Planting a garden

Mark and I decided to plant a garden this year...At least as much as we can. Since we live in an apartment we're limited to container gardening. We decided to try planting peas and tomatoes (and some flowers.)

Last Sunday we planted the peas and today I noticed they're starting to sprout. =D!!
I'm so excited to see the sprouts so of course I had to take pictures.


Here is a view of about half the container. If you look closely you can see specks of green.


Here's an up close view.

I can hardly wait to harvest peas! I hope our tomatoes and flowers will start sprouting soon. I love seeing progress especially since this is the first time since we've been married that we tried to plant a garden.

Ohio trip

Kaelyn's blessing was on Sunday, February 7, so I went to Ohio to be there for it. (Mark wasn't able to come because of school so it was me, mom and dad.)

It was tons of fun and I'm so glad that I went. This was the first time I have ever been on a plane before and it wasn't bad at all. I especially like take off. When I was in high school I wanted to be a flight attendant when I grew up...I've definitely changed my mind on that. I don't mind flying, but I wouldn't like that for a job. Plus I'd be gone all the time and that would stink.

Anyway, the trip was awesome. We got to Ohio on Wednesday evening just in time for dinner. We got to hold Kaelyn and she's absolutely adorable! I know Lynette posted this pic on her blog already, but I can't resist:

This is Kaelyn's confused look. Often when I was holding her and Lynette talked she'd make this look. She didn't seem to know what to think. xD

On Thursday it was snowing a lot and me and Lynette decided to go make snowmen. Dad came out and helped after a few minutes too. I didn't bring any snow/cold weather gear, so I had to make do with what was available. (the middle snowman is holding a news paper)


Here's one of just the snowmen. We made 3 big snowmen, a baby one and a dog.

The snowmen didn't survive the storm :( They tipped over into each other and by the end of the week our snowmen looked like a wimpy attempt at trying to make a snow fort. xD It was snowing most of that day though, and the snow was wet and heavy.

A few times me and Lynette goofed off with the camera, here's my favorite goof off picture:


We went on a tour to a chocolate factory. Here's the outside of the building:



The tour was pretty cool. It was neat to see how much work goes into making candy. Then of course we went to the candy shop. I ended up getting a few things:


The letters are made of chocolate and they had the entire alphabet plus 0-9. That was pretty cool. (I got L for Linda and M for Mark, of course) I didn't take any pics of the inside of the store because I didn't know if they would get mad.
I also got two candy bars, one for me and one for Mark.


and a couple of these, which are bags of black licorice.


Overall it was pretty cool.

On Monday we went to Kirtland, OH with everyone, including Steve's parents.

Kaelyn was so cute while we were getting ready to go, so I snapped a few pictures of her:




There was snow in the trees and I thought it looked awesome so I got a few pics:



The tour in Kirtland was pretty cool. I got a lot of pics there but don't really want to take the time to post them all. Here's one of all of us that were there:


While we were finishing up the tour I got a call from the airport saying our return flight on Tuesday afternoon was canceled. We were planning to fly back to KC Tuesday afternoon but ended up rescheduling it for the morning. It was a good thing too. Columbus was getting snow and so was Chicago. By the time we got to KC the Chicago airport was shut down so there's no way we would have been able to get out at that time.

Overall it was super fun but I'm glad to be home now. It was good to be able to meet Kaelyn finally and to see Steve and Lynette again.

Update

Wow. I didn't notice I haven't made a post since August. It doesn't seem like it could possibly have been that long. Oh well. We haven't really had much going on worth writing about.

A week before Christmas we got new couch covers, so that's what my post is going to be about today. I've been meaning to post this for several weeks now but finally just got around to it.

Before:




After:




I definitely have to say I like the after ones a whole lot better. We decided it was time to get new ones because our cat liked to try and chew on the old ones. That hasn't been a problem with these new ones, which is fantastic!

As far as life goes, we're both working and Mark is going to school. All of that is going well.

The latest

Sometimes having a vehicle is a pain...

My car got a flat tire last Tuesday night on my way home from work. (At like 11:45 PM) So I was working on changing the tire and got all the lugnuts off and then the stupid tire wouldn't come off. I had my phone out ready to call Mark, and a MODOT motorist assist vehicle pulls up. Thank goodness they did!! The MODOT guy even had a hard time getting the tire off and had to hit it a few times with a hammer to get it off. (I didn't feel too bad then, because if he couldn't get it off, I know it wasn't because I'm wimpy :P) He was pretty impressed I had started changing the tire by myself...He said he'd been doing this for 7 years and it doesn't happen often where a female will start changing the tire on her own. Thanks dad and brothers for making me learn how to change a tire! Anyway, we got the tire changed and I went on my way.

