The King and I

Bluebelle! She’s our precious sweet funny rotten love-biting sleepy silly puppy!!!!!

We’ve been talking about getting a puppy soon after we got married, but decided to wait until we had a yard and had worked on our house a little. So last Saturday we went out to visit a breeder I had talked to and sweet little Bluebelle runs up and pulls on Kasey’s pant leg. So his heart was melted and we took her home!! So this week Kasey is being a stay at home dad and playing with puppy since he has the week off, and he teases me about how much fun they are having while I’m at work. Here are some more pictures….enjoy!! 

oh yeah, she is a 9 week old Australian Shephard!!

I’m noticing a trend in my blog titles, which mainly have to do with how bad I am at keeping this internet journal up and running. I am not going to commit to being a more responsible blogger, however, since I know I will get distracted and may not write again for 2 months. So enjoy this new post faithful “The King & I” friends!

I’ve been thinking about why it’s been so long since I wrote last, and my excuse conclusion is that I just don’t get on the computer at home anymore. I’m on the computer all day at work, but I decided that when I have a free moment I shouldn’t be reading or writing blogs. And now I’m one of those distracted techy phone people who see all their emails on their “smart” phone so there’s another reason to not get on the computer. Anywho……..

Kasey and I are doing great! He is finished with training on the C-130 (yeah!) and is about to start in his squadron, doing what ever they do there. I’m still liking my job at KARK 4 in Little Rock, and recently sang karaoke for the first time at a work “Christmas Party After Christmas”. I’m learning so many new skills to add to my resume. We are in the process of having new kitchen cabinets installed, which is so exciting! It’s taking a little longer than we originally thought, but Kasey keeps reminding me how great it’s going to be once it’s all done. Since Dec 28th we’ve not had cabinets, countertops, a sink, or a dishwasher. So much fun….    but there are 3 cabinets put in place and the rest will be put in this week. I’ll post pictures at the end of this of what it looks like now, and then again when it’s all done!

We are getting more serious about expanding our family these days. I am actively searching for a puppy to increase our number from 2 to 3, and be our beloved dog child. We’ve decided on an Australian Shepard, unless we see a puppy at the shelter who melts our hearts. We like the Aussies because 1. they are super smart  2. they like to play (Kasey needs a playmate)  3. Not too big, not too small  and      4. the girl who always beat me out in 4-H back in the day had one so I’d like to think I would’ve had a chance had I had one too.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Years. We were out of town so much that I almost forgot where we lived! But that’s what is fun about the holidays, visiting family and friends and traveling. We did get stuck in the midst of “snowmageddon” that happened in Arkansas a few weeks ago. We had to stop in Texarkana on our way back from FW to LR, and then spend a whole day poking along in the ice and snow. A good thing that came out of this was the cutest snowman ever that we made as soon as we got back home! I’ll attach a picture of him too.

Well, I hope that everyone feels a little more caught up with what’s going on here. Thanks for reading this, and I hope to be better about writing more often, but no promises!!  haha

I have negleted the blog. I apologize. But honestly, who really reads this? Just kidding, I know who you are, and I hope it’s not a waste of your time when you head on over to my blog world and see that, once again, I have not written in over a month. Gimme a break, I’m boring!

So, to play catch up on what’s been happening: Kasey’s 25th birthday was October 22 and we had a great time celebrating!! We got Rangers semi-finals game 6 tickets and watch them beat the Yankee’s in that series, and had a blast celebrating the successful road to the World Series with around 52,000 other Rangers fans! It was really really amazing and we were lucky to get to witness the most exciting win in Ranger’s history to date. Kasey said it was his best birthday ever. How cute! I’ll post a picture of him at the game later.

I also celebrated my 23rd birthday on November 11…woo hoo, 23, what an uneventful birthday and age….yay! I got the day off at work, and Kasey did too since it’s Veteran’s Day on the 11th, and we ran around all day having a good time and enjoying the day off. Kasey got me a massage for my birthday so that was amazing! Thanks for all the birthday cards, phone calls, and well wishes. You people are so nice.

Last weekend Kasey and I went to Bartlesville and Coffeeville for King/Clark Thanksgiving with Kasey’s Grandma Clark and that side of the family. It was so fun and we had such a great time seeing everyone and eating some good food (aka too much food)!!  The drive from Little Rock to Tulsa & surrounding area is actually a really nice and enjoyable drive. The trees here in Arkansas are sooo beautiful this time of year ,and we just saw so many pretty colors along the way.

This weekend we are leaving to go to Fort Worth for Dunlap Thanksgiving. YAY! I am so excited. Thursday morning we are getting up to do the Turkey Trot (5K), then on to the chow down. I’m making cookies, going all out and making them in fun shapes and colors, etc. I’ll be fun. Hope they turn out.

