The kindness of a Kindle

My sweet, sweet husband got me a Kindle for Christmas. He decided to let me have it early since I'll be moping around the house for a couple more days with my sore legs, hip and back. I love that man. I had to laugh at myself because as I was setting it up I kept trying to use it as a touchscreen like my iPhone...yeah, that does not work. HA! :) I guess now I'll have to ask for Amazon giftcards for Christmas so that I can get some books loaded up. Feel free to send any book suggestions my way as I see a lot of reading in my future. :) Thanks again, Jackson, you are such a good man.

HEY! I'm walking here

Imagine my surprise on Tuesday afternoon as I'm walking to my car to head to some appointments and I get hit by a car. A maroon Alero like the one pictured above. Yes, as a pedestrian. It was about 2:20 and I had the "walk" signal. I first thought I was getting mugged because it was such a force from behind that I hit the ground hard and my things went all over the street. Then I looked up and realized that I'd been hit by a car that was not stopping. In fact the car proceeded to run another red light to get away. Can you imagine? They had no idea if I was dead or not because I was just a heap in the road in the rear-view mirror. (Their side-view mirror left a nice mark on my back and bruised my kidneys.)

This all happened in front of Huntington Bank (seriously thinking of moving all my accounts there now. Those people were so incredibly nice to me.) and within moment people were helping me gather my bruised laptop, cell phone, wallet and lunchbox. I was so embarrassed at first, but then once I realized that my left leg was a mess I let people help me. An ambulance arrived and I was treated at the scene. My blood pressure was, obviously, sky high so I had to wait with them for a bit until it came down. Jackson got my text message and was able to meet me in the ambulance. He was so sweet how he just burst into the back with an, "ARE YOU OK?!!" The paramedics were stunned that he had let himself in and I just giggled.

Jackson drove me home to let me change out of my dirty (it was raining so I was all wet and nasty from being on the ground) clothes and get a warm shower. When my back continued to hurt, as we thought it might, we headed to the doctor's office for X-rays. After about 1.5 hours spent with a doctor poking me and asking if it hurt (YES!) I got my prescriptions and was released.

Praise the Lord, I have no broken bones. This situation could have been a lot worse and I'm so thankful that the Lord was watching over me. I am, however, as sore as I have ever been in my life. I'm on a lot of pain medication and that makes me feel pretty foggy. I was able to only work for a few hours today from the comfort of my warm bed (thanks again for the heated mattress pad, Kathi!) and take a lot of naps. I plan to be back to work tomorrow. I just hope no one expects me to be in a hurry. ;)

And no the humor of getting hit by a crazy driver in Indianapolis and not in Boston is not lost on me. :)

Bieber Fever

I posted my favorite "Black Friday" commercial below for your viewing pleasure. Since I love Justin Bieber, I made the family go "see" him at Macy's. I don't love the way his perfume smells, but I enjoy that he can kind of laugh at himself. Grace was MORTIFIED that I made her pose with his poster in the middle of the store- hilarious.
Susie (she likes them young- HAAAA!) going in for a smooch.
Jackson pretending to be one of the guys in the commercial.
Kathi was like a little girl...giddy with excitement. ;) HA! Thanks to the Petefish clan for playing along...it was fun! :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! This year we made a return visit to Newburgh to visit with the Petefish clan for the big holiday. I always made dumplings with my family at these types of gatherings so I made them today, too. Yum!
Guy always makes the most delicious apple salad so I decided to give it a try, too. I am happy to report that it was awesome and very comparable to Guy's! Woot.
Jackson and Susie making MASHED potatoes- not whipped potatoes like some people prefer- mashed goshdarnit.
MacKenzie made the trip and was bullied, as usual, by her cousin Monty. We caught them in a rare moment of friendliness this evening. It was short-lived.

Wireless Printer

Seriously more than a year ago I bought this wireless printer. I had great intentions of it being super useful and easy. Yeah, it beat me. It was so confusing to try to get it working that I had given up. That really is not like me at all so Jackson pretty much constantly gave me a hard time about how we could not scan, print, fax or copy at home. (Cry me a river, honestly, there are people starving, but whatever.) Today I finally needed to print something to badly that I sat down and figured the darned wireless printer out. It was actually fairly painless. The sense of pride I got from defeating that thing is immense. I just hope that what I printed leads to another sense of pride since it would make a lot of my dreams come true. Stay tuned.

Let's go HOOSIER BASKETBALL!!!!

