Winter Wonder......Ice?

We finally live in a place that is cold enough to and we dont get snow, we get ICE!

Natures Concrete. Ekk.

The yard is like an Ice Rink and my poor kids keep getting hurt with the dogs pulling them around and they fall and slide, etc....

But it is pretty from inside.

Heres some pictures 

Single Parent Week

If you know me before this blog then you know I meet my husband Mike while he was working for the USAF - United States Air Force. He was deployed several times while I was either pregnant or just holding down the fort. When your spouse is gone more more then a few days, Months even you start to feel like a single parent.
Its not that my husband wanted to be gone, or even that he wanted me to be the only one raising the kiddos. But it sure starts to feel like your the only parent when the deployed one cant do much of anything when the home stead starts falling apart. Oh man, have I had to deal with some interesting fall a parts too!....

Well we decided to get out of the USAF so that we could be a family once again. 6 months gone any time let alone every year or two is just to much and was not worth the money in our eyes. So we packed up from the UK and moved back home to the USA and settled down. Or so we thought.....?
We are in a rental looking for our "forever home". Mike had to start looking for a job and wouldn't you know that the job he found that made us the best $ for the work ended up being a traveling job. UGH!

So here he is on his second traveling job and this time it will be for 9 days. 9 days sure does not seem like much at all with the 100+ days we have had before, until you have a house full of kids that start falling apart at the seems. Then you remember and realize just how wonderful your husband is and how much he does for you around the house.

So what do I do when Daddy is away. Well I do admit we eat more JUNK FOOD than normal. Not because Mike is a health nut but because with out an extra pair of hands to help in the kitchen or keep kids out of the kitchen while I am working on dinner preps we just pick up food to take home a lot more. Pizza, drive thru....easy junk snacks.  But what do I do to pass the time? Well that takes a little creativity. First I like to do something really fun the day of daddy leaving to keep spirits high. So yesterday after we dropped Mike off at the air port we headed north to visit some friends. Staying way longer than probably welcome we headed home grabbed a $5 Tuesday take n Bake style pizza for dinner and called it a day with fun movies. Today we got up did our school routine and then I surprised the kids by taking them to one of the "Paint your own pottery" places. That was a little more $$ then I wanted to spend but it sure keep us entertained for awhile.
We still have 8 days left and I know each day will not be full of blowing the bank. But we do have normal stuff to do as we home school, My second oldest daughter will be starting back up with violin lessons this week, and we got invited to a pot luck and birthday party so it should be pretty busy. I also have a realitor to meet up with about house hunting etc.  Next week before daddy comes back we might recover from all the excitement and then get the house back in order to welcome Mike home? Or maybe will just keep playing ;)

I'll post updated pics to the blog of our adventures as they come.....(I forgot to take before pics of our pottery boo me.)

Wanna Build a Snow Man?

When we knew we were going to move to Tennessee the first thought I had was that we were going to finally get a chance to live where it snowed...

Wow was I wrong. 

I know from pictures of my dads house that Tennessee does get snow and some areas more then others. But either this year is just a bad one or its really a big deal when it finally comes.

We are in the middle of January and as of right now we have only had three days where snow feel from the sky and two out of those three days the snow (if you can even call it that, more like frost) has not even stuck to the ground.

But just the other day I woke up to my son saying that it had snowed. So of course I was so excited.

Heres what I saw.... Ha ha

I hope you get a kick out of it as much as I did. Maybe one day we can Build a Snowman?

Back yard view from my kitchen window

Maybe when we finally find a house to live in, we will get a good snow day.

Where to Live? Where to Live?

With our biggest decision yet, which was to get out of the military early. We felt like it was time to really look for a dream of ours. The dream is to have our own house with land. Being that we are now in Tennessee which was a place I always wanted to live as a kid, more so because my dad lives out here.  With all the stages of buying a house I know that the start of getting a loan is sure not a favorite of mine. Plus with 5 kids tagging along to each open house or house showing asking us right in front of the Realtor or owner if we are buying the house makes me want to never do this again!

The problem with the house hunting that we have found so far is; that either the house is amazing with no land, or has land but the house is seriously lacking. I even ran into the issue of finding my DREAM HOUSE! Which you would think why would that be a problem? Well by the time I found it it was already on contract. Pout pout pout. Which means that now I keep comparing the other houses to the one I did not get. I know, not good.

What do I want in a house. Well with five kids we need at least 4 bedrooms but the more the better. At least 2 bathrooms and I would love an open concept with my homeschooling we spend the most time in the living spaces rather than the bedrooms. I like character which in my opinion is either going to be log cabin, Victorian, or country cottage. But this area seems to think track housing and plan Jane brick homes is a plus-boo.

                  Here is the dream house I lost so you can see what I was so unfortunate to not buy-

Isnt she a beauty? 

Maybe one day I can just win the lotto and build my own house just like this

This is a house that we just looked at and although its not the catalog house

 (the picture doesnt really show that its a little run down)

But I love the Character of this place and its on an amazing 8 acres! Which is what we are looking for. My fear is that this place will get a contract before we can even put in an offer. It seems like houses are dropping off the list faster then we can find them. We did not expect this with it being December house hunting.

I know that God has the right house for us. The issues is my patients to wait for the right one to come along.

If I knew what I know now about Tennessee I might have actually considered moving to Alaska instead. But I dont know if we could ever afford to live there honestly?

So the update on the house hunt is that we have no house

After issues with the house loan looks like we have to wait tell April to get a house. I am bummed because although we get a house eventually I feel like we have been house hunting for over a year and we still have bit of a wait to go. Besides the fact that non of the houses on the market even interest me.

Hopefully we will have some better UPDATE news to come.

Stay tune.

