got 2 packages of bees! Right before the bees were supposed to arrive Chad got sick with the flu and we had a ton of stuff to do to get ready - including taking down a small tree in our yard. Thankfully my brother and our neighbor Daryl were able to come over one afternoon and help us get the area ready for the hives. Here are some pictures of installing the two packages of bees:



We also planted our garden in April. We got all of our plants from the farmer's market plant sale and we also planted our okra plants from seed. Chad had a really great idea of replacing our garden bed borders with downed cedar trees from our woods. Cedar is much more rot-resistant, but it's very expensive. My brother came over one day and helped Chad get some of the downed cedars out of the woods and cut down to the sizes we needed. I think it makes the garden look more rustic too. On the day we planted our garden we found a king snake in our basement curled up with some of our gardening tools! Thankfully Chad was able to get it out and they are not poisonous, but we're still not sure how it got inside... Here are pictures from our garden:


Of course here are some pictures of Sandy & Roxy in April:


Chad & I also celebrated our 17 year wedding anniversary on April 29. Time really flies because it feels like just yesterday we got married! We went out to Outback which is our anniversary tradition and Chad got me some beautiful roses. Here are a few pictures on our anniversary:




Thursday, June 01, 2017

March 2017 Events

Our pastor created a website called Church & Culture about how the Church can affect our culture. For the last few years we've hosted a Church & Culture conference at our church and also in the UK to help pastors and church leaders understand our changing culture and be culture changers in their communities. This year I was able to attend the conference and it was VERY informative and interesting. My favorite parts were the sessions where my pastor opened it up to Q & A - I could have attended an entire session of just Q & A. Here are a few pictures from that event:



Our pastor, Jim White.


On March 5 we went to Asheville to see Jimmy Eat World at the Orange Peel. We decided to stay at a hotel within walking distance to the Orange Peel since parking is hard to find in downtown Asheville. We stayed at Aloft in downtown Asheville and it was a really nice hotel with an attached parking garage which was really nice. We were able to walk to dinner the night of the concert, to the concert, and to breakfast the next morning too. The concert was sold out so it was REALLY packed. Jimmy Eat World played a two hour show and were fantastic as always. But because the venue was so packed it was hard to find a spot where you weren't crowded. We ended up near this completely insane girl who literally "danced" like full body heaves - it was like Elaine from Seinfeld on speed. We eventually had to move because she kept running into us. She was crazy and I wanted to video her, but it was too dark for her to show up on my phone. I was able to kind of get a picture of her, but it was still blurred because she never stopped moving. Other than that it was a great show and I love the Orange Peel.On the way home we stopped by Brushy Mountain Bees to get our hive supplies - it was more out of the way than I realized, but it was worth it because the staff were really helpful and we got all our hive materials. Here are some pictures from our Asheville concert trip:




For Valentine's Day this year I got Chad tickets to a Charlotte Hornets game. We had always talked about going, so I decided to get the tickets for him as his Valentine's gift. Chad is a big college basketball fan (and turned me into one too - Go Heels!) and always said the NBA had changed and it wasn't as fun to watch as college basketball. We never really watched any NBA games, but going to the Hornets game I realized he was right - it was boring! You would think a live game would be more fun, but it was like the players weren't really trying that hard. Plus, we were seated near this unbelievably loud guy - he wasn't being ugly or saying anything bad, but he was SO LOUD I literally had to put my finger in my ear that was facing him. Unfortunately he was sitting right beside my friend Gail and her husband - they got season tickets this year and so did that loud guy - they had sat beside him at every home game. I don't know how they did it. He was SO LOUD. Overall, we had a good time, but I wasn't super impressed and probably wouldn't go back to another Hornets game. Here are our pictures from the game:


On March 12 we got a freak snow storm. We've had some pretty warm weather this spring, so when they were calling for snow I didn't think it would do anything. But, we actually got a few inches! It snowed in the early morning and by lunch time the sun had come out and it had all melted. It was pretty crazy. Here are some pictures of the freak March snow day:


And no month is complete without cat pictures! Here are some super cute pictures of Sandy & Roxy:

February 2017

Chad and I celebrated Valentine's Day at one of our favorite restaurants - Outback. Since we did have some cold weather in February there are some great pictures of the cats snuggling. The best part of cold weather is having BOTH cats on my lap! I was also finally able to capture a picture of Sandy getting what we call "pufftailed." Every once in awhile she gets freaked out - usually after seeing another cat outside - and she will get all big and puffed and try to attack Roxy. Thankfully they get along most of the time and Sandy the pufftail doesn't happen much. Here are some pictures from February:


The beautiful roses Chad got me for Valentine's Day:




January 2017

In January we finally started a long delayed project on our driveway and yard. When we bought our house we knew there was some water coming into the basement, but it wasn't a lot and it never got worse. But, our yard DID get worse. We had water coming off our neighbor's property and running down our driveway which had caused damage to the side yard, a void under the driveway, and the leak in the basement. Our driveway was also connected to our neighbor's property and we had access to our property via an easement - this was explained to us, but I don't think we REALLY understood the reality of that. It's not an ideal situation, so since we had to do this work anyway and our driveway was the issue we tore up part of our driveway and redirected it out to the front of our property. We added a berm to the side yard to redirect the water. While I wasn't super happy with the company we used, the work did fix the water issue in both our yard and the basement and we are really happy with the new driveway direction.

Here are some pictures of the driveway project, a snow day, and of course cat pictures!




Snow day pictures:



Cat pictures: