Weekends have been busy as well.  We went to St. Louis one weekend for Laura’s grandparent’s anniversary party.  Most of the rest of our weekends have been consumed with MSU football games.  Haley’s been funny at the football games.  We’ve trained her up right!  She loves Bully.  In fact, bulldogs, cowbells, and the M-State logo all go by the name “Bully” with her.  She shakes her hand in the air and says “ring ring ring”.  She’s actually enjoying the games now.  When people around her cheer, she claps like crazy.  A couple of times this past weekend she threw up her hands and said, “Touchdown”. 

I’ve been getting ready for a mission trip I’m about to head out on.  We’re going to Costa Rica to help a group called Adinfa set up a bakery.  They will be selling food/pastries to help fund the facility that houses and feeds street children.  It is going to be a lot of work, but we’ll have a little fun as well including visiting a coffee plantation and taking a zip line through the tree tops in a rainforest.  I can’t wait.  I know I’m going to miss my girls tremendously, though.

We’ve also finished up benches for the sunroom.  As you can see in the picture below, I had a little help building them.  Laura’s actually going to try to sell them so that I can re-build them a few inches lower.  No big deal.  It was a lot of fun building them with my little helper.  I’d welcome the chance to do it again.

The good part about the ride being cancelled was that Saturday’s ride was tough.  Due to Ike, we struggled against a headwind the majority of the way.  Once we hit the delta, the clouds spread and the sun was HOT!  The wind didn’t stop, though.  So, the good part is that we didn’t have to ride back on Sunday.

The bad part is that the wind we struggled against for hours on Saturday would have been a pleasant tailwind on Sunday.  That would have made the ride MUCH more enjoyable.

Regardless, we had a great time.  The ride was very well supported as always.  Accredo sponsored a rest stop along the way and was actually voted the top rest stop by the riders.  Our riding team for Accredo (which was about 20 riders) managed to raise a bit over $21,000. 

Laura came down to Tunica and met me on Saturday night.  We had a great time playing at the tables and endulging on Paula Dean’s buffet.  On the way home Sunday, we stopped at the Waffle House and had breakfast.  I’m not sure if it was something I ate, but I felt sick to my stomach all day Sunday.  I spent most of the day in bed getting waited on by Laura.  I’m feeling pretty good now, but Haley’s not.  Poor little thing has been coughing the past day or so.  It breaks my heart to see her hurting.

We managed to start taking pictures of the house.  I took a bunch of “before” pictures before we moved in.  I’ll try to post some over the next couple of entries.  Below are the first two.  Our sitting room before and after.  This is the room where I spend a good amount of time at home.  Its right off our bedroom and has our computer in it.  We just added a couch a few weeks ago.  We’re thinking we may do build-in shelves/cabinets along the wall with the window.  Still undecided.

We had a wonderful and full weekend.  Hayden’s parents came up on Friday night to spend the weekend.  I took the opportunity to have a girls night with my friend Melissa and we spent the evening scrapbooking at Archiver’s, a local store in town that hosts evenings to come in and use their tools, have dinner, and win door prizes.  It was fun catching up on some memories without interruption! 
The next morning Hayden’s dad and I went garage saling together!  I saw a couch on craigslist.com (my favorite website) that I thought would look great in our sun room.  I’ve been hunting a couch for months!!  We went and bought it…and had fun hanging out, just the two of us.  Unfortunately, the couch was the wrong color, but it will work perfectly in our office, so it’s not a loss.  So, the hunt continues…

Saturday morning we all drove up to “Goat City”, TN…give you a dollar if you know where that is!  We enjoyed seeing family and being outside at the Simons Family Reunion.  It was especially great to spend time with Papaw Ben.  We got home in time to change clothes and order pizza for the game. GO BULLDOGS!! 
Thank goodness we’re not fair weather fans because we’d be even more disappointed in the Dawgs performance than we were.  Haley had her MSU dress on and both sets of grandparents over to look for BULLY and COACH on the television.  Some kids like Mickey Mouse or other cute characters, Haley lives for BULLY.  We read the book, Hello Bully, many times a day and every time she sees the “M-State” emblem, she yells, “BULLY!”  We’re training her right.
Sunday Hayden was busy cleaning out the garage so I can park in there…yea!  He’s done so many projects lately and I’m sure he’s ready for a break…until my imagination comes up with the next thing we HAVE to have!  He’s so good at building what I come up with (see the benches).  We had a great time relaxing and celebrating my Dad’s birthday Sunday night.  Happy Birthday, DAD!  Needless to say, we’ve had a great weekend and are grateful the hurricane wasn’t too devastating.  We spent a lot of time watching it’s progress.  Our prayers are with all those effected by the damage.

