ICE! and Opryland Hotel at Christmas

My best friend (most commonly referred to as my wife) is moving to Germany at the end of the month and that makes me VERY sad so I’m trying to see her a couple of times this month since I won’t be seeing her again until Aug when I fly over for a visit. The whole time we were at Campbell I kept saying I was going to go see ICE! at Opryland and I never made it down there for one reason or another and Mari decided she wanted to see it one more time before they moved and another good friend flew back in this weekend to spend more time with Mari also so we headed down and had a blast! We got there at almost 5:30 and it was a perfect time, it obviously gets really crowded because they had 3 different rooms that they moved you through with those line dividers up to keep people organized but when we got there we ended up walking through with a group of maybe 12 people. It was great because we let everyone else get ahead of us and then we could act silly and take all the pictures we wanted.

The ice slides. These were so fun but you couldn’t let your feet drag so we pretty much ended up going down on our backs and you actually pick up some speed so it’s a shock when you hit the carpet!

Now for the inside of Opryland Hotel

And Opryland’s front yard.

Savannah and Savannah

It’s Dec and I didn’t post much in Nov because it was such a busy month! We went to GA the weekend of the 18th and N spent some much needed time with his family while I headed on to Savannah to spend some much needed girl time with some of my hunnies that I haven’t seen in a couple (or more) years. Christmas in the South was that weekend so we spent the day shopping. I had my camera and took some pictures as we were crossing the huge bridge but then I never remembered to take any pictures of the 3 of us together!! I really hate I did that!

The next weekend I came home for Thanksgiving with just the girls because the boy had to work and then I went to Savannah again with Aunt Beth, Amy, and Amber. We had a great time and walked all over Savannah. We did a neat Ghost tour of Savannah and I got some good pictures from that.

Our guide Nicademus, he was very authentic. LOL

While we were having fun in Savannah Kady was at Mama and Daddy’s having lots of fun with Abe and the pups next door. Kady LOVES playing with Abe.

And I love this picture of Kady and Miss Martha, the ears flying just cracks me up. LOL

Kitchen counter tops and cabinet installation

The counter tops and cabinet are finally in Haley’s house! We moved them over there Wed morning with the help of some of their friends since Nicholas had to work that day. Everything went in great and fit great. We did have some issues with the tite joint bolts because of where they were under the counter it was really hard to get our hands to them to tighten it all up. We had to put the counters up on 2x4’s and saw horses to keep it stable and when I finally had to leave because I was already going to be so late driving back to GA they almost had it together and said it wasn’t a problem to finish tightening them later. I love how it’s all coming together and can’t wait to see if finished next week.

Everything is away from the wall because they just finished painting that area the morning of delivery so it’s not completely in it’s place yet.

Right now they do not have the kitchen light up yet, they were waiting to get everything in before installing it because it’s a chandelier with crystals hanging on it. Once that’s in there will be a lot more light in the room.

You can see how the joints are coming together in this one, almost there!

View from the doorway into the kitchen from the dining area.

I already have fabric to sew a curtain to go on this side of the cabinet all the way across. It will look really good. And as you can see in the top left of the picture they are still painting! lol

I’ll be back over there on Wed so I can take more pictures of everything in place when I take her the curtain.

Haley just sent me this picture of the kitchen before! They have so much more counter space now!!

This and That

This month is flying by just as fast as fast as October did and it’s already the middle of the month! It was just the 1st! I’m almost done with the counter tops. We’ve had some rainy days so it really slowed the drying time down a lot and put me behind schedule. It’s looking really good though and we should be able to get everything in Haley and Brandon’s house before Thanksgiving so they can start back cooking. I know they are so ready to have a functional kitchen again.

Nicholas has been staying pretty busy at work but he’s had more off time this month than he has since he started so he’s been enjoying that. We’re looking forward to going to GA this weekend. I’m going to Savannah for a few days to see some of my hunnies that I haven’t seen in a couple of years and it will give N a chance to see family for a couple of days.

We went to the 30th Anniversary celebration fro Alabama LifeSaver this weekend and it was a lot of fun. It gave me a chance to meet a lot of people from the company that work at other bases and we had a chance to get dressed up for a change.

The new 407, it’s not in service yet. Right now everyone is training on it, not sure when all the bases will have theirs and the transition will be done.

All of LifeSaver’s aircraft together for the first time. Everyone was really excited for this picture because it really was awesome to see them all lined up. Everyone was still on call but luckly no one got calls during the party and had to leave. The 407 is at the very end, then Birmingham’s candy corn aircraft, Sylacauga’s aircraft, Rainbow City’s A/C, Children’s Care Flight, and last Auburn’s A/C.

Tonight we took Kady to her first Dog Training class. The instructor was looking at her and said “well there is one way to tell if she’s more Boxer or more Pit, let’s see how she reacts to a treat and command” He said that Boxers will go after a treat when you are teaching them a command but if they have to work for it they will give up and ignore it if they can’t have it right away but a Pit won’t give up and will keep going after it. Kady is a Boxer. We were trying to teach her the “settle down” command and get her to lay down and she wasn’t having it. He said Boxers are extremely smart but they question everything you want them to do and that’s her to a T. She was so funny. I’m looking forward to training her more because I think she enjoys learning.

Hard to believe just a few months ago she was this size

And now she’s this size.

As you can see that’s where she thinks she belongs on the sofa and if N is in here watching TV with me she will sit on the floor and whine at him because she wants her spot back. If he gets up for any reason she’s up there and settled in so fast it will make your head spin.

Last year I found some really cute cupcake and fun decorations at Kmart and decided to have a fun tree. It worked out that I had the perfect spot for it in the den so I put it up this week. I’ll put everything else up after Thanksgiving but I want to enjoy this tree as long as possible.

I still need to decide on a topper and tree skirt but I have some time. Maybe I’ll find the perfect thing at Christmas in the South this weekend.

More projects

When I talked to Haley about building the cabinet she told me she wanted to put butcher block counter tops on the other areas in the kitchen with the sink and a little eat in area. She wanted it stained the dark walnut to match the cabinet but we knew it wouldn’t be exactly the same since the wood tones started out so different. Since the wood in the cabinet was already so dark and had a red tone to it it took the stain really dark. The butcher block is a lot lighter so it’s not taking as dark. I had to cut out the whole for the sink and cut a couple of notches out of the counter top to fit around a wall so that took some time. The butcher blocks come with a factory oil finish and it took me forever to get that sanded off. I wasn’t expecting it to be so difficult and because it was oily it kept gumming up my good sander and I had to stop often to clean it out. 

Before I cut the sink hole

I’m using the cabinet as one of my work tables because I needed an extra one. I really just need to get some saw horses.

Everything set up and ready to stain. And our big pile of boxes that needed to go out for recycling. They are out of the way now.

After 2 coats of stain. It’s going to take me a while to get this done because it takes so long for stain to dry and since this will be at the sink it needs extra coats of Waterlox sealer. I found out about waterlox when doing research on the best sealer to use on counter tops, 2 other blogs I found has used it and a couple of years later their countertops were still in great shape. I want to put at least 5 or 6 coats of waterlox with 12 hours of dry time between coats.

And a couple of before pictures of Haley and Brandon’s kitchen so you can get an idea of how awesome it’s going to look after!

This is where the cabinet will go soon!

I’m really excited to see it all finished soon. I’m hoping we can get it done next week so it will all be finished by Thanksgiving!