We’re officially 4th time home owners.  I’ll post pictures when I have a chance to dig my camera out of the rubble.  We spent the evening at the house cleaning and getting ready for the movers to arrive.  I learned many things about our new house tonight (the reason I didn’t know some these things before buying will be found in a soon to follow story of how we ended up in this house) and was reminded of many things about myself:

1)  Our office has no light.  Plugs for lamps, but no actual light.  I found this out when trying to vacuum after dark and found no light switch.

2)  The view from our back patio over the pond has absolutely beautiful sunsets.

3)  We need a shower rod in the “powder room” (that’s really a full bath)

4) I have absolutely no clue how I’m going to layout our master and the movers will likely be cursing me for this tomorrow.

5) I hate spiders

6) The house has been empty for several months and spiders have taken up residency in our basement.

7) As in 2 went down there and had about 500 babies who live not just in corners but on the wall and ceilings and in closets and behind toilets (this one was particularly hard for me with my flashbacks to the movie arachnophobia)

I hate spiders and thus hated our basement.

9) I can conquer my fear and kill spiders.  I did this with a vacuum and am no longer afraid of our basement.

10) I love having a front porch and outside lighting.  Dave put together our glider tonight to go with the rocker I built last night.  I love them both.

11) I have no idea where I’m going to put my dogs…dare I put them in the beautifully finished now (hopefully) spider free basement…or do you think the creepy crawlies will come back?

12)  I can’t walk into a room without rearranging (in my head) our furniture 10 times.  I need to make some decision before 8am.

13) There is a lot of little wildlife around our house and the pond.  Bunnies, groundhogs, geese (which Dave has sworn will not be there for long) and birds.

14) I am terrified of the beautiful flower beds as I tend to kill any plant I touch, but I’m also anxious to try, try again

15) I was not excited about our house until tonight.  I’m officially excited about our house and am ready to settle into our new home, and nothing matters more than getting my little family back together again

Off to wash of the imaginary spiders crawling all over me then crashing.  The truck will be there bright and early!

What do you do when you live apart from your spouse?  Apparently we go to baseball games.  I imagine Dave gets as antsy in Canton as I do when I’m home alone looking for something to do.  What better way to pass the time than with an American tradition.

Dave has been going to Indians games (I haven’t been with him thus the lack of pictures) and has tickets for several mores games already.  Our neighbor kids play competitive baseball/softball and I’ve been tagging along to some of their games.  They’re already thinking about playing ball in college so we all jumped at the chance to go to watch Ole Miss vs LSU a couple weeks ago.  As Ole Miss alums Bryan and Megan have been to several and with the college ball interest the Williams had already been to a few, but it was my first college baseball game and first time to the University of Mississippi.  It’s no big 10 but it’s alright for an SEC school that’s not UT .

Thankfully the rain blew through quickly and since the Rebels had already won the first game of the night we were hoping they could pull out another win over the Tigers.  At one point we were going to run in for drinks when Jerry insisted no one leave until the “disco” dance…he had missed it at the other games.

Everyone in the crowd joined in on the dance.

At the bottom of the ninth the game was tied 8-8 and into the 10th we went hoping for a win.

We sat infront of the infamous “throw it in the dirt guy”.  No kidding that we were watching the away game on tv the next weekend and could hear him even on TV yelling at the opposing pitchers “throw it in the dirt” with everyone responding “DIRT!”   

Thankfully Zach and Page were looking out for me.  This was them yelling at me as a foul ball came flying into the seats right next to us!  After they saved my life I put the camera down for a bit and payed more attention the last 2 innings.  Ole Miss scored in the 11th ending the game at 9-8. 

I’m thankful for my friends that keep me entertained while Dave is away.  I know he hates to miss the fun here, maybe before too long I’ll be able to tag along to the Indians games.

…that I’m a terrible blogger.  No that’s not really what I was going to say although it is true.  I follow many other blogs and they are all perfectly capable of entertaining with clever posts avoiding spilling anything they shouldn’t.  I’ve tried many times over the last couple of months to get on here and ramble about New Years (we had an awesome party) or our Memphis “blizzard” (6″ of snow shuts the city down)  or airport madness (power outage in Charlotte for 2 hours) or my recent ski trip (in my defense I just got back Thursday) but all I wanted to do was type:

WE’RE MOVING AGAIN!!

But I wasn’t allowed to because nothing was official.  We’ve learned our lesson that it’s best to just not say anything when there’s a pending move because chances are something will go wrong and it will fall through.  It’s like Murphy’s law for us that if we tell anyone other than our closest family and intimate prayer chain that it will fall apart.  More than likely those opportunities were not in God’s plan for us and their falling through was completely unrelated to our lack of discretion.  But in my own weird mind, that’s the way I looked at it.  Maybe that’s why I wanted to tell you so badly…because it would fall through?  Oh but not really.  It’s not such a bad thing, just very bitter sweet. 