On Thursday (my day off) we went and got the tire fixed. I had been meaning to buy 4 new tires for my car with our tax refund money...but we got distracted and bought a new computer instead xD. They couldn't fix my flat tire because a stud (which is what the lugnut goes on to help hold the tire on the car) was broken and they couldn't fix it because they only did tires not any kind of repairs...So I went to a different shop and waited for 2 1/2 hours or so for them to get everything fixed and ready to go and then came home thinking I was done with car problems.

OH NO! I WAS WRONG! Everything was fine until Monday when I was about ready to leave for work. I got in my car and it wouldn't start...so I had to run back inside and get Mark to take me to work. Mark talked to his dad and on Tuesday we were finally able to determine that the starter had gone bad and got it started and drove it to the gas station to get some air in the tire (one of the tires they fixed was flat O_O!) and then took it to the shop.

We got to pick up my car from the shop today (so far so good) and I'm SO glad to have it back. It's amazing how much you take things like vehicles working properly for granted when they are working properly. Hopefully it stays working properly now.

We've been too busy handling everything to write about it...at least it makes for a new blog post ;)
Mark also started school on Tuesday, so he's trying to get back into the swing of things with school.

Both of our jobs are going well and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE my job in the new department. That's it for now and it's fine with me for life to lay low for a bit so we can recover from this past week (financially and emotionally. It's awfully stressful to have car problems and then have to take the car to 3 different places to get everything fixed!) I certainly hope the other car doesn't decide to start acting up...

Promotion

I got a promotion at work :D!

I've known about it for a week or so and decided not to write until now so that it doesn't matter if it gets out. Training starts on Wednesday.

I'm moving to a different department, which is a smaller department. I'll also have things like e-mail to help me do my job better. Basically the department I'm moving to will be one where we try to resolve the customer's issue in one phone call and minimal transfers, so I will have more tools to help me accomplish that.

I'm pretty excited. I will have training for 5 days and then move to a new schedule. If you need to know my new schedule, e-mail me. I'm not going to post it here.

Anyway, that's really the latest.

Tagged

I was tagged by Lynette, and apparently I HAVE to do this, so here goes.

The rules:
1. Go to your document/pictures file on your computer
2. Go to the sixth file
3. Go to the sixth picture
4. Blog about this picture
5. Tag six other people

I don't have a sixth file in either my document or pictures file xD. So I went to pictures and chose the first file, and chose the 6th picture. Here it is:


This is Daniel tied to a tree at my parents during a family gathering. I'm not sure the story behind it. I came outside and saw Daniel trying to run and pull the tree over behind him to get loose. I had to snap a picture because I thought it was funny (and it reminded me of the story about mom tying Allen to the tree in the front yard when he was young to make sure he stayed out of the street.) Allen was nearby keeping an eye on Daniel. By the time I took that picture, Daniel was getting irritated that he couldn't run across the yard because the rope was holding him back.
Soon after that we stopped to get a picture of mom and dad and all the grandkids.

Anyway, I tag whoever wants to be tagged. I don't know who all reads my blog.

I'm so glad that most of the time I'm healthy.

Little did I know, the sore throat I wrote about last time was just the beginning. Over the course of the past two weeks I ended up getting over the sore throat just to end up with a cold: runny nose, cough and sinus pressure. Around Tuesday night my ears started to hurt and I could feel something building up in them (it felt like I had water in my ear.) By Wednesday, it was starting to get hard to hear out of my right ear. After talking to Mom a bit for some ideas of what I could do to get rid of my cold and make it so I could hear, I went to a CVS minute clinic (This was actually the 2nd time I went...I went two Wednesdays in a row, the first for the sore throat and then the second mainly for my ear.) Come to find out, I had an ear infection from my cold. I hope that NEVER happens again. It got so blocked I could barely hear out of my right ear. Literally, there were times Mark was standing a foot away from me, on my right side, and I couldn't hear a word he said. He would have to come to my left side so I could hear him.

The doctor gave me some antibiotics, and today my ear infection finally cleared up. I blew my nose three or four times, and both my ears popped a few times, and viola, I could hear again!

These last two weeks have been miserable for me, just because of being sick. I'm really glad Mark didn't get it and hope I didn't give it to anyone else. (This is one of those kinds of sicknesses NO ONE deserves to have)

I've still got a cough and a slightly drippy nose, but I will take that any day in exchange for the ability to hear.

It's amazing to me what we take for granted because it's so normal. I didn't realize how much I had to listen until I couldn't hear any more (and actually had to make an effort to be able to hear.) I'm also very glad I don't get sick very often.