So I have been MIA

I was called out on my lack of blogging, so here I go.  This summer, which sadly is officially over, was a crazy hectic exciting time in our household.  I did not travel quite as much because we had P every other week.  When we have P, I am the one who stays home with him while J is at work. Thank goodness I have such a flexible job and can do office days at home.  It rained a lot, so we did not get many pool days :(  We did pick strawberries and raspberries, run lot of errands, got our library cards, and had some fun.

P's baseball team played in an uber amount of baseball tournaments and baseball games.  I do not think we ever won a tournament, except one, by playing the entire thing.  It seemed that the championship game was always canceled due to thunderstorms.

We had some fun visitors come in town.  My parents came in for a weekend to see P play baseball. P and I took them to Crown Candy, which is not in the best part of town, but is celebrating it's 100th year this year. You wait in a long line to get a table, no matter what time you arrive.  They have the most delicious malts and shakes as well as the biggest bacon sandwich you have ever seen.  The next week the Watson's came to visit via train and we saw the Rangers beat the Cardinals, did a little boating, and I finally did the Budweiser tour after 11 years of living in St. Louis.

At the beginning of August we took a Blair family vacation to Gulf Shores, AL for a week.  What a fun time!  It was so nice to just sit on the beach in my beach chair and not worry about my job or really anything.  The waves were not big until the last day.  P had to have a skim board and wore himself out learning how to skim the waves. It was very fun to watch. J is like a kid in the water, all he wants to do is jump waves. My little family had pictures made on the beach.  I am very pleased with how they turned out and look for one around Christmas time in your mailbox!

But the biggest excitement of the summer was........WE'RE PREGNANT!!!!!

June Challenge: Day 2

What do you drive? What is your dream car?

My very first car was a 1988 Eddie Bauer Bronco with gun racks and a whench on the front. It was my dad's hunting vehicle. In the case that it was a weekend during deer season, I was stuck driving the dreaded cadillac,  I loved that beast.  I was the girl called to pull the guys out of the mud.  Everyone knew what I drove and I liked it that way.

For graduation, my parents gave me a 1998 silver mustang sport.  They even went all out and had the huge red bow made and put on the car and surprised me.  I was so excited....the only downside was they would not really let me drive it because I had mono and they were worried I'd fall asleep.  Nothing like getting a brand new car and told look but don't drive.  We had a custom sun roof installed.  I absolutely loved driving my mustang and it served me well for 4 years in Fayetteville and almost a year in St. Louis.  My first winter in ST. Louis was interesting.  Put someone who has never driven in snow in a rear wheel drive car.....you are smart to stay the heck away from that car with Texas plates!  Sadly the mustang's time here ended too soon. My car was stolen 4th of July weekend from the parking lot of my apartment complex and found the next morning totaled. I was going to get a new car soon but that was not the way I wanted to mustang to go out.

I decided on a black 2003 4Runner sport.  I loved that truck....and still do.  Up until a month ago I was still cruising in the 4Runner.  I just think it is the best car out there.  It has over 140k miles and has not had any major mechanical issues.  It drives and rides really well too. Toyota just simply makes a great car.   A month ago, J added lawn care to BlairCo services and needed my 4Runner to pull his trailer.  We needed another car.  I need the SUV for all my products to demo, so we went up to the Toyota dealership to look at used cars.  I would have been happy with another 2003 4Runner, but J was not going to let me get the exact same thing (year and all!). So now I am sporting a 2006 goldish tan (not my favorite) Sequoia.  I do really like it, however I am still getting used to parking it.  It will be nice to drive to Gulf Shores this summer!

 

Day 1

1. Family story – how did your parents meet, how many brothers/sisters, tell us what you want.

My mother and father meet in Dallas on a blind date.   I find this rather fitting as my sister and I both met our husbands on match.com.  My mom is from Arkansas and my dad is from Louisiana. Both were at Louisiana Tech for a year at the same time. They even knew some of the same people.  However, my mama transferred to good ole Arkansas to be closer to her fiance or boyfriend (not sure if they were engaged yet). After that engagement failed (he was caught out with another girl a few weeks before the wedding, my Mama and a friend decided to move to Dallas.  My dad graduated LA Tech and moved to Dallas.  Enter a blind date and now 41 years later they are still married.

I have a younger sister, Allison.  She has been married for almost 5 years (shy a few weeks) and lives with her husband Mike in Wylie, TX. The have a dog, Ranger, and a cat, Tinkerbell.  She is a graphic designer and loves everything I hate doing...ie decorating, painting, being overall crafty.  She just has the eye for that kind of thing and I am a numbers person.

I live in St. Louis with my husband, J.  We have been married a year and seven months   I have a stepson, Peyton, who is 9 and just finished the 3rd grade.  He is super athletic and plays baseball, basketball, and soccer.  We have an Old English Sheepdog, Charlie, who is like our other child.  Hopefully at some point in the near future we will start prepping for another addition.

June Challenge...a little late

Yay, for Mrs Watson and Mrs. Hott (someone should tell me how to link my blog to others).  A June Challenge, I like!  Now I just need to catch up.

