Paducah here we come!!

Tomorrow is the day. Work has been crazy trying to get ready for me to leave. I cannot wait until I am home with family!! Whoohoo!!

I don't know how much I will be able to get online & blog this weekend, but I plan to keep you posted on my relaxing vacation with family. I hope you all have a WONDERFUL rest of the week & weekend!!

Love to you all!!

I also need to say:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NATHAN!! LOVE YOU!! :)

This weekend...

I am going home!! It is so funny that I call Dallas home & Paducah home. I guess Paducah will always be home. It is that way for both of us.

I can honestly say that I am SOOO ready to be on that plane Thursday! Nathan & I have not had a birthday together since he went to Abilene & I am excited to share this weekend with him! I know I've blogged about this before, but I really am excited!!

So, that's what's on my mind this week. Thinking about packing, getting Sam taken care of (our WONDERFUL friends Scott & Tricia are going to keep him while we're gone!!), and getting Nathan here is what is on my mind. Nathan is just as excited as I am. He called me yesterday all excited & ready to go. I think we all just need a break & some time together.

Thursday night we'll get into town & probably crash pretty soon after getting home since we'll get in so late. Friday night we're going to go to eat somewhere with my family and Ryan's parents. That will be a lot of fun. The rest of the weekend is devoted to spending time together with Nathan & having a birthday weekend!! Thank you, Ryan, for giving me this gift for my birthday!! :) I am so excited to have an old fashioned birthday. LOVE YOU!!!

I hope you all are having a great start to the week & anticipating this weekend as much as I am even if you don't have a birthday!

To my Reidland folk...see you soon!! :)

Love you all,
Lesli

Bret's office. As you can see...any space that was off the floor was covered with books, boxes,& electronics. 

My desk...can you see it? It was covered with everything from computers to books. 

My desk, my pants, Crysty Kimberlin, & John Kimberlin  

Me (in pink pants) standing in the water right before we left. 

Kimberlins' office 

Rains pour...office floods

Yesterday I got home from the scrapbooking retreat at 1:20 or so. It was pouring! Texas roads are just not capable of handling a lot of rain, so many roads were flooding & fast. I got back just in time, but Angelique (who drove & dropped Summer & I off at church) still had to drive home. Ryan and I loaded everything in my apartment & headed back to the building to see if she would be able to go home or if she was planning on waiting the storms out. I figured our apartment would be much more fun than sitting at the church waiting on the storm to pass. Anyway, when we got there Jim, our campus minister, told us that the basement had been flooding. He thought it was undercontrol, but a few seconds later water started coming in the windows that lead out to the draining system in the Kimberlins' office. Ryan and I quickly started trying to get their books off of the bookshelves and trying to find something to catch the water. Not long later we noticed at the other end of the basement was flooding. It was coming in the door & out of the maintenance room (where the sunk pump is). There was no hope of stopping it. Our only hope was to get everything off of the floors in the whole basement. While we were doing that, the pressure from the water against the window in the Kimberlins' office broke one of the bottom windows. Wow! Water really started rushing in then!! At one time, there was 3-4 inches of water on every space of our basement!! We worked from 1:30-4 trying to do as much as we could. By 4 we realized there was nothing more we could do. So, Ryan and I headed to lunch! That was definitely a late lunch!

Today they have been working on pumping out the water & possibly tearing up the carpet. It is a mess!! Tomorrow we will either be in a basement with concrete floors or have a temporary office moved upstairs for some of us. We'll see what happens!

I will post a few pictures from yesterday that Ryan took. The level of the water doesn't look near as bad as it actually was. I guess it is because you can see the carpet better than the water. You'll also notice in places where the carpet is floating!!

Update

We did go apartment hunting last weekend. We were both disappointed in our findings. The ones that looked really good online turned out to be ones with great photographers because they looked NOTHING like the pictures. It was a good day though. The weather was perfect. We ate at a fish restaurant outside for lunch. I really didn't think I would like spending the whole day driving around looking at buildings, but it turned out to be pretty good. It gave us some time together to talk. That part I didn't think about! :) It turned out to be a good day dispite our slim findings.

