Picture Perfect!

I had so much fun on our recent trip to Florida! We got to take some family pictures at the beach... not so many of them turned out! Here are two that did! I love the feet picture, which is surprising because i hate feet, but it is neat!

OUR NEW ADDITION

So again I find myself apologizing for not writing for so long but this time I have a really good reason. So much in our life has changed in the last few weeks it nuts! Last Sunday (the 10th) we were pulling into the church parking lot when Pat's phone rang, we got the terrible news that Pat's grandmother had passed away. It was kind of expected she had been in a lot of pain for a very long time, so the news came with a sigh of relief. However, we had already planned that on that day we would be driving to Cincinnati to pick up our new puppy. So after church we did it, we drove to Cincinnati and got our little Henry. Here are some pictures of our new Great Dane Pup!

This last one is Henry's dad and a rough estimate of Henry's size! Henry has been the best puppy with limited accidents in the house. But boy when we want to go to bed he whines and whines and whines. We are running on empty here, no sleep for us!

So Wednesday we traveled, both pups in the toe to Poland Indiana for Pat's Grandmothers funeral. That day was really hard on the family with the worst part being a visit to Pat's Grandfather in the Alzheimer's wing at the nursing home. They had told him the day before that his wife passed away, but unfortunately he was not able to attend the funeral and when we got there he didn't even remember. It was truly one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.

After the funeral and all the others goings on that day we headed home plus one more dog. Pat's parents are on vacation this week in Costa Rica and we get their dog JR. So here I am with a hurting husband a new puppy, chip, and old man river (JR). JR is very old and grumpy he needs a lot of medicine and special attention. So needless to say I am stretched pretty thin.

When we think it can't get any worse in the car on the way home from the funeral Pat got the call we have been waiting for. The "powers that be" had named a successor for Pat's boss's job....... Pat unfortunately did not get the job. They are bringing in someone new whom Pat will have to train to be his boss. This company astounds me! Pat is currently doing the job by himself yet they think he is not "seasoned" enough to handle it. Both Pat and I were devastated and emotionally drained. The next day Pat had a face to face with the regional boss to talk about his job performance and figure out job situation. Well he had some "good news".... Pat's next move will be to a terminal about six months from now. You guessed it! There is no terminal for 68 miles from here and he wont be stationed there, they're thinking Decatur Illinois. So now we get to get our house ready to be put on the market and start thinking about packing.

please pray for us and our new puppy! we are being challenged everyday, but i know god wouldn't give me more than I can handle.

Cassie

Christmas Joy!

So after all the flooring issues Patrick and I traveled to Louisville for Christmas, we were able to make it to Mass at Patrick's home church, which is his favorite family tradition and then we were able to spend Christmas morning with my dad and the evening with my mom. We had a wonderful time and I fell in love with my mom's Christmas decorations. I am so lucky to have such a wonderfully creative mother, hopefully I have gotten some of these talents.. I thought Id share some of my favorite pictures with you all!

The big tall huge Christmas tree which I love love love!!! Its decorated with dark red brown and white... So gorgeous. Also my mom hung her Christmas lights on her patio vertically, suspending them from a cable. It was soo cool and when the wind blew it looked like snow a little!

Here's the handsome husband reading his new Christmas book! And one of my favorite things, magnolia leaf garland swagged on the stairs.

The built ins where every nook and cranny is filled with something Christmas!

And my mom put Christmas all through the kitchen too. Nutcrackers, and reindeer, and snowmen oh my!

I just love all of my moms decorations!! She will probably be mortified that I took these pictures without straightening everything first.... Anyone who knows her knows how weird she is about stuff like that! I also wanna brag on her for a minute because she is designing a house for the up coming Southern Indiana Home Show. Congrats mom I love you!

Cassie

IM BACK!

So sorry for my absence, but my life has been complete chaos since the last time I blogged. Patrick and I were so so looking forward to a nice and long relaxing vacation. It was supposed to start on the 20th and end on the 27th. Well nothing in life goes as planned and now I'm just so used to that!

On the 19th I started some laundry, you know getting everything nice and clean for our trip we were supposed to leave on the 20th and spend 4 days in Crawfordsville with Pat's parents and then to Louisville Christmas Eve for Mass at Pat's home church and Christmas with my family... so I threw in the load of whites and because I wasn't feeling well all crampy and such I laid down to nap while the load was running ( I turned on the buzzer to wake me when it was done). Well I woke up 34-45 min later and noticed my light "express wash load" wasn't done???? I got off the couch and took one step toward the hallway and the carpet smooshed and water pooled around my feet. The closer I got to the Laundry room the more water there was. In the laundry room itself there were two inches of standing water!! There was water everywhere. Our house is not that large and probably half was covered in water. My washer had never shut off! The water just kept running! Thank goodness for my neigh boors they ran right over to help, what a godsend!

Over the next day we kept sucking out the water with the new shop-vac, running the commercial size de-humidifiers, and running tons of fans to keep the air circulating. The bedrooms seemed to be drying ok, but they were not that wet, but the hall way and the living room were still really soggy. So on the 20th we decided that we needed to rip up the carpet in the hallway and living rooms (see below).

Well the hubs and I went to Menards (the best store ever) and picked out some flooring and decided to install it ourselves. We thought it would be simple click together flooring... NOT After 3.5 days we were finally finished with the install. It looks great now but we missed all our time with Pats parents and our lives were completely upside down for days!! Here are some pictures from the carpet being ripped out to completely finished! And my new rug!

Completely done~ Don't mind all the wires to our new theater system we still haven't had time to install!! Tomorrow Ill share the next phase of my Christmas vacation!

God Bless,

Cassie R.