The Last 30 Days

I have been BUSY! 

To sum the past 30 day so of my life up... amazing! 

There has been a lot of anticipation on my side of things.

Josh and I were waiting for a trip to get here. We made a six day trip down to Boca Grande, FL to visit my grandfather and boy did we have fun! I love going on trips with him. Everything is always perfect.

We got to go TARPON FISHING! :)

I hooked a tarpon at 8:26 and fought him until 10:18. I handed the reel over to Josh only to get it back 20 minutes later to reel him in the rest of the way. Over 2 Hours of fighting that fish.

The fish was giant... 150lb

Come to find out... we had such a hard fight because he was Foul hooked. Oh well it was fun anyways!

Pictures don't do him justice....

Wish I could have gotten my hand in the picture.. he could have eaten it. 

I also was anticipating the arrival of 40 precious little beings.... 42 to be exact.

Aren't they precious!!  I love them. Half are mine/mom's and half are my sister's.

I was also anticipating some check offs for nursing school. Check offs that kept me in the program. I passed so no worries there!

I have been able to do a good bit of riding as well. Sweet horses are doing just fine!

Now I am anticipating a beach trip with Jaclyn and a 7 day cruise with my family and Joshua! It's gonna be a good, good summer!!

Possibly more time for blogging?! Possibly!

Pig Show!

First off,

It was only last week when someone came trudging onto my blog and made me feel as if I couldn't write what I feel for being watched like a hawk and picked apart. Well guess what, I don't care. If you want to come onto my blog and mock me- that is perfectly fine with me! You are only wasting your time and brain cells.

I only hope that one day you will be as mature as I am and have a relationship with someone that makes you as happy as I have been with my boyfriend.

I also can only pray that you will never be treated as I have been treated by you, but I can hope differently.

As one of my favorite bands sings  "I don't think that I could be so Cold hearted".

That being said! Moving on.

On a lighter note, and the reason I started to write this post, Josh and I had a very busy and successful weekend!!

As many of you know Joshua raises showpigs. Duroc showpigs. He had a very bad incident where his main breeding sow and best momma pig miscarried. She was carrying the pigs for the show that happened this past weekend. Since she miscarried, there were no pigs for the show this past weekend.

That all changed when Josh and I made the long trip to Butler, KY. I could have sworn I wrote a blog post on that, but I can't seem to find one! I'll just post a quick recap! :)

 

We left the boring flatness of middle GA and headed toward the gorgeous mountains of TN and KY.

We got to our destination and picked up all these little piggies!

Most of them are for kids that show pigs and wanted a KY pig that Josh picked out for them.

The two 'red' pigs at the top left corner are Josh's two little show pigs. 

I loved that trip. It was fun and relaxing.

Josh and I both agree that roadtrips are our favorite things to do. Just the two of us, no one else to worry about!

While we were at the barn in KY, Josh had to pick out his pigs. He was looking for a gilt and a barrow. He was had chosen his gilt and was trying to figure out which barrow he wanted. He and I narrowed it down to two, then, boars. He has since castrated the poor fella making him a barrow. Anyways, it was down to the two. Josh couldn't decided which one he wanted for sure. I knelt down beside him and tried to help him figure out the flaws of each and the positives of each. At some point, after he was still undecided, I just blurted out... "That one! He's got the best... everything" and he said "Looks good to me!"

So Aubie it was. Bet you can't guess where I got that precious name from!

I named the gilt Bree and the rest is history!

 

Bree

Josh and I spent some time walking them and Josh fed them up the way he knows how and off to the show we went. Since the two pigs were litter mates, they are very much the same size. He was sure they would be in the same class (since classes are done by pig weight), but they just happened to be in two separate classes! He took Aubie out first. The second he walked out of the holding pen the judge pointed at him. He was pinned! Yes, my little Aubie has a chance to win this thing! (Every pig that the judge likes he sends to a different holding area to look at them again after all the other pigs are out of the way. He has to look at about 20 different pigs in each class, sometimes more, and pick 8 of those to place.)

I go get Bree and bring her around into the holding pens to get her ready to go into the ring for the next class. 

They let all the 'pinned' pigs out of the ring and the judge looks over them for a while. He slowly pins certain pigs again which are the pigs that are 4th-8th places.

Josh and Aubie are still in the ring. 

Then the judge looks at one guy and holds up three fingers. He turns around and quickly flashes two fingers at the other showman and one finger at Josh. He won!

Now it's Bree's turn! Guess what, same thing! 

