Busy Little Bees

It's been a busy little week for us!

We've (no just me) has been working hard trying to get the house cleaned up for the royal couple that is arriving tomorrow.

I've shampooed all the carpets upstairs and just finished the living room this morning. 

The "trusty assistant" got a little tired helping me this morning.  Although, if it wasn't for the "trusty assistant", I wouldn't have to shampoo the carpets!

Tuesday night the Village Idiots spent the night at being 1st place Champions at trivia.  Damn we kicked butt.  We did so good that we didn't even have to wager any points in the final question to keep in first place.  It was one of more awesomely smart nights!

Last night we got to spend the evening together and attend a long anticipated concert with Joan Jett and The Who!  Love spending time with my honey.

This concert was even more amazing because The Who announced this would be their last (after 50 years).  Glad I finally got to see them!

Last week we had a hail storm with hail this size:

It pelted the crap out of our house and cars for about 20 minutes.  Now we need to get someone out here and look at our roof and see if it has hail damage and needs to be replaced by insurance.  SORRY.....no time on our dinner plate for that.

For now.....the main focus is the company coming.  We've already got a wedding to go to while they're here (Aaron is best man); we've got church and dinner to go to on Saturday night with Lynn and family; we've got a family field trip to Shiner, Texas to see the brewery of Aaron and Paul's favorite beer.....SHINER; apparently they've also got plans to go to the beach and the zoo.  They keep trying to include me, but they don't understand that next week is payroll and the next week is a HUGE trip.  This also doesn't count all the amazing special dinners I'll cook while they're here.

How in the hell am I going to be able to do all this?

 

Lots of things going on here in Texas

Spent most of today cleaning house and getting ready for our company next Friday.

Also spent some time doing paperwork things that needed done.

I also need to spend some time researching our European vacation.

There are so many "extra" things that need to be done when you are traveling to another country.....things that I didn't even realize.

We had to contact our credit card companies to tell them we are traveling internationally so that they will allow our charges.

We have to do a couple of special things with our cell phones so that we'll be able to make and receive calls over there.

We have to research what kind of electrical adapters we need so that we can charge all our electronic devices.

We need to make sure that PZ is totally covered and has everything they need while we are gone.  This also includes changing the order of the call list in case there's a break-in.  We don't want to have to be scrambling around hoping our phones work so that someone can see what's happening at the store and meet the police.

We had an issue with our hotel reservation.  Our credit company declined the charge because they thought it was a fraudulent transaction.....so I need to work with hotels.com and the hotel to make sure we do have a room reserved.  This of course was after calls to the credit card company to make sure they will allow it.

There's packing to do with consideration of the cold and rainy weather that can happen at any time.

UGHHHHH.......and there's the research to figure out what we will be doing and when.  We are also meeting up with a guy that Paul used to work with at Domino's 30 years ago that lives in London.  We have lunch and a casino date planned with him.  WHAT????? casinos in London (woo hoo!!).

We also have a relative of Paul's grandmother who lives in Manchester and we've been connected with her on Facebook for 5 years and might try to get to visit her.

There's is just TOO many things to plan and TOO many things to get done before our BIG trip.

The best thing we ever purchased

This has become our private sanctuary every night.

It's calm, it's quiet, and it gives us uninterrupted time to just sit and talk about our day.

 

We plan, we dream, and of course discuss Pizza Zone here.

 

It's like sitting in a nice warm bubbling bath each night before you pop into bed.

 

I really enjoy this special quiet and RELAXING time with my best friend!

Are we excited? Maybe a little.

We are way beyond excited about our upcoming journey.   

So now the research and planning has begun.  The first stop was the library:

But then......after doing some research, we came up with another brilliant idea.

Let's go here on a day trip from London:

So we are seriously considering taking a guided tour which will take us on a bullet train from London to Paris.  We will spend the entire day in Paris and the tour includes a double decker bus tour of the city, a 1 hour cruise down the Seine River, going up the Eiffel Tower, and going to the Louve Museum.  You then take the train back to London.  However, this entire tour is 16 hours so it makes for a very long day.....but what the heck -- we'll be on vacation!

We got a smoking deal with our airline tickets using our flight miles -- so our initial costs for 2 round trip non-stop tickets from Houston were 120,000 miles + $382.  We did upgrade our seats though because we really wanted the extra legroom and space for a 10.5 hour flight.  We didn't want to finance our house to pay for the little pod bed/seats.....but crossing our fingers we get a free upgrade  (haha......you never know).

We've spent the last 2 days (and way too many hours on deciding a hotel to stay in).  Our criteria was we wanted to be near things to do at night, had to be a London charm building with character (not some modern metal highrise), and conveniently located near subway.  We plan heavily on using public transportation and walking and want to be near things.

