Stand by me

Just a quick post (with a picture! I know you've been starting to wonder if I'd lost my camera) to show off the TV stand we bought and put together last night. As you know, we set up our 'new' tv on our card table last fall. By Christmas, we were debating how it would look to stick a 2 x 4 under the sagging middle (we didn't), then we spent a couple of unsuccessful weekends searching for an entertainment center/tv stand. By the time the basement flooded a couple of weeks ago and all of our electronics were displaced, I had been ready to give up on a sturdy option. As we prepared to put everything back together this week, I realized that if we put the card table back up, we might never find another tv stand. Luckily, J agreed that we should do a little shopping first. Feast your eyes on our much more supportive tv stand from Target. Not necessarily a permanent solution for this room, but definitely one I can live with!

In other news, J and I managed to 'just say no' to the resort folks, and happily collected a new golf club and visa gift card. We also enjoyed a couple of beautiful days driving the back roads of Kentucky with the top down, which made for a great weekend away. Next up on our agenda is the second Thin Mint Sprint (this one in Corbin) this weekend and a new backyard fence in the next couple of weeks.

Title: "Stand By Me" by The Temptations

Lookin' for adventure

One afternoon when I was a little girl, my mom took me on a road trip that she titled "a wild goose chase". Now, I think I'd heard the term before, but to this day when I hear the words "wild goose chase", I picture riding in the car with my mom across the eastern shore of Maryland. I don't remember exactly where we were going, but I do remember that we went to hear someone selling timeshares at a resort in return for a 'free' gift.

This weekend, J and I are headed out on our own wild goose chase. Last month, I attended the Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event, where I found a booth promoting a new resort in Western Kentucky. Through a brief conversation with the sales rep, I learned that for visiting the resort for just 45 minutes, I could receive a new driver (golf club), and that J and I would receive Visa gift cards for our time and effort. Ever my mother's daughter, my eyes lit up at the prospect of a 'free' golf club! I quickly signed us up and have been looking forward to our visit ever since.

Fast forward to this weekend. I quickly realized that the trip to visit the resort was halfway to J's folks home. The drive down is typically too long to do a trip home in a regular weekend, especially if we planned to kill few hours on our wild goose chase, but the prospect of the three day Memorial Day weekend made perfect sense.

So we're heading out on our adventure this evening, with a visit to Rough River State Park tonight and our resort tour in the morning, followed by the drive to Poole tomorrow afternoon. I'm looking forward to digging into their family history with J's grandmother and a visit with my best friend from college, and J is looking forward to a round of golf with his dad. We'll be back Monday, hopefully with my new golf club in tow!

Happy Memorial Day, and please take a moment to remember those who fought for our freedom!

Title: "Born to be Wild", by Steppenwolf

Do you know the Omelet Man? He lives on Winthrop Drive.

I'm sure you're wondering where on earth the Melton Point has disappeared to; fact of the matter is we've been incredibly busy doing nothing exiciting enough to take pictures of and write about. We've finally gotten through our busiest weekend, and I'm taking a day off to recover, so thought I'd get a post up (though, admittedly without pictures).

First, how does our living room look? Worse than the last picture you saw. Our first two plans for getting rid of the old furniture fell through and I've been too busy to call Habitat to come pick it up. Then last weekend, J stepped off the steps into sqiushy carpet in the family room. The sump pump failed and flooded the entire basement, which then required that we take all of the electronics upstairs (to the living room) and bring in a water mitigation team to dry the place out. The family room is dry now, but we still haven't cleaned the carpets, so nothing has been put back in place.

What else have we been up to? Well, two weeks ago, I spent a weekend at Girl Scout camp, where I rapelled down an 80 foot cliff, ascended a rope to about 30 feet in the air, and zipped off a 35 foot tower. That weekend of fun ushered in two weeks of frantic planning and work for the first ever Thin Mint Sprint sponsored by our council. J, it turns out, has a future in data entry if this lawyering thing doesn't work out. Every night for the last week before the race, he entered race entries for a few hours so that I would have an accurate check in list. We ended up with 400 participants and a beautiful day to run the Thin Mint Sprint, and I've just about caught up on my sleep!

And finally, do you know the Omelet Man? The church that J and I attend serves breakfast (Soul Food) on Sunday mornings between the early service and the Sunday School hour. While we don't usually make it on time for breakfast, we have attended a couple and have been overwhelmed by the welcoming and hospitable nature of the folks who do attend. We decided last month that we would like to do something to re-pay this generous nature of the church, and after Easter, hit upon the idea of serving breakfast.

A little back story--J comes from a line of great breakfast cooks and he certainly does the same. After our wedding, we bought a set of Calphalon non-stick pots and pans, which includes an 8" omelet pan. Together with an ancient spatula from my first apartment in college, these tools turned my husband into Omelet Man. He regularly cooks omelets on weekend mornings for us, and in January, he took his show on the road to Cumberland Falls for our camping trip with friends.

When we learned that you could sign up to do an egg dish for Soul Food, J suggested we try an Omelet Bar. We had no idea how it would work out, so the woman in charge of Soul Food offered to bring an egg casserole and let us do the omelets as a quiet test. In the end, we had 12 toppings to choose from and served 18 omelets (probably about half of those who attended Soul Food took us up on the omelet bar) to rave reviews. We're pretty excited about the results, and J is pretty excited about having a second omelet pan and gas burners to carry it all off with!

Title: My version of "Do you know the Muffin Man?"