We have 2 first place pigs and there are only 2 classes of Durocs. Josh automatically wins Grand Champion and Reserve Champion for the Duroc breed! It was just a matter of picking which one was Grand and which one was Reserve. Aubie ended up with the Grand and Bree was Reserve. 

I'm so proud of Josh! He won BOTH Grand and Reserve! He was pretty excited too.

Sorry for the horrible quality of this picture! I was the only help Josh had and I didn't have time to fumble with my camera, alas the cellphone was there.

Since Josh won the overall Duroc show, he had to stick around and show in the overall final drive. That means there will be one pig from each breed (all the Grand Champions) showing together in the ring for the judge to pick out the Grand Champion Overall Pig. 

Josh didn't expect to win this because the Duroc never does, and just as suspected the Crossbred won the Grand and the Hampshire won the Reserve.

Overall, it was a great (& long) Saturday!

Big thanks to Clint and family for helping Josh get the pigs to the showgrounds while he was on his way back from Athens!

The rest of the weekend was great as well. I am now sitting here at work waiting until I can see Josh again! I miss that boy when he is gone...

But, so happy I can call him mine! :)

I think we might just have to have some little pig showers of our own one day! Don't worry, they will show horses too!

Trade Day, Sprinklers... Amen!

Josh and I took a trip to North Alabama a couple of weekends ago to visit my sister! I haven't been up there since I graduated from Auburn and I had a three day weekend off of school so we packed the car and headed out!

Josh has never been to Linsey and Ben's house so he was pretty excited about it.

We got up there and hung out with Linsey & Ben, checked out their chicken coop (which is amazing... she should do a post on it! hint hint, linsey! Now that it's clean!), we made/watched supper be made, and felt the baby moving around in Lin's tummy.

I always have fun when I go up to Linsey's house. It's a whole different world up there and it's just so interesting!

Funny story about the first night!   We were all sitting in the den with dinner in our laps getting ready to eat yummy chicken burritos that Lin had made! Ben said he would say the blessing and started doing just that... not even 10 seconds into the blessing Ben is praying, blessing the food and time with family and Josh says "Amen brother!" and throws his hat back on his head! Linsey and I died into laughter... we had not heard an Amen and Ben had not said Amen. Ben shook his head and said with a smirk on his face "I'm not done yet, stupid!" I think Josh turned 12 shades of red as he tried to keep from laughing! Needless to say that was a laughter filled prayer! It was quite funny!

Linsey lives around a bunch of different small towns and one of those has a drive in. We were going to go to... but it was closed due to the tornado damage :(

I can not even begin to explain how bad the damage is up there. I can't imagine what it is like in Tuscaloosa. It really takes seeing it with your own eyes to put it into perspective.

Saturday we all woke up early and went to Trade Day!

This place is the real interesting part. It's a big place with rows of junk where rednecks gather. :) 

It really is fun though! 

Need a sign so your puppy won't get run over? 

They got 'em.

Kids loving this Lilac Crested Amazon 

Baby Ducky!

Notice the trucks parked in the back... they all have some sort of animals.

Goats, llamas, hunting dogs, stray dogs, puppy dogs, lots of dogs...

Quail

Bunnies

Chicks

Good looking men..

Oh wait... that's Josh! ;)

It was so hot that day... luckily they had some shaved ice!

Yum! I got Mango with Creme!

They loaded me up with some Creme... definitely worth the extra $0.25!

Sometimes you can actually find a pretty decent deal at trade day....

For instance.. Ben here got a Dewalt bag and a Sawzall for $10.00

Linsey... she got some peaches, a baby, and shaved ice! ;)

Please note that the Sawzall had a battery on it. (Maybe worth $30?)

Well, Ben wanted to take the gears out of the $10 sawzall and fix his own sawzall.

He ended up fixing the $10 sawzall and it worked perfectly.

You can't get a better deal than that!

Ben carried that thing around like a baby all afternoon on Sunday. 

It even got to have sprinkler time with us.

Me and Josh at Trade Day

Sprinkler time.

Mmm hmm. You heard it.

It's like pre-school all over! Reading time... Sprinkler time... same difference!

We set up a sprinkler in the back yard, we all got a lawn chair, we all sat around the sprinkler and let it hit our feet. That is what you call a redneck sunday afternoon! haha

It was fun though! Good visiting time and dog playing time.

I wish I would have gotten pictures of their dog Remy playing... and all of us at sprinkler time.

After sprinkler time, it was time to go home. We had a great weekend and we both can't wait to go back! I think Josh had a great time hanging out with Ben and looking at all his cows while me and Linsey did girly things inside the house!

I don't like saying goodbye, but I got to see Linsey this past weekend at her baby shower, so that was a plus!