I got Jackson IU Basketball tickets for our anniversary so we went down and cheered the boys on to a 94-65 victory. The Hoosiers are already 6-0 this year. Let's hope they can keep this up! There is just nothing like an IU basketball game- the energy is electric and it is all just so fun. I think being able to go to games whenever we want to again is one of my favorite things about moving home.

Christmas explosion

Since we are going to be in Florida for Christmas this year, I wanted to decorate early so that I could enjoy a good month of my decor before heading South. This was what the foyer looked like when we finished bringing up my Christmas tubs from the basement. I felt a little overwhelmed at first, but it went quickly and it is always so fun decorate to the sounds of the season.
We went to Menard's to get some more wreaths for the outside of the house and found a Christmas tree that we loved so we got it.
Please note that our tree makes 5'10"ish Jackson look like a midget. It is about 10 feet tall. Yep. We were "those people." Jackson loved the fact that 5 people had to help us shove this tree into his Jeep.
I mean it kind of fits, right?! HA! We must have looked so funny driving home from the store, but so be it. With such a monster tree we had to get it home somehow!
After a couple of hours of work we had the tree up, lit and decorated. It looks gorgeous! I love Christmas! Also, let it be known that Jackson Petefish actually said to me, "I think we might need more Christmas decor!" I almost fell over. He always talks stuff about my Christmas collection of goods. I just wanted to have that in writing. HA! :)

Blog entry #1,000...Anniversary #5

The Petefish Family

I dug up my favorite family photo for my big 5th anniversary post. How lucky am I? I just look at the photo and my heart explodes with love and thankfulness for the blessing I have received in this life.

Who would have thought that about 6 years ago when I first mentioned Jackson's name to my family at Thanksgiving that we would have been married for 5 years now? I'm pretty sure the people we worked with at American Funds lost that bet. ;) I truly believe that we were made for each other. I love Jackson like I did not know was possible. He truly makes me a better person and is my very best friend. There is no one else I would rather spend time with no matter what I am doing. He is supportive. He is funny. He is the best. Period.

Would you like an example of how awesome he is? I had a miserable day at work today- on our actual anniversary- so he stopped at the Villa Inn (my absolute favorite spa ever) and got me a gift card for a massage. And that was not an anniversary present, it was a "I know you had a bad day" present. Seriously sweet.

I made the mistake the other day of telling Jackson that I don't think about things as impossible anymore because I know that if I ask him to make something happen for me, he will make it happen. (I'm pretty sure that quote will live on forever. Great. HA!) We just have so much fun together that I simply cannot imagine my life without him in it. I flipped through some of my old blog posts and the amount of fun we have together is so evident to me. I feel blessed each day that we get to spend together and look forward to spending the rest of our lives living and laughing together. I love you, Jackson!

Petefish Pro Shop?

Imagine my surprise when we go to Susie's for dinner one evening and she asks us to get her Christmas stuff out of the attic and we somehow come home with 6 sets of golf clubs. I'm not kidding. 6 sets. Jackson, obviously, loves to golf and he found a set of irons (I think) that he liked so he bought them again and again. I'm not sure why. I'm also not sure why they had to leave the safety of Susie's attic. ;)
He promises that once they're all cleaned up he will stop having them on "display" in the garage...only to move them to "display" in the "man room." I took this as sign that I needed to go buy more shoes. Hey! Fair is fair. ;)

Caught!

I was finally able to capture photographic evidence that MacKenzie does, in fact, watch television. She is particularly fond of House Hunters and that darned doorbell. ;)

DIY- toilet edition

This weekend we tackled installing our new toilets ourselves. After a bit of an incident in removing the first throne, we sailed right through the process. We have two brand new toilets downstairs and then we refurbished the one that had been in our master for the upstairs. It was a process- for sure- but I am pretty excited with the results. I love new toilets! :) And before you ask- yes, we do have to paint behind the toilets because the old ones were larger than the new ones. Arg!

Biking on the beach

Monday morning we rented bikes so that we could ride them on the beach. I got so tickled because the bike rentals were billed as only for sale for 24 hour time slots and each day was $12. Jackson haggled with the owner and got him to let us use the bikes all afternoon for just $12 for both of us. I was impressed.

