Life IS an Adventure!

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Adventures of Bj & Tracy

I Cannot Believe It Has Been 1 Year - Happy Home-aversery!

I can't believe it's been a year since honey and I bought our quirky, foothills home.  We still have lots of work to do and it is always an adventure, especially during the project.

Some of the projects we tackle are bigger than we think and can sometimes take us a bit longer than we planned, but that is part of our place's charm.  It's probably always going to be a work in progress.  Not everyone likes to work on projects, but we do, and we make a great team.  God knew this was the perfect place for us, whether we live her 5 years, 10 years or forever.

It's been a busy, productive, crazy, expensive, fun, busy, but wonderful year.  I love my home and I love that sharing it with honey makes it that much more perfect.

At the mortgage office after signing the papers

Our quirky foothills home

the "back yard"

trying to create a cool pic commemorating the day.  Note the cards of our awesome agents, The Blantons

Baby enjoying her new deck

checking out our other neighbors on the way home

This is a perfect day

sunsets on our deck.  one of my happy places

A Funny Thing Happened When I Opened The Mailbox...

Our home is located about 8 miles north of a pretty small town in Northeast Georgia.  The last population count was about 3400!  The population might be 3402 now.  We love our town.  It's a friendly place but did I mention it's a pretty small town?

One of our challenges is shopping.  Honey and I resort to a lot of online shopping for things we need but can't find at the local walmart (about 15 ish miles from us).  Bless our mail carrier's heart.  She's been such a blessing over the year with our constant stream of packages.  On rainy days, she covers the packages in plastic and leaves them on our front porch.  Not only does she leave the packages, but she attaches the mail!  So on days we receive packages, she saves us the walk to the mailbox.  We take good care of her at Christmas!

But even our stellar mail carrier deserves a day off.  When it is her day off, we know it is, especially if we receive packages.  On her off days, large packages are left on the porch and the regular mail is still in the box.  This is not really a big deal.  Packages left on our porch on rainy days are pretty wet on the bottoms by the time we get home though.  That's kind of a big deal.

A few weeks after we moved in, I found THIS in the mailbox! (Obviously her day off!)

It immediately made me think of THIS

Bonus funny at the end:  Bj and I have a joke because I did that to him... but you have to watch the end of the video to find out.  =)

I did eventually get the crammed package out of the mailbox.  After tugging and pulling on it a few minutes... I got the bright idea to go get a knife.  I ended up cutting the box, removing the contents, so I could collapse the box and get it out.  FYI... this just happened again last week.  Ha ha ha.

update 4/20/16- God just allowed me to thank our regular mail carrier personally!  I'm working from home today and had to sign for a package and was able to thank her!!  yay!!

#nationallookupattheskyday

 

There's a "national" day for everything, isn't there!!

Evidently today is national look up at the sky day.  

Lovely sunset in White County, GA - My home sweet home

Death By Duct Tape - I hate snakes

So, we were enjoying coffee on the deck one cool Saturday morning, last June.  We were working up the ambition to get dressed and start our Saturday errands and chores.

It started to look like it might rain, so I took our coffee cups in the house and honey and I started to cover our chairs in an effort to keep them dry.

Flashback a few weeks.  We purchased cheap patio chair covers at a store that starts with a B and ends with an S (ha ha, that's funny!).  Anyway, after a few coverings, the covers tore.  So we went to Freds to buy some duct tape to patch up the chair covers until we could get nicer ones (the better ones at Walmart but not until they were on sale).  The only duct tape that Freds had was pink cupcakes and green camo.  I chose the pink cupcakes.  

Back to my story... so I took our coffee cups in the house and then went out to help honey cover our chairs.  When... SCREECH!!!  We both saw it at the same time.  SNAKE!!!!!!!

So evidently I can levitate, because somehow I managed to be standing on the other chair and I don't remember how I got there.

Honey bravely grabbed the broom and quickly threw the chair cover over the deck.  Where we stood looking over to see where the snake went so honey could shoot it.  Keep in mind that our deck is over 20 feet high.

Welp, he went out with his "snake shooter" (a 410 pistol that I know he was kind of excited to use) and came back in and said, the snake is dead!

I was like... "but, I didn't hear a shot??"

Honey said, "I didn't have to shoot it, it was already dead!"

I was confused... "huh?"

Honey continued, "come look at it, I have it by the garbage can."

I hesitantly followed him, but understanding he likes snakes as much as I do, it must really be dead!

So here we stand at the end of our driveway, with our pink cupcake duct tape repaired chair cover with a snake stuck to the tape!  Our neighbor drives up and takes a look and says, "That's a king snake (or rat snake - not sure which he said honestly because you know like... it's a SNAKE!).  You can tell by the checker board belly."  "They are climbers!"

Cool, a harmless snake that eats copperheads... but still a SNAKE!  And one that CLIMBS????!!!!

But he scratched his head and asked us why we killed it with duct tape.

"huh?"

So of course, I had to share the picture on facebook as one of our new adventures up on our mountain and folks on facebook are asking why we killed the snake with duct tape.

"huh?"

So all we can figure is one of the few hawks that lives up here, maybe dropped him as he flew over and the snake curled up in the chair cover, that was on the deck floor, and got stuck and died.  Poor thing.  insert shudder here..

Anyway, that's how you kill a snake that you didn't know was there...

Death by duct tape!

Spring Fever!

I've got it bad!!!!!!!!

I'm 3 work days away form 5 days off in a row (without the flu!)!!!!!

I can't wait!

Honey and I are really exciting folks though... so spring break is quickly shaping up to be a week of sitting on our deck, exploring more of our neighborhood (North Georgia Mountains), appointments, and projects around the house.

I'm hoping for 1 date night.

But here's to not getting up at 4:30am for a week!  Woo Hoo!

Pretty springtime on the Hilbun Farm.  Photo by me!

The Last Sunset of Winter 2016

I love our sunsets up here in north Georgia.  I never grow tired of God's artistry.  Tonight's sunset looked like the sky was on fire!  My picture, from our deck, does not do tonight's sunset justice at all.

The best part of the sunsets here is sharing them with my love.  It's fun to jump up from our chairs and literally gasp and run to the edge of the deck to stare at the amazing colors.  They change so fast too.  You can't take your eyes away too long or you'll miss something amazing!  

"Every sunset brings a promise of a new dawn."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here's tonight's promise and the last sunset of the winter.

Welcome Spring!

The Mountains Are Calling...

And I must go!

John Muir


early birthday gift to my honey... I hope he likes it!