Sewing/Crafting Challenge

This is a Challenge to myself. I love Crafting of all kinds. Sewing, Crocheting, Drawing, Painting, beading......you name it! I also love to try new things and once I do I usually spend a lot of time on that new thing because its just like and addiction. Well I wanted to push myself to the limits. I want to make one project a week for the year. (why 1 project a week? well mostly because I have so much other things going on that one project a week might seem like no big deal but once you get going with Home schooling, Bible, daily chores, shopping, and whatever else that might get to the point where its overwhelming. Especially with the including of us house hunting this year. So here it is the challenge.....1 Craft project a week! I also want to see if I can make two quilts from start to finish this year. I usually get the top done and then leave it to sit for a year if not longer because I just get busy with life. So this is it, my challenge and results)

Week 1
Country Quilt:

Finished my country quilt

Top Before it was finished

Week 2

Rag Quilt

  Felt 10x10 in squares Easy and soft. I love the way it feels. Its the size of a lap blanket.

Week 3

Cushion for a toddler rocking chair 

This was a pretty easy sewing project And helps give the house that country decor

Week 4

We went to a place to paint Pottery (unfortunately I didnt get the Before Shot so you'll have to wait to see it tell I get it picked up)

Week 5

Ive been painting and its been a long time.  

Week 6:

 I am loving the western painting look. I just had to do more. These canvases I used are just pictures I had laying around that I havent put up in my new house as I didnt think they went well.

Updates to come of the next weeks Projects

Random Post and Pics

-Random Post of Pics for Family and Friends-

My dog Harlow apparently can sleep any where. But he is taking care of my sick kids.

One thing that I love in the Moring is Coffee!

This is how I know that my kids belong to me....Ok maybe not the only reason. We never waist time looking for matches. And OCD persons nightmare. ;)

-Just a fun post to share thoughts and Photos with Friends and Family-

This is the man of my dreams! I love that we can have fun with each other. Silly photos

Opryland and Opry Mills is one of my favorite places to just go visit

One of the biggest Christmas Trees Ive ever seen

We were standing probably 50 ft away its BIG!

The Waterfall in the Hotel

Darn Cute 2 yr old

Levi is looking more and more like Mommy, Sorry Dad

Our only Boy, Dont worry he is spoiled

Me and My Love

Anika and I taking selfies on the way to lunch (Dont worry I wasnt driving)

Amariah

Cavern Trip

While the in laws where here we had a pretty great time. Along with Majong which is our family game ever sense my mother in law taught it to us, we took a trip to the Caverns. This was the first time ever for my children to see a cave and I haven't been sense I was a really young child.

We left fairly early with it being more then an hour drive from our house. Coffee in had and snacks in the bag we were ready to go.

Cumberland Caverns

Heres a link if your in the area and you ever want to go

http://cumberlandcaverns.com/

You have to walk to the cave from the gift shop, its about a quarter mile from the gift shop. 

I was worried that the walk to and from the cave plus the 1.5 mile walk in the cave would be hard on the little ones. Thankfully I was wrong.

Shyanne and Amariah walking to the cavern

The door to the Cavern

Inside the Cavern was amazing! My most favorite part which was pretty much at the very beginning was the pool of water. It was Crystal Clear and almost looked fake. The clearness of the water gave an illusion of it being really shallow but they said that at its deepest point it was over 7ft deep.

Impressive. 

Here is the pool of water all lite up

These look so amazing! I cant believe that underground is such beauty

The pool of water is filled with a waterfall and here it is....

The water fall behind the kids and Mother in law, Kathy

I did not dress up for the cave lol but here is proof I was there. ;)

Here is the waterfall again. Better picture. BEAUTIFUL!

more pics....

A bat! Is this batmans cave? lol ok lame joke alert.

This is the longest room in the cave. I forgot how long they said it was but it keeps going and going. Its like 4 foot ball fields or something crazy?

Group Pic!

This was right before we had to walk up as is STRAIGHT UP 350 stairs. Man it was a work out and I was carring a 25 lb toddler to boot

More awesome shots

They had a light show. In the show they narrator the man who discovered it and how he got stuck in the cave for 3 days and 3 nights. Which he didnt know the length of time seeing as how it was completely dark in there and he could not find his way out. If it wasnt for his friends coming to find him he would have died, so they shut off the lights and yeah it was DARK. The youngest two of my babies were not happy about the minute of darkness. 

This is the area lite up and those are called pipe organs in the back ground. They even make nose, hints the name.

 more photos of what we saw on our walk out of the Caverns. which was hard to look at as your trying to not fall from the slippery path and misleading depth of how far away it is. But it was well worth the effort.

The kids and I thought this looked like fingers coming down from the ceiling. Dont say that in front of a 4 yr old. Levi got really scared and didnt want to walk under it after that.

I dont know how they proved it but apparently this wall of graphity is authentic and from the first visitors to the cave.

I dont know who that man is? But thats Allyson standing in front of the grave yard. This isnt really wear they are laid to rest but its in memory of someone who died in the cavern.

This chandelier is from New York where some oprah house shut down and they brought it to the caverns. Apparently this is one happing place to listen to bluegrass underground. They hold concerts once a month and weddings, sleep over tours etc....

Look even the Caverns celibates Christmas.

On the drive in we say this really cool barn that I just had to get a picture of and include here.

And seeing as how it was past lunch time we just had to stop off and get food. Here is my cute 2 year old enjoying a frosty. (She loves Elsa if you cant tell)

So it was a very long day but worth the trip we even had my dad over for dinner which was an easy take and bake pizza as I was exhausted!

And a game of Majong to finish it off!

Shyanne and Santa, I mean my dad.

Majong 

(This is actually a pic of us playing on New Years eve but it just shows this is our game)