Happenings of our lives

It has been lovely weather in Missouri this week, so Jordan and I went on a walk on Monday evening. We wanted to walk to Downtown Ozark. It was suppose to be a short walk, just about 3 miles to there and back. We really like walking, but there are a couple of things lacking here for pedestrians, like sidewalks and pedestrian crossings at stoplights.

We were going to walk to a park, but there wasn’t a crossing at the light. We kept walking and found a path that was near the Finley River, so we walked on that, we made it down to the community center and kept walking on some new paths they have there. There was a trail so we decided to follow it.We thought maybe it came back to our house, but it didn’t. So we walked around and eventually got back to our house, after walking for a couple of hours and a little more than 8 miles of walking.

Sure it was fun, and Jordan’s always prepared so we brought flashlights and were okay walking in the dark. A little dog started to follow us home but didn’t follow us all the way home.

Jordan and I live even closer to the Mark Twain National Forest now that we live in our house. We’ve passed a sign for the Bar-K Wrangler site when we go to Hercules Glade.

It is less than half an hour away from our house so we decided that we would camp there on Saturday. So we drove down there and hiked around. The Swan Creek Trail actually goes through Swan Creek, so we couldn’t go to the trail. We actually drove onto Trail 533 and parked at a campsite. We walked around and just enjoyed the beautiful fall colors. We got to see some horses and some beautiful leaves. I took a lot of pictures of the creek and the little waterfall that we saw.

We walked around for a couple of hours and then came back to our campsite and made dinner. A ladybug landed on Jordan’s pants and I tried to take some pictures, but it was hard to get a good picture of it. Poor Jordan’s contact was bothering him so we decided to drive home. It was a good thing that we did because it got so cold that night that it frosted.

We had our first visitors! Sarah and Mike came to visit his parents and we live close by, so they came and visited us.

They came Friday and I babysat their daughter ( I keep calling her a baby, but she’s not anymore). They went to Dixie Stampede and then came back here to stay the night. The next day we went to Silver Dollar City and had an awesome time. Our realtor had some sweet connections and got us free passes for the day.

The first Silver Dollar City Attraction was the Marvel Cave. That was the first attraction that we went to. It had been raining and flooded part of the cave, so we couldn’t go through the entire cave. It was pretty awesome, but I didn’t get very many good pictures. We want to go back and go through the whole cave next time that we go.

After the cave I really wanted some funnel cake, I love funnel cake. So we got a funnel cake and then we watched some glass blowing and looked at the ornaments in the store. Jordan wanted some kettle corn and so did Sarah. We went on some rides and eventually got to the kettle corn. We bought a huge bag and started to eat it, it was delicious! We went on Fire in the Hole and the Sarah and Mike went on it. They went on a couple more rides and we watched Camille.

There were some delicious onion chunks that were like onion rings but not rings. Jordan got two of them because they were so good.  We went on a ride called WildFire that was a fun roller coaster and not as intense as the ones at Six Flags. We liked it so much we went on it twice, then Sarah and Mike went on it. Camille really liked watching the roller coaster cars on the track. After that we all went on Flooded Mine, then we came home.

Thanks Sarah and Mike for visiting us, we had so much fun with you and hope we get to see you again!

When we were looking for houses one of the major things that we were looking for was a backyard that was big enough for a garden. After we closed on our house we were at Lowe’s and started looking at bulbs and seeds. There were a bunch of bulbs that needed to be planted in the fall. So we bought tulip bulbs at Sam’s Club and some onion and black tulip bulbs from Lowe’s.

We are trying Square Foot Gardening this year. Jordan’s graduate adviser swears by it so we decided to try it. We hope it works.

We built the boxes the same day that I took pictures of the frog and set them out in the backyard. Here are pictures of Jordan building them.

Click on the image to go to the album

Last Saturday (October 17) we planted the tulip bulbs and onions. Here are those pictures:

Now we just have to wait until spring for the tulips and fall for the onions. 110 tulips and 180 onions and 3 garlic. If you’re wondering why we planted so many onions, we wanted some of each kind, but they only came in packs of 60. The tulips, well I love tulips, so I wanted a lot of those. You might also be wondering why they are so close together, well we didn’t follow the spacing on the package. The spacing said 1 inch apart and we put the onions 2 inches apart. They still look pretty close together, oh well.

We love our house, we’re so happy here. There were a couple of things that we wanted to change before we moved. I wanted to paint the living room but I don’t think that will happen, the ceilings are really high and painting the bedroom was enough work. So we’ve really only done two things since we moved in.

Painting the master bedroom:

Click on the image to go to the album

Jordan picked out the color, I thought it was kind of dark, but it looks great. It is called “Dusty Olive” from the Behr Premium Plus Ultra. We really like it. I think it looks great with the trim. Since we painted and set everything up, we’ve put up curtains, put the treadmill in, and bought shelves for the side of the bed.

The next day, I put hardware on the cabinets in the kitchen and all the bathrooms. I used the new drill that we bought right before we moved into the house. So here are those pictures:

Click on the image to go to the album

So Jordan made this draft several months ago, but never wrote anything.

On July 25 we went to Canyon Lands with Justin and Julie. We knew it was the last weekend that we would be able to camp right before we moved, and we were so happy that we got to go with them. We would have never been able to without them (and their car that has 4 wheel drive ). The campsite that we reserved was about 30 miles in and the whole trail is about 100 miles long.

The first “landmark” that we came to was Musselman’s arch, it is an arch that you can walk across. There were a ton of signs that said not to ride your bike across, I’m guessing someone had an accident or something. We were also excited because it was the first time we were going to use our new camera and tripod while camping.

