Lake of the Ozarks pictures

Irie trying to figure out how to get into the front seat.

Tuesday enjoying the breeze from the window.

Taking a break by the lake.

When we ran out of water.

Leaving on a jet plane (if it doesn't leave me first!)

I'm sitting in the airport in Sacramento waiting for my flight. I should be in the air right now, but when I arrived this morning, I was told my flight was delayed 45 minutes. As I was about 2 hours early, I wandered around the airport, responded to some emails, checked messages, etc. I wandered down to my gate at 10:20 and asked where my flight gates had been moved to only to find out that it had already left. Apparently they were able to take off sooner than they thought they would be able to and just went ahead and left. Because my flight was booked by a travel agent, they didn't have a number to call me at. Awesome.

This wouldn't matter so much except I'm supposed to be delivering a teleconference at 7pm this evening. I had to move flights around so that I will now be on my layover in Chicago during the call time. I can't imagine how much fun it will be to try to deliver a teleconference from an airport! I'm quite sure I won't be the first though.

Anyway, while I wait for my Sacramento to Chicago flight to take off, I thought I would spend a minute updating my blog.

I don't have any pictures handy, so I'll have to update with those later, but we did have another eventful weekend.

On Saturday morning, Ryan and I decided to make the 2.5 hour drive to Lake of the Ozarks with the dogs. It was a bit of an overcast day and we wanted to get out and do a little hiking. I've never been to Lake of the Ozarks and Ryan hadn't been in a long time, so we thought we should get it done before the summer got even further away from us. The drive was a bit long, but not too bad. When we got there we found the state park and a nice little trail. As we were entering the trail, there was a nice sign that said there was a high level of ticks in the area so to be sure to wear repellent. Well, the dogs had their frontline on and we had sprayed ourselves with repellent so we carried on. Our overcast day turned out to be extraordinarily humid and we (and the dogs) were dripping in no time. About an hour in, the dogs had already ran out of water and we decided to head back. We spent some time driving around the area to see what all was there and quickly discovered that it's not very dog friendly. While pretty much everywhere in St. Louis allows dogs on their restaurant/bar patios, nowhere in Lake of the Ozarks does. So after trying several places, we finally cut our loses and decided it was probably time to start driving back anyway. About this time I discovered a teeny-tiny little tick on my hand. With a quick look over the dogs we found that they were totally infested as well. It was a very long 2.5 hour drive home knowing that we were all covered with ticks! Our would be leisurely evening, turned in to a full scale tick hunt with specialized shampoos, sprays, etc. It was great. Irie (who's fur is much thinner and therefore easier to see through) has at least 100 bites all over her legs and stomach. She looks like she has the chicken pox. I called the vet and they said they would check them for Lyme disease when they get their next round of shots, etc but otherwise not to worry about it if they didn't show any symptoms. Ryan and I, other than being itchy, don't seem to be showing any negative signs either. Keeping our fingers crossed!

Sunday was home improvement day and while I spent the day painting our upstairs bathroom (which I'll post pictures of later), Ryan spent the day filling our big hole in the driveway much to the neighborhood kid's dismay. Since we moved in, we've discovered the neighborhood kids playing in our driveway with the pieces of asphalt that make up the hole. They seem to enjoy stacking them up and knocking them over. This is not a big deal, except somewhere along the way a few of the kids have decided they're also good to throw around - specifically at our garage door. After hearing this a few times and running out to try to catch the kids that were doing it, we decided the easier thing to do would be to remove all the pieces. Now it is mostly filled and Ryan has told several of the kids to stay away from it so that it will set properly. The next day the neighborhood snitch showed up at our doorstep to let us know that some of the kids had been putting their footprints in it and riding their bikes through. She wouldn't give up who had been doing it, but wanted us to be know it was happening. Nice. At any rate, while neither project is professional grade, it felt nice to get a few things accomplished this weekend (and checked off the ever growing list of home improvement tasks.)

Fawning over Ryan

On an unrelated note from this past weekend, I realized another reason why I love Ryan.

As we were driving through rural Illinois to get to Clinton, two young fawns jumped in front of the car. Ryan slammed on the breaks and managed to scrape by with only tapping one of the deer on its hind-quarter. The fawns ran off, but Ryan backed up to where he had tapped the deer and we searched to make sure it hadn't been hurt.

As we wandered along the side of the road hoping to not find the deer, it struck me that I'm with someone pretty special - and very in line with my own feelings. Not many guys I know would stop to make sure a deer they barely tapped was OK.

Thankfully, as we were searching, we saw both deer further down the road running into the corn fields. Good stuff.