See we’re moving back to Canton, OH.  That means better job for Dave on days (WOOHOO!!) and closer to family.  All very good considering we’d like to expand ours in the next couple of years and a husband working nights doesn’t make that easy   But it means leaving our Memphis family. 

This was the hardest decision to move we’ve made yet.  Every other move it’s been “time” as in we’ve known we were ready for a change and the next step was always clear.  This one while we knew it was the responsible “time,” (career, location, etc) it’s not the easiest to leave the wonderful friends we’ve made here.  That and Memphis is awesome in general so it’s hard to leave.  Between that and the horrible housing market this move, for me anyway, is a leap of faith.  Without going into the boring details and drama of it all, our company is as always doing what they can to help but the economy has taken it’s toll and relocation programs are no exception.  This means that Dave and I could potentially live apart for 6 months this time.  Basically every day before the 180th day that the house sits on the market is another nail that I chew off (oh wait I quit biting my nails) and more time away from my hubby.  He’ll be able to come home every few weeks and I’ll still have my monthly trip up to our main offices so it’s really not going to be so bad but it sure sounds like a long time!

So now that it’s official I can stop holding my breath, Dave can stop clenching his jaw in his sleep and we can get caught up around here.  I’m going to work on getting pictures posted, the site hopefully reformatted along with keeping you informed of the move.  Let me just tell you that relocation has it’s ugly moments and I’ll try to share all of the juicy details…which at one point or another usually includes my wanting to throw telephones out the window, fly to the relo company’s undisclosed headquarters and have a throw an in person hissy fit to my agent, or the temptation of getting in my car and following my lost mattress to Utah.  Ah it should be a fun few months.  Say a prayer that we keep our sanity and that the house sells quickly. 

Until next time,

We had a ton of neighborhood fun this weekend.  It started with a birthday dinner for my dear friend Megan.  Oh and you’ve probably noticed that I missed posting about mine and Dave’s birthday’s this year.  There are pictures of our fun parties here.  Anyway, Megan turned the ripe old age of 25 last week so we went to a Japanese Restaurant to celebrate; complete with vampire teeth for everyone in honor of Megan’s love for Twilight.

Saturday was crazy.  We decided to tackle 2 parties in one day, the kids were first at 4 for their pre-trick or treat party.  Without any kids of my own and trying to get ready for the adult party later that night I wasn’t much help.  But I did go down the street for a couple hours and took some pictures of the fun.

Jessica went all out with the goodies.  There were mummy dogs, festive cupcakes, orange and green rice crispies, gastly green punches, “bat” wings, meat balls, even yucky gummy feet and hands. 

The kids had a great time with the games. They tossed candy corn into their partners pumpkins and ate doughnuts off a string.

And then they were off for trick or treating and I ran off to finish up my own goodies for that night. 

Dave decorated the outside of our house with spooky tombstones and a giant spider earlier in the day.

All our neighbors sit in the driveway to hand out candy so he set up the projector so he and the dad’s passing by could watch the football games (including UT in their awesome black jerseys!)  He had the fire pit going out from and the strobe light with spooky music so the whole outside had a weird spooky/football feel during trick or treating. 

The parents got all their little goblins to bed, recruited baby sitters and headed over for some grownup fun.  We had all kinds of food.  There was goblin soup, witches brew punch, oogly eye martinis, pumpkin baked brie, monster eyes, pecan cream cheese dip, roast beast sandwiches and the most wonderful chocolate trifle.  Everyone pitched in on food since I had been travelling like crazy before the party so that was a big help.

It was a perfectly not so terrifying night.  Well that is until Mark and B-Payne started dancing.  Then it got a little terrifying   Oh and Megan, I’m still having nightmares about the creepy grim reaper guy in our foyer.

Thanks everyone for the great time! 

Love you!

Last weekend we celebrated our neighbor Brian’s 29th birthday. (You can thank me for this picture later.)

All the lovely neighborhood ladies came out to help celebrate.

The guys came too.  Dave matched the cupcakes.

There was the mandatory cornhole tournament that, after the rediculous amounts of rain earlier that week, left us with muddy feet and the boys walking around wearing make-shift Capri’s.

Apparently this blog has brought out my need to take pictures of muddy feet.

As always we had a ton of fun.

Thanks to Megan, our adorable host, for letting all your crazy friends come over and celebrate. 

As always, more pictures in the Picasa album.