This weekend the boys are going to have to fend for themselves. I'm heading with some ladies at our church to Salado, TX for a scrapbooking retreat. I'm excited to have a weekend to relax, work on my ongoing scrapbooks & visit with the gals. Ryan got me the new Mary Higgins Clark book yesterday, so I might find some time to sneak it in as well! I LOVE her books!! Hopefully the boys won't get too bored without me!

Just two weeks until we head to Paducah!! I can't wait! This is one of the best birthday presents that Ryan could give me! I know I've said it on this blog before, but I love family birthdays! Now that I'm married (I still say it like that although I've been married 4 1/2 years), it wouldn't be much fun without Ryan, but to get him & family...that's icing on the cake!! I just hope my parents don't get too tired of me being there for 10 days! They might just be ready to send me back to TX by the time my flight comes!! Hopefully not. Hopefully Ryan will be ready to have me back home after a week of being there without me. Maybe it will give him a *little* taste of what it is like when he's gone! ;) Doubtful, but maybe. He's so great for giving me this trip!! Love you Babe!!

I hope you all are having a great week & have a GREAT weekend!!! See you all soon! (I love that I can say that & it really be true!! :) )

The Plan

The plan this weekend is to go apartment hunting. The apartments we live in are owned by the church & are planned to be torn down this year. There is no definite word yet on when that will be done, but as far as we know, it will. As of now, we have to be out by June 1st. So, we've started looking. Even if they give us more time, we may move anyway. Our electric bill during the summer months averaged $250 last year and didn't get below 80 at times! Needless to say, it is not an easy apartment to cool! I would much rather move in May or June than August or September!! That would be absolutely no fun...and moving isn't fun anyway! So, wish us luck in our endeavors!

I say "the plan" because it is not what I want to do on our weekend that we actually have together. Ryan spent last weekend in San Diego training with the Reserves. He spent the weekend before drilling at the base. Next weekend I'm off to a scrapbooking retreat. SO...that doesn't give me much motivation to spend this weekend looking at apartments. Hopefully we can do just a little Saturday & a little in a few weeks. That's "the hope". ;)

I pray everyone has had a good week & continues to have a great weekend!! Love you all!!

Trip to Paducah

My birthday is at the end of this month. As a birthday present from Ryan, we are flying to Paducah at the end of March. He will only be able to stay in for the weekend because of work, but I'm staying one more week!! I'm so excited! :) This will be a great time for me to just hang out and relax. We got quite a bit of time at Christmas, but with having to do Christmas dinners & presents & seeing everyone when they needed to be seen, we really didn't get much relaxing in. So, this time I plan on taking it easy!

PLUS! My brother is flying in with us!! Nathan's birthday is the 29th, two days before mine. As kids we use to always have birthdays together. Whoever had the "big" birthday got to choose where we ate or what we did to celebrate. I have to admit, looking at other kids who had their "own" birthdays you would think I was jealous, but I wasn't. It was neat to have my brother and I celebrating at the same time. It was kind of like a mini-Christmas. Since he's been in college, though, we haven't had many if any birthdays together. So this year, I am excited to have a FAMILY birthday!!

My plan was to fly Nathan in and surprise my parents. Well...my dad decided that since Ryan and I were flying in, maybe Nathan should, too. So he called Nathan and told him to check on flights and see if he could get off. Nathan called me and said that he didn't think he could make Dad believe that he didn't want to go in or couldn't get off. So, I called Dad and let him know that we had already booked the tickets & he ruined the surprise. :) Oh well, we've both successfully surprised them with our arrival before. It will be nice just having us all in together. Now...I just have to wait! 4 more weeks!! Whoohoo!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Spring is coming!

I absolutely LOVE this time of year!! It is 87 degrees at the moment & sunny! What a prefect day! Yesterday it was in the upper 70s & sunny. After work, Ryan and I went for a walk around the neighborhood. I love afternoons like that!

This time of year puts me in such a good mood. It is so refreshing to be able to open the windows and let the fresh air in. I am planning on enjoying every day we get like this because in Texas, it doesn't stay too long. Sure, it is typically sunny but most of the year it is a lot hotter than I care for. So, days like these to me are little ways that God smiles down at us. Aren't we lucky to have a God who cares about our world enough to make seasons?! We would never appreciate a day like today if they were all the same. Thank you God for creating our world to be beautiful and amazing in so many ways.

I hope this blog finds each of you with great weather and smiles on your faces!!