Feelings

There are some days I lay in bed and think "why do I even have to get up. There's nothing exciting today except work".

And then I want to slap myself when I realize "thank God I woke up and what a truly great life I have".

Why is it.... no matter what you have -- after awhile you just keep wanting more and more?

Time to start appreciating what's right in front of me.

Tree Trimming

I couldn't believe how much the tree in front of our house had grown until I saw it from the neighbor's perspective.

We had it trimmed 3 years ago and obviously, it's time for a trim again.



They came this morning and in one short hour......we can see across the street from our windows again!

The journey to a new office

My office is actually the dining room in our house.

We have absolutely no need for a dining room and the wood floors in the room give it an "officy" kind of feel....so the 14 years we've lived in this house -- it's always been an office.



Well since it's an office and it's right in the middle of the house -- it really has to stay looking nice.

Since one of our stores needed a new desk and Paul just happened to find some desks at an auction.......off we went to the auction.

We got a great deal on two desks, so we hauled them home. Unfortunately, they are so big and there really was no place to put them until we were ready to set them up -- so they got put in the living room on a TEMPORARY basis.



I've spent the last two days moving furniture around, sorting papers, and shuffling everything around the house to try and get the new furniture set up. Just changing ONE room required messing up all the other rooms to try and accomodate all the stuff that needed moving.......





Here's the empty space all ready for the new desk:



Here's the new desk in it's new home. This was thanks to Aaron and Aaron for helping me get it set up and the hutch on top!



So now after a little bit of blood, sweat, and tears......let me present my brand new office!





Although, I do have to admit that these pictures don't really tell the whole story. I still have 2 boxes of papers that I need to get back out here and I'm sure the desk will never be as clean as it looks right now!

Wordless Wednesday: WET!

Last summer was a drought. Not having that problem this summer. Day 5 of rain.

Never in a million years

did I ever think that this cat would come ANYWHERE near this man.



For almost 16 years she has run and hid from him anytime she sees him.

Tonight, she rubbed against his legs and then jumped up on the sofa and laid next to him.

She's almost 20 years old now and acts feeble and frail -- but she has finally decided that he's not the enemy anymore.

If you only knew how monumental this occasion really is.....

How I spent my 4th of July

Of course I had a lot of expectations of things that would get done.
But of course it really didn't happen that way.

Paul went and spent a few hours in the Zone doing things. This meant I had to create my own things to do.....which isn't very hard these days.

First task was to get payroll done. Check.

Then I spent some time DEEP DEEP cleaning an area of the house. The chosen area was the breakfast room. After a couple of hours of scrubbing, washing, organizing, and throwing things away.....my Prince Charming finally made it home.

Time to tackle the patio cover that spent a week on our porch and then 2 months in our living room.





I should have taken pictures of the old one. It was in sad shape. It had been perfect until we had to take it down for Hurricane Ike and when we put it up again, it was never the same. The canvas roof finally started deteriorating and it had giant rips in it and the metal structure started rusting and it just looked like crap. So it was time to buy a new one.





Really and truly is was very easy to put up and only took us a couple of hours.





It's wonderful to now have a beautiful cover over our tiny slab in the backyard.



Now it's time to get some new furniture out here and jazz it up a little. We opted to not put up the netting because they just get yucky and spiders like to hid in there......so we'll just put it up as we need it.

After completion of this project, we decided to go out and get fajitas for dinner. A nice way to spend the end of my 4th with my favorite person and a good plate of fajitas!

Oh No.....new competition

I know....it's seriously been awhile since I posted.

Let's catch up a little now and then we'll go into detail later. We've been busy. We've been to Tucson. We've been busy. We have been trying to catch up from Tucson.

There you have it in a nutshell!

Now today's post. The title might not mean much to you......but to us it's HUGE!!

We just found out today that there's a new competitor opening up down the street from us.

That's bad because they are a big chain. Popular. Their pizza is good.

We've had it before on a visit to Florida one time.

This is probably one of the biggest and toughest competitors that we've dealt with yet.

I don't want to put their name here, if they do automatic Google reporting like we do -- they would see my post and see what our game plan is going to be to squash them.

Luckily, we found out early and we can start making a plan......instead of driving by one day and seeing their sign and thinking.....holy crap!

Not to worry.

Now is the time to start tweaking things and making sure that we are perfect.

Now is the time to start heavy marketing to the areas surrounding their store and getting people loving our pizza.

Now is the time to get serious.

Game on......we're ready for the challenge. It's been awhile since we've had to knuckle down a little.......watch out other "PIZZA PLACE" -- we are the pizza kings in this area and you are going to have to be afraid of us!