It's officially summer

It never really feels like summer to me until I get to spend some time on the water. As luck would have it, the most unseasonably cool weekend we've had yet this summer, was the one we ended up spending on the water. It actually was really nice despite the cooler weather. Ryan and I met Sarah and Michael in Clinton at Sarah's parents house. They were nice enough to put us all up for the weekend (and babysit the Oldham boys) while we got some quality "adults only" time in on the boat.

We spent the majority of the day just lounging on the boat and chatting, but before we headed in we got inspired to do a little tubing. The water in Clinton Lake is oddly warm, so despite the 70 degree weather, it was actually quite nice to be in the water. It has been several years since any of us had been tubing, so it was a nice blast from the past.

Michael, Sarah and Ryan


Me and Sarah in our classic self-portrait style.

Ryan showing us how it's done.

I also had the pleasure of getting to spend a little time with my two pseudo nephews, Payton and Preston. Payton, as always, was a crack up. He's just such a sweet, lovable little guy. He's in to everything (especially anything mechanical) and spent a good hour when we first arrived taking me and Ryan for a ride in his grandma's Yukon. Plenty of buttons in there to play with.

And Preston - I just can't believe a whole year has almost passed! As bubbly as Payton is, that's how serious Preston appears to be. It's pretty funny. But despite the fact that he normally has a deadpan stare on his face, I was able to get some giggles out of him this weekend and actually managed to catch a few on film.




So, now that the summer has officially begun... I find we're at the end of July. How does that happen?

In truth we've done a lot of fun things this summer that I just haven't gotten around to writing about. We had a great 4th of July with Nicole and Jason. Ryan and I got to take in a day at the Six Flags water park. We've had a few BBQs in our new backyard, lots of house guests and plenty of fun activities with the pooches, but somewhere along the way I lost some interest in documenting it all on the blog. I think in part that is due to stress at work and my lack of desire to sit at the computer and think in the evenings.

About the middle of last week I decided I was starting to feel a bit out of balance and, well, just bored, so I'm on to a new regime now. More trips out of the house during the week, more exercise, new engaging books and less thinking about what all I need to do for work seems to be the ticket for the moment. I think next on the list is getting started on some of our home improvement projects so I can feel a bit more accomplished and getting back to finding some friends in the area. There are actually a few decent prospects, there's just been so many other things going on I haven't really spent any time focusing on it! Summer is just a busy time.

Incredible Pizza Company trip #2

Lily and Senora test their rhythm.

And take in some pint-sized bowling.

No trip to the Incredible Pizza Company would be complete without 20 rides on the carousel.

Tuesday's new headrest

I turned around in my office chair the other day to see Tuesday using my bookshelf as a headrest. It didn't look very comfortable but she seemed to enjoy it.

House pictures (part 2)

The office.

The family room.

The game room.

The puppy palace.

The staircase (pretty much everyone's favorite aspect of the house.)

House pictures (part 1)

The kitchen.

The "dining room" with our make-shift dining table.

The blue room (aka the master bedroom.)

The enormous whirlpool bathtub in the master bath. It's ridiculous - you can fit about 5 adults in it.

The downstairs fireplace - complete with a bunch of our home improvement tools.

The move

One of our first experiences as new home owners was realizing that water was not flowing through one of our downspouts. I got the easier task of buying a pipe snake while Ryan had the joy of clearing the clog.

He did a bit too good of a job.

Ryan showing off our new paint job.

Irie could've cared less about moving - she just wanted us to play ball with her.

It's official!

As of about 11:45 this morning, I became a homeowner. Despite all the misc. problems leading up to the purchase, the closing was very easy. A few signatures (OK, a lot of signatures) and you're done.

After the closing, Ryan and I spent the rest of the day over at the new house. We decided we need to paint the downstairs because whoever did it last did a pretty crappy job. So we spent many hours sanding the walls, taping everything up, filling holes/dings, etc. Tomorrow we will begin the actual painting.

We both have the entire coming week off so we're hoping to get at least some of the things on our home improvement list done. There's definitely a lot of cleaning and yard work to be done and several other little (and some not so little) projects - but for the most part, I think we're in pretty good shape. I'm not sure when we'll actually move our stuff in, but I guess that in part depends on when we actually get it packed up. :-)

We also introduced the dogs to the new house today. They were like two kids in a candy shop running in and out of all the rooms exploring. They also became instant favorites with some of our new neighbor kids - as did Ryan. Ryan let them in to the backyard to retrieve their lost ball and about twenty minutes later they showed up at our doorstep with several handmade "welcome to the neighborhood" cards. Each card stated that Ryan "rocked" and that he's the type of guy they'd like to hang out with - sometime soon, if possible. It was very cute. I think we'll be keeping those.

There are many stories and pictures I need to get caught up with on the blog, but it's after midnight and I'm ready to turn in for the night. Perhaps with being on vacation this week I'll be able to make more posts - maybe....