Laura went down to the lake with me to take pictures of the maiden voyage.  She ended up taking a spin herself.  It was really a lot of fun.

We’ve been getting some visitors in the backyard.  Deer have been more than abundant lately.  I got some great pictures of them two days ago before work.  I saw some as I was running that morning at a track in our neighborhood.  Then I saw them again in our backyard.  I grabbed the camera and got a few shots.  There were three bucks in velvet, two does and one fawn.  The fawn was so cute.  I guess I need to wash our windows so the pictures will be a little clearer.

Haley’s growing fast.  She and I went to the park yesterday in Arlington.  They’ve got a crazy huge park there.  All sorts of climbing and swinging and sliding stuff.  She had a ball.  Afterwards, we picked up our new dining room table and chairs.  Finally we have furniture in the “empty room” in the front of the house. 

I did a triathlon last weekend.  It went better than expected.  I haven’t been training much so I wasn’t expecting anything too phenomenal.  Just wanted to finish.  I forgot how much fun they are.  I hate I didn’t get more in this summer.  I’ve been riding a little to get in shape for the MS 150 that’s coming up in about a month.  We leave from Graceland on a Saturday, ride 75 miles to Tunica to spend the night at Harrah’s then ride back the next morning.  I’ve ridden it the past couple of years.  The ride is very well supported and a really good time.  Hopefully the weather will be as nice as it was this past weekend.

Outside of that, not a whole lot has been going on.  I’ve taken on a new role at work and that has been keeping me really busy.  Very satisfying and enjoyable, but busy.  Once I get up to speed in the next month or so, it should slow down for a bit.

Laura’s been keeping busy with Haley.  Haley is growing like a weed.  She’s thinning out a little and is getting more and more personality every day.  She’s up to probably 25-30 words now.  Bully, cheese, papaw, da da, mama, and fish are her favorites.  Oh yeah, I can’t forget “shoes”.  She’s a mess.  I tried to take a bunch of pictures of her the other night when Laura was out, but it didn’t work well.  Every time I’d get her set and hold up the camera, she’d run towards me saying “baby”.  She loves to get her picture taken and then look at the picture on the camera display.

I think we’re about to switch churches.  We’ve been visiting another church that seems to have a lot more going on for couples our age.  In fact, there are 11 Sunday school classes for newly married people.  We really like it but want to make absolutely certain before we pull the trigger and join.  I’ve got a feeling we’re only a few weeks away.

We had a great time with my parents visiting.  Laura was working with her parents at Catholic Heart Work camp so my parents kept Haley a good bit of the time.  She was sad to see them leave.  This morning, she woke up saying pa-pah and ma-maw.  If you’d ever heard her say those two words, you’d know exactly how sweet they are.

Work’s been busy lately, but a lot of fun.  I’ve been training a lot for a triathlon I’ve got next weekend and am finally starting to shed some of my winter weight.  I know.  Sad.  It takes me nearly until August to start losing weight.  Guess I need something like a triathlon to motivate me. 

Other than that, all is well in our world.  We’ve been hanging out and enjoying the long days.  Haven’t been enjoying our new electric bill, but I guess that’s all part of it!

I was out of town in Dallas for a week before we went on vacation, so I’ve only gotten to sleep in my own bed once in the past two weeks!

We started off our trip going to Florida. And we started going to Florida off with a stop at Captain D’s. Yep, Captain D’s. Three pieces of fish and a few shrimp is the perfect way to start off any vacation!

The weather in Florida was extremely cooperative. And I was a good boy. Wore my sunscreen and hardly got burned. While we were there, Bill and I managed to get in a round of golf. I won’t say that either of us set any course records, but it was definitely nice spending some time with him.

Haley was such a good girl. She seemed back and forth as to whether she liked the beach or not. She did really good on the drives as well. There was one little fussy point on the way to the beach, but other than that, she just hung out in the back seat…happy as can be. Another update will be coming soon about the second leg of our trip…California!