Time in Tennessee coming to an End

Our time in Tennessee looks like it will be coming to a close the end of this week. Our claim status has dwindeled considerably!! Strange as it may sounds, most farmers that we lack are farmers that have been in TEXAS to custom harvest. We laughed thinking that we could have done most of this work in January right from our home, for the Southern Division of the company that we are working for. Kinda crazy huh?? Looks like we will be home next weekend--and we will acutally get to stay home for a week before attending a school in Dallas. We both are looking forward to it!!
I had spoken about tornado sirens in my previous blog, and I have posted a couple of pictures of damages that we saw. The tornado was 5 miles from our motel and did quiet a bit of damage to the small town of Popular Grove. It is so sickening to be driving by and witnessing families trying to gather what belongings that they have left after such a storm. Friends, neighbors helping clean up the mess along beside the families is extraordinary! We have since passed this sight many times and it is amazing to see just what 3 days does, you can hardly tell anything had happened--except the two homes that were destroyed.
Our weekends get extremely long away from home and we always try to find something to pass some time on Saturday---Last weekend we drove over to Memphis and visited the Memphis Zoo. If you are ever near Memphis and have some time, I highly recommend the zoo. It was great! We couldn't have ask for better weather--60 degrees and absolutely no wind. We spent a considerable amount of time looking at all the animals--but while we were there--the monkeys began communicating to one another--and my goodness, the noise was indescribable. One began its squawk, then another joined in--then another, then another. It did not matter our where abouts in the zoo, it could be heard. We ran back to see first hand and the crowds made no difference to these monkeys!! They were a riot!!
This Saturday we again had lots of time on our hands and we went back to Memphis for the annual RV show. We made note last week that there was going to be a boat show and thought we would enjoy attending something like that. Low and behold we had the wrong dates down and got to see a convention center full of RV's. Now I am telling you--these RV's are better than our home. It was an adventure and quiet interesting to say the least. These salesman pushing to sell us an RV for $300,000.00 was amazing. We have often talked about getting an RV for our work, but after seeing the prices and putting a pencil to our work--we will continue to choose the motel!! There are so many pros and cons about fellow employees having their own home to take with them--but I personally do like the motel. It is really hard to believe that we have spent 41/2 complete months in a motel room. We have learned pack light, pack organized and use all the essentials the motel has to offer.
Being downtown Memphis we visited the world known "RENDEVOUS" restuarant. This place is known for its ribs and bbq. It is in an old basement and all meat is cooked by the broiler to heat a old motel. They are known for their famous "RUB" on their ribs. Elvis, Rolling Stones and many other famous people have eaten here. It was an experience finding it in an alley and underground. Besides FREEZING, we had a great day.
We woke today with it being 20 degrees!! To cold to do anything outside. We attended church and have settled ourselves in to a day to watch the next to the last football games of the seaon.(To bad for Dallas)
Not knowing our next adventure I will be keeping you posted...
Until then.......

In a New Year---

Unbeleivable that another year is upon us! I realize it has been such a long break in between blogs, but we were able to go home and see all the family and spend alot of great time with everyone! We left Tennessee on December 22 to go home for 10 days. Thankfully we were able to go back to Tennessee to do work through the month of January. Being home with the kids was so much fun and we had such a great Christmas. I actually didn't do any decorating--except for the last minute thought of the table decoration for our family meal. Curtis went across the street and cut the evergreen pieces off our neighbors evergreen tree, I then gathered up some decorations that I had put away from Cory and Angels wedding. It was so much fun and so fast---decorating and undecorating for Christmas. We spent so much time playing games and introducing the old game of "PIT" to the kids. If you are not familiar with the game---lets just say---a WHOLE lot of hollering goes on. I think Jenna lost her voice from screaming--but we laughed and had such a great time!! We spent Christmas eve at Granny Hunts home and had everyone there in Curtis's family but Tori. She was not able to come this year.
The actual Christmas eve, Curtis and I put together a traveling Christmas video scavenger for a bunch of kids. We had 17 participate and had a blast. I think the kids did a great creative job on what they put together. They had to put the 12 days of Christmas together with each day being from a different house-and those at that house had to do the singing. I am going to try to add 1 small part of a video to share--hopefully I will get it to work. It was a nice way to celebrate Christmas-- We spent Christmas day at the movies--that has become a tradition that we started 4 years ago. Cory and Angel were able to go with us, along with Sam, Lisa and Dal. Coli and Jenna were spending Christmas with her grandmother--they were missed but we totally understand!!
The rest of the week just flew by--we had my family Christmas at my mothers on the 30th of December. My sister and her family were not able to come home this year, so it was just us. We had a nice relaxing day and thankfully my parents had 3 days off--in a row!!!!
New years eve--we planned a 4 wheeling trip to Kermit Texas. It is all sand dunes--and there was 10 of us that got to go. We had a great time--other than so many wrecks (thankfully noone got hurt badly) we had an awesome time. We got home at 10:00 p.m.--so needless to say--we slept for the arrival of the New Year!
We left home on January 4th to arrive back in Tennesee on the 5th. We are expected to stay here until the end of January. The work is very easy--just working alot of paper work because there is nothing left in the fields. It did get 74 degrees here on the 7th and so beautiful. We acutally have not had that many sunny days--it has rained 3/4 of the time we have been in Tennessee. We had a bit of a scare on Tuesday the 8th, the bad storms came in and the tornado warning sirens went off 4 times. We decided we would take cover here in the motel room---lying in the bathtub. Dyersburg did have 2 tornadoes--1, 3 miles south of town, and 1, 5 miles east of town. We haven't heard how much damage has been done yet, but we are so thankful that we are SAFE.
My pictures that I have posted are very random--but I did want to share something. Maybe it won't be that long for me to be posting again--
Until then....................