1. Family story – how did your parents meet, how many brothers/sisters, tell us what you want.
2. What do you drive? What is your dream car? 
3. Biggest indulgence 
4. Favorite snack? 
5. Do you have any pets? 
6. Name you picked out for your kids when you were younger. Bonus: share any name ideas you have now 
7. You’re in labor: drugs or no drugs. Why? 
8. If you had a choice – SAHM? 
9. What did you first notice about your spouse?
10. Tell me about your best friend. 
11. Describe your wedding. 
12. Perfect anniversary – describe it. 
13. What’s the most interesting vacation you have been on? 
14. First job 
15. First love 
16. What did you have for breakfast today? What do you normally have? 
17. Do you drink coffee? Cream/sugar/how do you drink your coffee? 
18. Describe your job
19. What's the best advice you've ever gotten? Why?
20. Favorite movie and why 
21. Any horrific events happen to you when you were young? 
22. What’s your favorite children’s book? 
23. If you had 100,000 that had to be donated to charity what would you do with it? 
24. What’s your biggest fear? 
25. Describe the contents of your purse. What kind of purse do you have?
26. Your house is on fire. What are your first 5 thoughts?
27. When you were younger, what job(s) did you want to have? 
28. Do you speak any other languages? When do you think a child should learn a new language?
29. Tell me the highlights of your college years. 
30. What’s one thing in your closet you wear when you have a nice occasion? Interpret that as a date night or important job event.

I don't think we are in Kansas Toto...

For those of you who may not have heard.....Missouri gets it's fair share of tornadoes.  There have been some major ones in the 11 years I have lived here.  2 years ago, one pretty much took out an entire terminal at the St Louis airport.  Friday night, one came a little to close to home for us...literally.

I was working my normal Friday night shift at Ann Taylor at West County Mall. Around 8:15 the security guards came by our store and told us we needed to get to the first floor.  We closed up, grabbed our phones and headed down.  The hall way by the bathrooms was way too crowded so we sat up against another store, as far as we could get out from under the glass sky lights.  I could see major lightning. I tried calling J to tell him we had to close the store but he didn't answer. A little while later, he texted me telling me he and our dog were in the basement and were having a hard time making a phone call.   He did say he thought our house was ok.  I knew things must have gotten bad for J to go to the basement.  He is always the guy standing out on the porch or in the garage watching the storms roll in. When I finally was able to talk to him, I found out he was ok first off, our house was ok, but we had no power.

After we were released back up to our store around 8:45 (and some lady was waiting for us to do a return...seriously)  We rushed to get the store looking decent, since we close at 9.  I was heading home by 10pm and had a hard time getting home.  The road I take of the page extension was pitch black because of the power outage.  Half way down, I had to turn around because a fallen tree was blocking my way.  Once I got home, J met me in the garage (he had to manually open it) with a flashlight.  

We were woken up around 2am with bright lights on....yay the power was back! That morning we went out and surveyed the damage.  We are lucky, only a leak in our new roof. I contacted the owner and let him know.  We did have other peoples siding and gutters in our trees.  I also think lightning struck the bush out front because of the way it fanned out.

Please keep the other people in the area in your prayers....there were a lot of houses destroyed.

J took this from our garage right before the wind started hissing

bush out front that I believe was struck by lightning

Too much in my head

I will start this post off by saying, I am finding it so hard to blog lately.  I guess sometimes I just feel like I do not have much to say in general, so that makes it even harder to type. By all means, I am doing well and for the most part happy with how busy life is right now, but I have this strange sense that something is missing.  I am not sure what is missing, but it has to be something.  Maybe it is all the rain we have been having.  I swear, it can be sunny all week (like it is right now as I look out my office window) and as soon as the weekend hits...BAM....thunderstorms both days.

Yes, I am thankful that with all this rain, J's new addition to his business, the lawn care, is booming, However, it is really taking a toll on my tanning activities, like pool time, boating, and talking the dog for walks/runs.


Work has been so busy with all the product shows, one after another.  This week, I am just finding it hard to get motivated to work. I had so much structure the past 2 months with set times for shows that now I am having a hard time focusing.  But I have been somewhat busy and my April numbers looked way better than any month in Q1.

My marriage is in a good place. J is super busy with work and that makes him a much more happy person.  Things are really doing well for BlairCo. Please continue to keep my family in your prayers for strength for him to continue growing.

Summer is almost here, which means......Summers with Peyton!!!!  I am looking forward to doing some fun things with him this summer when we have him every other week.  I am sure my posts will pick up!

My new ride

Well, things came to a head last week.  J has now opened the third and final (at least for now) branch of BlairCo Services, the lawn care side.  We bought a huge mower and trailer.  The problem with this is his Ford Fusion can not pull the trailer.  We were switching cars so he could used my 4Runner when I did not have product shows, but of course that finally caused problems last week.  He scheduled 10 lawns on wednesday and I had 2 product shows, needing my 4Runner.

Our quick solution was for me to drive my MIL's Durango.  When I got done with my shows we went over to Pappa Toyota to see J's buddy Mike, who is a sales man there.  I would have been perfectly happy in another 2003 4Runner. I just have loved my truck so much.  J says, only his wife would pick the exact same car for her new car. I say, don't rock the boat when you love something.  I was talked into a 2006 Sequoia. It is quite a bit larger than the 4Runner, but doesn't drive that way.  However, I really notice the difference when it comes to parking.  I have to back up and straighten myself out multiple times in each parking space. I am sure the people around me are thinking, that woman can't drive something that big.  I also didn't love the color, a goldish tan...hey I am a black or white gal, but it is starting to grow on me.  J tells me that in 2 years this will become a work vehicle for him too and will finally get a brand new car!

For now, just stay out of my way in parking lots.