So we’d stop, get out and take a couple of pictures and then keep driving. There is a picture that I look really angry in, well I wasn’t angry, I was just trying to convince Jordan that what I was doing was safe (now looking at the picture it probably wasn’t). Jordan had brought the tripod out of the car and dropped one of the pieces that we needed to stop it from moving horizontally. Darn. So I tried to see where it fell, and so I got on the ledge.In the next picture you can see how it dropped off.

We stopped and set up camp, and had dinner (some wonderful pasta salad made by Julie). Then I slept in the tent because I was sick (not from her food, I was the only one that was sick) and I eventually threw up later.

So after all of that, we sat outside on the rocks and watched a thunderstorm a ways away. Jordan got some pretty cool pictures of the moon, and we slept outside because it was too hot for mosquitoes.

The next morning was really pretty too, a little more cloudy, but the light breaking through the clouds was gorgeous. I felt a lot better the second day and had a much better time. The sky eventually cleared and we got some more great pictures. We kept driving, and near the campsite about 70 miles in there was a cool thunderstorm. It rained and cleared up just as we were about to the end.

It was a beautiful day, the red rocks contrasting with the cloudy blue sky, we were so glad that we got to see it before we left Utah. Thanks Justin and Julie, we’re so glad we got to spend time with you guys before we both moved.

I haven’t mowed the lawn since I was in high school. So, when we moved to our house, I told Jordan that I loved to mow the lawn and that it was so much fun, etc. So, when Jordan was at work one day I mowed the lawn. It is not as fun as I remembered. Our lawn hadn’t been mowed in a long time, so the grass was pretty long.

I started out by reading the whole manual, and then started mowing. I started out by mowing the front lawn and filled up 3 black trash bags (those trash bags are pretty heavy too). So after I mowed the front lawn I moved to the back. I started to mow and had to stop several times to empty the bag on the mower. Because the lawn was so long, there were a lot of bugs and little animals that were jumping from the lawn mower. But, one time I was emptying the bag I saw a frog, so I grabbed the camera to take a picture. I took a couple of pictures, and then started to mow again. This frog was stupid, he kept jumping toward the camera and lawn mower. As I was mowing, I started to get close to the frog, and he kept jumping toward the mower, weird. So I started to swat my foot near the frog and accidentally kicked him, oops. Don’t worry he jumped away after I accidentally kicked him.

In the end I filled up 8.5 black trash bags of lawn clippings and got some pretty cool pictures of the frog. Springfield is pretty cool because they take the yardwaste and compost it. The negative thing is that we live in Ozark, and they don’t take yardwaste, so we had to drive it to Springfield.

Here are the pictures of the frog:

Click on the image to go to the album

I told Jordan that I didn’t think anyone read our blog anymore, so I didn’t think it was important to post. He told me that people do read and that they like to look at pictures. So, this week I’m going to try and write more, because even if people don’t read it is still important to Jordan.

Jordan and I knew when our closing would be after we got the house, we just didn’t know what time it would be. For a long time (until we got rid of TV) Jordan and I would always watch shows on HGTV like “House Hunters” or “My First Place” we thought they were really fun to watch and helped us decide the kind of houses that we hated.

Anyway, so on HGTV the people respond to the offer and only counter once it about a 5 minute period. This is not like real life, sometimes it takes then a while to get back to you. The other thing that happens on HGTV is that the people sometimes have problems with their house, but it is always fixed at closing; yes this does happen, but sometimes it takes a while.

On HGTV closing is always in a room with the buyers and sellers at the same table, everyone signs a couple of papers, and POOF the keys are handed over to the buyers. While this is similar to what happens, it takes a lot longer in person, especially if you want to know what the papers you are signing say.

My  favorite difference between HGTV and is when they go back and visit the homeowners. The people just have everything set up in the house and everything is just dandy. This is more realistic than a lot of what is shown, but it doesn’t show the people packing and unpacking and setting everything up.

Anyway we’re really enjoying our new house and are going to be really happy here. Jordan put it best when he said that the house just absorbed all of our stuff. So we’re using our room and the other two are empty. We’ll post some pictures (that actually have our stuff in them) .

We had to go back to Hercules Glade because it was so pretty. We went to the same place as last time but a different trail. Jordan hiked the first part of the trail on Saturday and then we hiked the actual trail loop on Sunday. Jordan got lost on top of a hill that we kept seeing while we were hiking, we called it baldy because there were no trees on top of it.

Sunday we woke up to two stick bugs stuck to our car, it looked like a stick was stuck to our car, but in fact, it was two stick bugs stuck to each other. We started to hike on the trail and we kept seeing these funnel shaped spider webs, (we got smart this time and brought hiking sticks so we didn’t run into webs). The funnel shaped webs were only in the meadows or by the base of the trees. We saw a really big spider come out of one.

We kept hiking and started to hear water, and found this really cute waterfall that we might camp next to sometime. After the waterfall there was part of an old truck that looked like someone had used it for target practice. Then we saw a turtle, it was so cute, and smart, I couldn’t get a picture of it’s face.

Then we almost walked into a huge spider’s web (if you click on the link, it’s on the 4 page in the middle). Then there was a cute frog. We kept walking and found the front of the truck we saw earlier (just kidding, but it was the front of some truck). Then we saw one of the funnel spiders come out of it’s web, gross. As the trail looped around, there was a really pretty glade of trees. The loop ended up being about 5.5 miles, not too bad.

Click on the image to go to the album