It sure was weird saying goodbye to Linsey... next time I see her she's going to have a baby girl!! And I will be Aunt Mo x2.

Packing... check.

So, I'm basically all packed and ready to go minus a few things! I'm getting excited!

I still have a few more things to fit in there... but hopefully it'll all fit and be under 40 pounds! I want to save room to bring stuff back!! :)

And yes all my clothes are in plastic bags! If you ever plan a trip to Europe or somewhere that you will be for a good bit... then I definitely recommend this method!

1. You won't get shampoo all over your whole wardrobe if the bottles decided to explode!

2. You can pack day by day! Very cool.

3. Everything is nice and compact. I push all the air out and it makes for more room!

4. Awesome people pack in zip lock bags.

Here are a few things I'm taking with me to keep me company! :)

I don't know about you... but I can't sleep when there is snoring going on! I'm pretty sure that Pop snores. These little fellas will be gooood company, if I decide they should be!

My best friend, Leslie, let me borrow this book! It is going to be a movie soon, so I'm spoiling it and reading the book. I probably shouldn't because I don't like movies after I read their books... Oh well. 

I'm also taking "Where are you Now?" by... Mary Higgins Clark. I'm in the middle of it... and it's pretty good!

Ok, so I'm not taking these... but they are my favorite and I couldn't resist taking a picture of them!

This is the purse I bought not too long ago to take along. It has super security for all those nasty pickpocketers! It has the flap, then a zipper, then more zipper!

It kind of looks black in this picture... but it's really a dark purple. I like it  a lot.

While I am gone, Josh may get on here and post a few blogs for me! I asked him to be my 'guest blogger' and he said "I miiiight." So we'll see!!

I will also go ahead and write a few blogs about a couple of different things and schedule them to automatically post throughout the weeks.

They'll be about horses, art, fish, and something special!

I hope everyone has a great two weeks!! I'm not sure if I will have internet, but if I do then I'll update if I can! We are actually going to be on a River Boat going down the Rhine River! The website says they have free, wireless internet via satellite... so we'll see how it goes!

My new travel partners!

My mom scored at TJ Maxx and got me some new luggage! :)

It's the Olympia line by Picasso.

They also have it in Lime Green and Black.

I got the BIG one and the very little one!

I'm not a pink kinda girl... but I definitely do like it though!

I have been getting a lot of pink stuff lately...

Pink planner for school

Pink purse for my birthday

Pink luggage for my trip!

Don't worry... I won't go pink crazy.

I really am a lime green kinda girl... 

but they didn't have the carry-on size in the lime green!

I've never had luggage with four wheels before... 

they scoot around where ever you wanna go!

So much more convenient that the forward/backwards pulling ones

that fall over when you try to turn too fast or go up and down stairs with them.

 only five days!!

Let's go Braves!!

Last Thursday Josh took me up to Atlanta for a Braves game! It was my birthday present, and a darn good one at that! Made it even better that the Braves won!

We had Dugout seats above the Braves and they were pretty awesome!

We were there for Gonzalez's first game! I didn't know it at the time... my brother told us when we got home. I actually took a good amount of pictures of him. He is batting in the picture above. 

He did very well! I know he got a double and I remember him getting another good hit later in the game.

My favorite, Chipper! I know a lot of people may not be really big fans of Chipper Jones, but he was the Braves Idol when I was growing up. He was the handsome one! :)

Chipper has definitely started showing his age! I hear this may be his last season... I'm not much on sports so I get all these updates from my brother! I think it would be pretty smart to leave with the coach that drafted you! I'm sure he has made enough money to last him... forever.

and we couldn't expect any less from Chipper..

AND..

Way to go Chip! Can I call you Chip?

My little cousin wanted Jason Heyward's Autograph..

This is as close as I got!

I love how they do all the players differently. I wish I would have taken more pictures of these!

Turner Field at night! It's so pretty!

They won! They hit hands and then Josh and I left! 

Well after we got a picture!! :)

The sweet lady I was sitting next to took it for me and I took one of her family in return! They had twin boys that were turning 8 that saturday and they were so cute! They were really nice people. We got lucky and had nice people on both sides! There was one lady that was acting a little crazy behind us... but I think there is one of those just about every time you go somewhere! 

I totally didn't know this, but you can take your own food and drinks into the stadium! How generous of them. Powerades/all drinks were $4.50. A Bag of peanuts was $6.50.

I WILL be taking my own food next time!! We even discussed sitting in the all you can eat/drink section for $45.00! Now that would almost be worth it. I think I'll just take my own food!