We splurged a little on this hotel because it's in the PERFECT location.....but still got an excellent deal at 50% off their regular rate.

Yay.....can't wait.  But now I have to get the house cleaned for company next week and I'm dying to go shopping for all the new clothes that I will need to go to London and Paris!  Seriously, a girl can't go on a vacation like this and not have new things to wear!

Sickness, Cleaning, and a new exciting secret!

Good old Paul started it on Tuesday and I'm lucky enough to finish off the week with it.  Hit me yesterday and I ended up staying in bed the whole day.  I'm up a little today, but only to attempt to get some things done.....but not much.

Good thing we decided to not travel this weekend.  Actually.....lots of things happened throughout the week that really stopped that from happening.

So we are still taking these next 3 days off (I'll believe it when I see it) and trying to give the house a good cleaning and get this dog housetrained.  We've got company coming and we want to impress them with a clean house.

Also, need to pull these things out and dust them off.  Looks like we might need them soon.

Hmmmm.............what crazy thing do we have up our sleeves this time?

It's one of those "life's disappointing moments"

Well......we had plotted out 4 days off that we could take beginning on Saturday.  We scheduled for it, we did all our work so we could freely go, and we got all excited that we were finally going to get some time off.

But then we got disappointed.

And it's Cris' fault

And Wrigley's fault

And the Houston Rockets fault.

It's Cris' fault because:  Cris is scheduled to be working 3 of the 4 days we would be gone, therefore, he would not be here to take care of our dog -- and she's not used to being home alone for more than 3-4 hours at a time.

It's Wrigley's fault because:  she still isn't housetrained, therefore, we couldn't leave her at someone's house to be boarded while we were gone.  I'm sure no one wants to put up with all that mess.

It's the Rocket's fault because:  they won their division last night and now there is a playoff game on Saturday night.  That means business will be extra busy and we really didn't have enough people scheduled as it is.....so we need to be here.

However, our plans are to go ahead and take Sunday-Tuesday off and just relax and get some much needed cleaning and maintenance done around here.  We have company coming and we really do have a bunch of things that need done here.  We can also take off and do fun things during the day as we feel inspired.

And while we are disappointed -- we hope to get lots of things accomplished.  Next plan is to wait until May when the college kids are out and we are going to take a NICE LONG 6 DAY VACATION.  We are so ready.

Welcome to our week in review

Busy Busy week!

Paul got sick.  Major bummer.  I had to work for him last night.  Can't tell you how much I hated that.  However, I know he bends over backwards to do whatever he needs to when I'm sick.  So I had to do it for him....because I care.

Cris is in Dallas for training this week.  He left on Sunday afternoon and doesn't get home until Friday night.  I've been taking care of his wild cat and his adopted cat.

I've been going over there 3 times a day and playing with them and trying to keep them company a little bit.  What a pain.  But he takes such great care of my animals when I'm gone.....so I owed him.

Since it was such a glorious beautiful morning, Paul decided to started chopping down the jungle of bamboo in our yard this morning.  Can you see him?

 He did make a pretty good dent on it. 

Bamboo is majorly hard to get rid of.  You have to chop it down and within 15 seconds of cutting you have to pour some strong killers in the stalk or it will just grow back.  We'll have to post a picture of the yard once we get it all down.

Normally Wrigley would love to be out running around the yard.....but she didn't like all that activity and chose to watch us from inside the house.

The garden is looking awesome and we've got buds on the Pecquin peppers and the tomatoes!  Now I've got to find some time to plant all the seedlings in the house.

But our main priority is getting all our work caught up by Friday.  We might be going on a secret adventure on Saturday.....don't know yet......but we'll have to see!

I'm so tired and my list is so long!

Dragging my feet today.

I'm just so tired and don't really want to do anything except lay in bed.

Not going to happen though.

I'm supposed to be taking Cris out tonight to get him some clothes for his training in Dallas next week.  But we both agreed to postpone until Saturday -- just got too many things to do.

Here's the proof:

I had to start another list because my paper was too small for all the things that need done.

Oh well......can't wait until I can take a picture with all those things crossed off as being done.

Oh yeah.....there's another issue today as well.  We thought we were going to be really prepared early for next month's Pizza of the Month. 

Well yesterday we picked it out.  Today we find out that the hummus we were going to use on it was recalled today for containing Listeria.  Just great.  However, it's better they did it this month instead of next month when we were already selling them.  So now we need to either pick a new pizza OR make the hummus ourselves.  Why is everything always so difficult?

Day 4 - St. Augustine, FL (Part 2)

Well finally taking the time to get the 2nd half of our day in St. Augustine in the record books.  If you can't remember what happened the 1st half of the day.....go back a couple of posts and refresh your memory.

