April 23rd

My favorite place in the house right now. I love just sitting outside reading.

April 21st

My flowers came back from last year!

April 20th

Today we took Daniel to ...

at the Raleigh Memorial Auditorium.

It was a present for his graduation. He really enjoyed it. When we got home I cooked Lemon and Thyme Chicken Breasts with rice and green beans. It was a recipe out of my Yada Yada Prayer Group book. We decided it was definitely a keeper.

Lemon and Thyme Chicken Breasts
3 tble flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 tble olive oil
1 med onion, chopped
1 tble butter
1 cup chicken broth
3 tble lemon juice (I used the little plastic lemon)
1 tble fresh or 1/2 tble dry thyme
2 tble fresh parsley chopped
lemon slices for garnish

Shake the flour, salt and pepper together in a plastic back. Add the chicken and shake to coat (save the excess flour). Put the chicken breasts into a large skillet in which you have heated a tablespoon of olive oil over a med heat. Brown the chicken on one side (about 5 minutes) and turn. Add the second tablespoon of oil, and brown on the second side.

Remove and set the chicken aside. Melt the butter in the skillet and saute the onions until they are translucent. Add the remaining seasoned flour and stir until smooth. Add the chicken broth, thyme, and 2 table lemon juice. Stir constantly while you bring the sauce to a boil.
Return chicken to skillet and reduce heat to a low simmer. Cover and cook until chicken is tender (about 15 minutes).

Remove chicken to serving platter. Stir the remaining lemon juice into the sauce and pour over the chicken. Garnish with parsley and extra lemon wedges.

April 19th

Now that they have raised the water restrictions we are going to try to get our side yards to grow grass again. The Carolina clay just doesn't grow grass well! So Joe and Arthur went and got some dirt and seed and we'll see if the side yard will take this time. We are only doing one side right now. If it grows will do the other side come fall. I'm also hoping to put some bushes and pine straw on the slope to prevent run off and putting bushes and annual plants on the side of the house. No one ever told me that trying to landscape from scratch is hard and expensive!

April 18th

Just a shot of the bright green grass at my neighbor's house.

April 17th

Not too much going on this week. It has been beautiful weather with bright blue skies and fluorescent green grass. At this time of year here, before it gets too hot, the lawns all have this weird almost fake green shade to it.

A couple of days ago my friend, Rose, got a new puppy and Arthur and I went over to visit tonight. They haven't decided on a name for him yet but he's a cutie!

April 12th

No picture today. Just a really long long day of travel. We wanted to stay and spend one more day with Ben but our tickets had us leaving today. So we left our hotel at 7:30 and drove to Kansas city which is about a 2 hr drive. Then we had to drop off the rental car and take the shuttle bus to the airport. Then take the plane to Washington DC. So far so good but our plane had "mechanical problems" and so we waited. One problem followed another and our 3:15 flight ended up being a 5:45 flight. We boarded another bus to our new plane (they gave up on the first one) only to be told that our new plane's air conditioning wasn't working. After another 15 wait on the bus, we were finally allowed to board our sultry plane - they promised the air conditioning would work when we got in the air, which it did. We finally landed in Raleigh a little after 7:00 pm. There were some very upset people on our flight but you know - it wasn't a big deal at all. My son is home - all is right with the world.

April 11th

Finally, at 3:30 am our soldiers marched in the redeployment room. They received a standing ovation of course. Ben was one of the last men coming out and I was almost worried that we got bad information. Finally he marched out!

There was a very brief welcome home ceremony and they were released!

We got to spend that whole day with him. Mostly we shopped ( they come back with nothing except army gear) and just got to be with him.

Welcome home Ben! We are proud of you!

April 10th

The continued adventures in Kansas... We went to Wyldewood Cellars Winery first. They make their wines with Elderberries! I generally don't like red wine but these tasted deliscous. Then we drove through Alma, considered visiting the cheese shop but decided against it. We went on to Council Grove.

Council Grove was one of the first stops on the Santa Fe Trail. We ate the Terwilliger Home which was built in 1861 right on the trail. It was one of the last houses that the freighters passed when going west. Now it is a cute little restaurant and they encourage you to walk around and look at everything. We drove around and looked at the wagon train ruts and a few other historical stops before we headed back to our hotel.

Terwilliger Home

I should mention that our hotel is great. We are staying at the Best Western. It is clean with nice staff and a great free breakfast in the morning. If we have to stay 4 nights here, this is very tolerable. When we got back, we checked the FRG website and Ben's landing time changed again. He's now coming in at 3:30 am! I think the military has a very strange sense of humor. He also called on a friend's cell phone and he's in Maine right now, waiting for his flight here. The wait is almost over!

April 9th

And so we wait... We did get in touch with a nice man at the base. He will call us on the cell phone when he gets the manifest. We did notice that one chalk is coming in tomorrow night so we are hoping Ben is in that group. In the meantime, we are trying to explore Kansas. Kansas in April... Hmmm... not quite what I had in mind. Why couldn't Ben have been stationed in Hawaii or Florida?

We went to see the Konza Prairie. Then we drove on back country roads to Wamego to see the Oz Museum.

Toto greeted us at the door.

It was a very cute little museum and town. We had lunch at a quaint little deli and then went to see the

Old Dutch Windmill in the city park.

**Update: We finally got the call but Ben isn't coming in until 07:30 on the 11th. Not terrific since we have to be out of here by 8:00 am on the 12th! But at least we will get to see him and have a whole day with him. PTL! I was so afraid that we wouldn't get to see him at all.

April 8th

So we are in Kansas but we don't know when Ben will get here. Unfortunately the military is on a need to know basis and I guess we don't need to know. We' ve been back and forth with Ben the past couple days - first he was stuck in Iraq because of sandstorms. Then he was in Kuwait waiting for a flight out. We tried to change our flight but it was going to cost a fortune. So we have been praying that he is going to get here before we have to leave!

April 6th

Dan started a new job today. He is working at the bakery deparment at Costco. It pays almost twice what he was making at Andy's and he is guarenteed 24 hrs a week.

April 4th

I wasn't sure which picture I liked better so I posted all of them. I noticed this old abandoned house covered in wisteria on my way to the grocery store today.

Today is my "sanity" day. I'm working the weekend and wasn't going to take any days off, just use my "days off" as my time in Kansas next week rather than take PTO. But I was starting to get a bit frantic about all the things I had to do and work 8 days straight! We weighed my sanity with using some PTO and oddly enough Arthur voted for my sanity. Lol! So today, I slept until 9:30, got the house clean, did a bit of groceries, hemmed some pants, paid bills, did the kid's taxes, and just got a bunch of odds and ends done that was hanging over my head. Now I feel better!

April 2nd

Daniel's friend Matt flew in to spend the rest of the week with him. They've known each other since they were about 7 or 8. Since we moved to NC, Matt has flown here a couple times and Dan spent some time in RI with Matt's family.

April 1st

Our shag teacher had a beginner shag party. It was great because we got to dance without feeling like we looked stupid since we are almost all new. There was free hot dogs and chips and even a review of one of the harder dance steps we learned.