We rode for a bit and then Jackson just had to get into the water. He is such a kid at heart- his big grin just melts my heart.
After we turned in our bikes, we headed back to the resort to spend time in the hammocks. Ahh, vacation. I love it.
This photo does not do these kites justice as they were the size of my car and just gorgeous. It was a warm, but windy day and the kites were quite the sight. We enjoyed our bummy beach day before heading to the airport and back home to Indiana. Tear.

Hilton Head and Savannah

Once we finally arrived in Hilton Head, all was well in the world. We woke up Saturday morning and headed to the beach. It was lovely. They had porch swings on and near the beach that I loved to lounge in and watch the waves. From the beach we headed to Harbor Town- a part of Hilton Head- to see its famous golf course and lighthouse.

We saw that you could go up in the lighthouse and decided that $2.50 each was our limit on what we'd pay to go up. We walked into the lobby and the sign said admission was $3.50. I was sad, but I was not going to bust my little budget- ha. The lady behind the counter told us that if we carried some bags up to the top of the lighthouse where the gift shop was, she would knock $1 off the price. I was delighted as it now matched my budget. It was so random and funny. We gladly climbed the stairs to the top, made our delivery and went out for some photos.

You can see the famous 18th hole surrounded by yachts...rough life in these parts. :)

A view of the lighthouse from the ground. It was really pretty cute and neat to see.

That evening we went to a seafood joint for dinner where Jackson ate 18 (yes- 18!) raw oysters on the half shell. Sick! The sunset view was incredible from our table and we loved it.

Can you believe that view? I love it.

Sunday morning we headed to Savannah to do a trolley tour of the city. This steeple is the one shown in the beginning of the Forest Gump movies when the feather floats in. I thought that was neat since the "Feather Song" was played at our wedding and this was our 5th anniversary celebratory trip. Aww. :)

I am OBSESSED with the trees in the South. I love the Spanish Moss that grows on them and makes them look so old and gorgeous. I am totally a Southern Belle at heart- though Jackson scoffs at that notion!

We hopped off the trolley tour at Forsyth Park and took a little stroll so we could see its famous fountain. The park was gorgeous and a real asset to the city, in my opinion.

We got to eat at the famous "Lady & Sons Restaurant" owned by Paula Deen and her boys. The food was OK. It was really buttery and salty and we'd had better. The gift shop was also really proud of their goods, but hey, if she gets away with those prices more power to her.

From Savannah we drove out to Tybee Island to watch the sunset. Tybee is known for its lighthouse so we made another stop to see yet another lighthouse. I have become found of them in my old age, it seems.

I kept this random of photo so that he could see how he generally looks at me- like I am insane. Hmph. I cannot imagine why.

Another view of the lighthouse. It was considerably larger that the one in Harbor Town.

They had another swing on this beach so we sat and watched the waves while we waited for the sun to disappear.

Jackson just has to touch the ocean whenever he can- cold or not!

We thought this log that was washed up on shore was awesome. Enjoying a nice sunset on Tybee Island.

We stopped at Leopold's Ice Cream in Savannah on our way back from Tybee Island to Hilton Head. It is supposedly one of the top 10 ice cream places in the nation. I said supposedly on purpose. It was really pretty lame! While we enjoyed seeing Savannah and doing some shopping, we were happy to head back to the resort and spend some more time in Hilton Head.

Toilets!

I asked for toilets for Christmas and Christmas came early as our new toilets were delivered today. Woo hoo. I worked at Gerber toilets in college so I was especially excited to see that my new thrones were Gerbers. Thanks, Mom & Guy! That delivery guy could NOT believe that these toilets were our Christmas requests. Too funny. :)

Butt Wipes

Imagine our surprise when we walked into a Piggly Wiggly (funny in and of itself) and saw a sign for "butt wipes." We laughed and laughed and I, obviously, had to take a photo. Ohhh Piggly Wiggly.

MacK & Grammy

The best thing about living back at "home" in Fishers is having people available to watch MacKenzie again while we leave. Yep. I meant for that to read like it did. I love escaping this place.
Grammy is still recovering from her foot surgery and had a makeshift bed going on her couch. Little did she know MacKenzie would take that as an invitation to sleep there herself. I thought this was so, so cute.
Grammy's boyfriend came to check in on her and got to play ball with MacKenzie- how lucky!
We got a lot of photos of MacK's adventures with Grammy- look at the pure joy on her face.
All of that ball made her need to take a break...it is a good thing Grammy shares her bed!
I picked MacKenzie up this morning after I voted and she was exhausted. She slept in the sun for most of the afternoon. Thanks for the fun, Grammy! :)