Our first stop after lunch was the Fountain of Youth.  Seriously, you couldn't come to St. Augustine and not see it.

 However, I imagined something more glamourous other than a cistern well with a spout.

But hey.....in case it really works, we helped ourselves to a glass full.  Actually, the smell of sulphur was really hard to overcome and I quickly drank my glass and moved on down the road.

After getting our share of this magical water.....we spent our time at the park watching a cannon shooting and getting our picture snapped in front of a beautiful spot.

  This guy is the BEST travelling buddy!

We left the park and headed over to the Lightner Museum.  This was a museum filled with all sorts of trinkets, jewelry, furniture, toys, collectibles, and all kinds of other stuff that had been collected by this man for years.  The museum was in an old hotel that was built and designed by Henry Flagler....the father of St. Augustine.

Do you see me standing in front of the building?

It was a beautiful old building and a beautiful collection of interesting stuff

 Another old hotel designed and built by Henry Flagler is now the current Flagler College.  What a beautiful place to be able to study and learn in.

 We were now headed out of St. Augstine on our way back to Orlando.  But we had one more stop to make before we got out of town......the St. Augustine Lighthouse.

My first time in a real lighthouse.  And I climbed every one of those 219 steps.  It was hard and difficult......but so worth it when you got to the top.

It was about 6pm and we had a 2 hour drive back to Orlando.....so off we went.  We ate a nice dinner at a stuffy restaurant where the wait staff and hostess were rude -- but the food was great.  We'll never eat there again and I don't even want to give them any advertising by publishing their name --- but the restaurant is named after a familiar professional golfer.

We had wisely selected a hotel 2 minutes from the Orlando Airport.....because we had a 5 am flight...which meant getting up at 3am.  We checked in the hotel around 10pm and chilled for a little bit....before trying to get some sleep.  Of course, those early mornings always come so fast and we are just NOT early morning people.

Another safe, fun, and a little somber time spent in Florida on December 6-9, 2014. 

P.S.  We have now determined that this was one of our most favorite cities ever to visit and that we would love to retire here when that day and time comes.  We absolutely loved it here and hope to be able to spend some more time there in the future.

Hello World....yes it's me again!

Whew.....life is so freaking busy.

But, I'm sure you are all sick of hearing me say that.....or write that.

But it's really true.  PZ is going crazy.  Not that I want to complain how busy it is because that means we are making money, but I just need to complain that I have to be there and there is always so much work to do.

So due to the fact that I don't have time to write this blog -- you get a pictorial view of what my life was this week (well only partial.....because the rest of it would bore you).

The week started out with buying the ingredients to make my husband Molasses Cookies.  Just to let you know......these ingredients sat right here in this spot for 5 days until I could get the time to make the cookies.

Got out of the hot tub the other night in the dark and saw a S shaped thing in the dark next to my foot.  Jumped back and turned on the porch light only to see a freaking snake.  Luckily, it was busy eating a frog, so I didn't get bit.

I took this next picture about 15 minutes after we got back in the house.  You can see the steps on the left and I'm not even sure this is the same snake we saw earlier, because he clearly didn't have a frog in his body.  Lesson Learned......we will be inspecting the ground before we get out of the hot tub at night.

However, this looks just like the same snake that we saw in our garage back in October.

I HATE our Oak tree in March and April.  It drops leaves, then these yellow squiggly things, and then yellow pollen all over my car. 

 Had a little story about us in an article in PMQ magazine this month in a story about boxtoppers.  It's always nice to see your ideas show up in a national pizza publication.

They also included a picture of our boxtopper in this story.

But.....I'm sorry.....don't request autographs, I just don't have the time!

 

And then there's this little princess.  She has decided that she needs to sleep in my little office and has to go wherever I go.  She also licks us to death.

 

And by the way......those cookies finally got made.  We used the recipe on the molasses jar and although the cookies weren't what we were expecting (we thought we were going to be making those big huge soft black Molasses cookies), the ones we got were wonderfully flavored with molasses, cloves, ginger, and cinnamon.  Delicious!

 

 

 

Our plans for Easter are to enjoy Scalloped Potatoes and Ham and Strawberry Shortcake for dessert.  We finally have a day off from Pizza Zone and our plans were to clean the game room/exercise room/junk room......but we've worked so freaking hard this week that we just might take it easy.  We will also be enjoying the company of Cris and Larry for dinner......just our small little family.

 

We'll end this post with a short video of Wrigley "playing" with the Roomba today.  If it's sideways, I apologize for the amateur video that I took.....just turn your darn head.

 

 

Isn't she just the cutest little dog ever???

 

P.S.  Don't forget.......we still haven't bored you to death with the other half of our day in St. Augustine.  I know that you keep checking back each and every day to read it......but it's coming.

Stay tuned!