Vacation wrap up

Well the end of my vacation this week turned out to be very nice, as was the beginning. so all in all I'll call it a success.

Sarah came down to St. Louis this weekend and we had a great time taking in some sights, relaxing by the community pool and just getting some time to have true girl talk with no interruptions or short time frames. It was wonderful! :-) Somehow I managed to not take any pictures this weekend except those of our beautifully manicured toes. Odd - I know, but I've never had a picture painted on my toes before so I was a bit excited. (See photos below - pic #1 is Sarah and #2 is me.) But I promise we did more than that, including the Anheuser-Busch Brewery tour and visiting 2 out of 3 of the Man vs Food challenge stops. And while it was primarily a girls' weekend, we did let Ryan join us for some of the activities. I was really glad Ryan and Sarah were finally able to spend a little more time together and get to know one another better.

In other news, the before-mentioned house problem seems to be resolving, though we still have a kink or two to work out. Ryan and I spent most of the afternoon today window shopping for home repair items and getting ideas for furniture and decorating. We're both getting really excited and can't believe that our close date is less than 2 weeks away.

Tuesday seems to have fully recovered from her stomach issues earlier this week and is back to her normal self. And Irie is still irie. I found her a new sweatshirt that I love at one of the stores we were at today so she had to try it on for us tonight.

And tomorrow I go back to work. But never fear - I still have more than a full week of vacation that needs to be used by the end of June!

Is it over yet?

Today has been... well, interesting.

It started out well enough. I'd been spending the last few days up at Grandma Deetz's (pictures to follow) and today I drove back to St. Louis. I'm on vacation this week and wanted to get home today so that I'd have tomorrow to run some errands, do some packing, switch summer and winter clothes, etc before Sarah comes down for the weekend on Friday.

However, apparently there was a different plan in play for me. The drive was calm enough. I got home around 6pm and walked in to a wonderful world of chaos. Tuesday apparently has not been feeling well and when Ryan got home tonight (about 15 minutes before me) he discovered that she had had diarrhea in her crate. He got her (and her crate) into the backyard to be hosed down, but she got fragrant footprints throughout the house on her way out. So while Ryan worked on the crate and dog, I worked on thoroughly cleaning the floors. After her bath, she threw up all over the bathroom, so we had the fun task of cleaning that up as well. I think so far we've gone through about 5 towels to clean up the messes. She seems desperately thirsty but every time she drinks, she seems to throw it up. We started giving her a few ice cubes every hour or so and she's doing ok with that (so far.) She and Ryan are in bed now, so hopefully it will be a restful night and the worst is behind us.

In addition to this fun, I also came home to a very strange new house issue. I won't go into the details on this public forum, but it definitely threw us for a bit of a loop. So far everything is still OK, but we'll be keeping a close eye on the situation. Perhaps once everything is solidified, I can fill you all in. Until then, just keep your fingers crossed! :-)

At any rate, I don't think tomorrow will be as productive of a day as I had hoped, but I'm sure I'll make due. And perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised. After all, I certainly didn't expect any of the happenings from today!

Quick updates

I know I haven't updated lately so wanted to post a few quick tidbits.

1) Everything with the house is moving along on schedule. We've changed our closing date to June 12th, the inspection is done and we've reached agreement on who's fixing what. The next step is the appraisal. So far we haven't hit any major issues, but we're still a bit wary, I think.

2) Tuesday is still healing - we hope nicely. She has proved to be nearly impossible to keep down. We can't wait to get approval to start taking her on longer than 10 minute walks and getting her back to the dog park. She doesn't seem to be in any pain and has no qualms about running, jumping, wrestling, etc. I'm very concerned that when we take her in to get follow-up x-rays next week we're going to learn that she hasn't healed well. Irie (other than her obsession with eating the trunk of the tree out back and rolling in smelly stuff) is doing great.

3) Ryan and I spent this past weekend finally enjoying some of what St. Louis has to offer. Even though we've been here several months now, we just haven't felt like we've really had the chance to do fun St. Louis stuff. This weekend we checked out a local piano bar, the Botanical Gardens with Carl, Kathleen and Lily, a neighborhood restaurant with a great patio and the zoo. It was a very nice (and relaxing) weekend. All of our upcoming weekends are booked until we close on the house so it was really great to be able to just kick back this weekend.

Oh, how I like to see the little word "option" appear

As some of you have heard, and many of you haven't, Ryan and I began looking at houses this past weekend. As luck would have it, we fell in love with the third house we saw on our outing.
As potential non-luck would have it, there was an offer being made on the house so we had to move very quickly. And for first-time homebuyers - this was a little traumatic. Thankfully we had most of our ducks in a row so we were able to make an offer.

This morning we received written confirmation that our offer (counter-offer, whatever) has been accepted. So... pending inspections, appraisals and all the other things that could go wrong - we're going to be homeowners very soon!

We're very excited because the house is just so much more than we thought we were going to find. It's in our current neighborhood (which is especially nice because we already have friends here and know the lay of the land), it has more space than we were expecting, it has awesome perks (like new appliances and systems, a double lot fenced yard, three car garage, etc) and it's (in my opinion) a very nice, homey place.

Of course I realize much could still go wrong with the deal, but it's closer than we've ever been, so we're excited!

We'll try to keep everyone posted on our progress through the blog, but here are a few pictures to whet your appetite.

The progression of Tuesday

Tuesday has been doing pretty well and not causing as many problems as we had anticipated. It is annoying to have to have her on a leash at all times - it requires much more tag-teaming by me and Ryan. Also, because Tuesday is not allowed to jump up or down from the couch or bed, we've been trading off on sleeping on the floor (air mattress) with her. Probably a bit extreme, but we both get more sleep this way than if we had to listen to her cry in her crate all night. All in all, it hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. Of course, we're still in week one. Her stitches come out next week and then after that we can begin to allow her a bit more freedom and walking. The vet checked her out today and said the knee seems to be healing nicely though and she thinks she's going to be a quick healer. I would agree as she seems to not show any signs of pain at all and has no issues putting her full weight on that leg. Quite the trooper.

Keeping the injured leg elevated helps alleviate pain, Tuesday reasons.

It's hard to not feel sorry for her when she looks at you this way.

All tranqed up and sleeping soundly.

She finally got the soft cast off today and it was replaced with a nice e-collar to keep her from chewing her stitches. I'm not sure she appreciates the trade off.

The Incredible Pizza Company

It had been awhile since Lily and I had been able to have any quality aunt-niece time so Ryan and I turned in one of our visitation rights cards and took her to the Incredible Pizza Company last Friday. It was quite the place - kind of like a Chuck E. Cheese meets New Jersey boardwalk.

They have an extensive pizza/everything else under the sun buffet, 4 different style dining rooms (including one that's made up like a drive-in theater that airs full length movies), a pretty extensive arcade, a special area for the under 5 year-olds, bumper cars, mini-golf and go-karts. What more could you want?

I think Lily really enjoyed it - especially the moon-bounce and the merry-go-round that we could barely get her off of. I wasn't sure if she would like the go-karts because I know she's not always a fan of the "scarier" rides, but she loved it. Of course, we weren't going that fast, but she thought we were going top speed and she particularly enjoyed the fact that we were racing Ryan.

However, if you asked her what the best part was, she'd inform you it was getting a tiny plastic Care Bear in exchange for her 60 hard-earned tickets. Go figure. :-)

Lily riding the pony.

Peace.

We're going so fast the camera couldn't keep up with us.

The merry-go-round that wouldn't stop.

Send good, healing thoughts Tuesday's way today. She's currently recovering from surgery on her right hind knee to fix a luxating patella. Her surgeon says she had lots of "joint mice." (What a terrible name!) It sounds like she's doing pretty well though and the vet says the surgery was definitely needed - she couldn't even believe how bad it was.

Tuesday is such a happy girl you would never know she was in pain except for the way that leg was always just doing funny things.

We should get her back tomorrow night and then the real fun will begin - trying to keep her off her new improved leg so it can heal! (So maybe you could send some positive thoughts our way too!)

Blast from the past

One of the big highlights for me this weekend was driving through my old hometown of Carbondale on the way home. We drove by my old house (which looks remarkably the same), the pond Carl and I used to catch turtles at, my elementary school and some of the other old favorites. It was a somewhat erie feeling to see all these things and have them all seem so familiar when you haven't seen them in years. We were there around dusk and the pictures aren't great, but they're the best I could do from the car!

The new name of my old elementary school - Trinity Christian School. Whatever happened to good ol' public schools.

The corner of Winkler Elementary - which also looks exactly the same (minus the name). They even still have the same rusted swing sets.

1014 Glenview Drive. Try to look past the car parked on the street.

The big 3-0!

Ryan and I went to Memphis to celebrate my 30th birthday this past weekend. It was a little chilly to truly enjoy all Memphis has to offer, but we had a good time eating our way through the town. I think I ate enough fried food for a lifetime. But we did find time in between meals to check out Graceland and the Civil Rights Museum, which was cool. It was amazing to me how much I had forgotten from my high school and college days. Perhaps a strange thing to do on your 30th birthday, but it was fun. Here are a few pictures from the trip.

Ryan checking out the surprisingly delicious fried pickle.

Doing his part to try to drink down the most disgusting drink I've had - the Diver bucket from Silky O'Sullivans. Nasty.

Taking a more delicate approach.

Outside of Dyers (home of the deep fried burgers) on Beale St.