One more thing that’s happened……we bought new kitchen cabinets! Woo Hoo! They will be installed in a few weeks, and then our new countertops on, and everything should be done by early January. Then we will give the kitchen a new paint job, backsplash, and it will be amazing!! I can’t wait. Our kitchen now is….let’s just say old. Yes, I will leave it at that. I’m in a positive mood :-)

Well, I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and gets well rested up. Kasey and Iwill be celebrating our 1st anniversary Sunday, so think back to one year ago on Saturday partying it up with the new Mr. and Mrs. King!

Is it bad to write a new blog when you’re at work, but you bosses are still gone to lunch, everyone is gone on sales calls, and you have finished everthing to do for now? I hope not. Because I’m at work. Typing. Listening to the thunder outside. Hopefully the weather isn’t too bad because our department is having Fair Day tomorrow! WOO! It’s Arkansas State Fair month, so we’re going to check out all the fried masterpieces that go along with that. Can’t wait!

Not too much new stuff to report. We’ve been out of town the past 2 weekends for weddings, so life’s been busy! I’ve started watching this season of The Biggest Loser, The Office, and Modern Family. They are sooo good! If you’ve never seen Modern Family then you are seriously missing out on some laughs to be had! If you’re a Biggest Loser fan, as of right now Adam is my favorite. He’s got a good attitude and not a ridiculous sob story for why he’s on the show. You know you have to have some kind of tramatic life event to qualify!

Fall is revealing itself here in Arkansas, and it’s so pretty! Hopefully Kasey and I will be able to take a drive through the Ozarks and see the trees turning. I love Fall!!!!

Hello little blog reader community! I hope everyone has been functioning OK in my very long absence. I know it’s been tough to go day after day without reading about my exciting life and innermost thoughts and feelings……..HA.

Some updates! Let’s see, the last time I wrote I talked about how much I love cookies…wow. Sad. I’ve got better news this time. Number one, I finally made some curtains for my living room and my bedroom. Woohoo! They are pretty! My sweet mama came up a few weeks ago while my dad played golf with some guys in Hot Springs, and we sewed til out fingers were bare nubs. But the result is beautiful! I will post pictures, except for pictures of my bedroom curtains because I lost the brackets to hold up the curtain rod in the move. (If anyone has seen them, please let me know! Also keep your eye out for the tops of my lamps and Kasey’s ipod) Also we got a hutch for our dining room. It was an early birthday present from said sweet mama. It looks awesome in the dining room!

GREAT NEWS #2 :   I got a job! YEA! A real job with a title and a salary and a cubicle. It all happened so fast, I had 2 interviews and then they offered and I said I’d give the weekend to think about, but instead I called back the same day and accepted. :-)    I now work at KARK Channel 4 News in Little Rock, an NBC affiliate. I am the Local Sales Assistant, which means I work in the Sales Department and pretty much do everything. HA! That is what it seems like at the moment, at least! I know I’m really going to like it and will learn so much about sales and television broadcasting, which is pretty cool. Gotta have the news, right? Check out my employer at Arkansasmatters.com ! or not.

Other things that have been happening around here are that Kasey started a soccer league with some guys from our young married’s class. They play on Thursdays and so far have lost and tied. Hopefully they will only go up from here and win the next one! He is a stud if you didn’t know already. Everyone loves him, and that’s probably the  only reason I think I have any friends. jk

Kasey’s simulators have been going really well, and he is enjoying it for the most part, and he’s really enjoying lots of free time that he has with his ever-changing schedule. Most recently he gutted (basically) our laundry room and painted the new concrete floor a nice tan color, and is about to paint the walls light green and give me some pantry shelves. Can’t wait! It looks awesome in there and it’s no longer frightening to do the laundry, although I still don’t do it very often……..

Well, I think it has been long enough now that I can let the cat out of the bag and say that I am going to be an aunt! Jennifer and Jason are going to have a baby, due March 1st! Last week the baby was as big as an orange, which is so funny to think about, and they haven’t found out the sex of it yet. We can’t wait to find out!!!!! Everyone is so excited and happy for them!

OK, well I think that is enough for tonight! Have a great week everybody!

Madagascar Vanilla cookies! They are sooooooooo good, everyone must run to their grocery store immediately and get some. And they’re sweet enough that only a few do the trick. Go get them, do it, do it, do it.

So as soon as I say we are done painting for a while, we paint another room or start on another project! Recently I spent 2 horrible days   s-l-o-w-l-y   peeling off wallpaper border in our guest room. Then I painted it a pretty bright blue, close to the teal color side, but not so greenish. It’s bright!

Right now Kasey is working on the utility room. It was bad. Really dirty, old, no shelves that I could reach, eww. He ripped out all the linolium and trim, shelves, bit of disgusting carpet, and now is working on getting the sticky up. We are going to paint the concrete instead of adding more linolium or tile, a cost cutting solution! Woo hoo!

Here is what we have finished in the house so far:

Living room. Ripped off wallpaper, textured all the walls, and painted.

Dining room, painted.

Guest room, removed wallpaper, painted.

Master, painted.

Painted all trim in whole house.

WHEW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Lots of work!

Here are some before and after pictures. Come on over if you feel like working on our backyard!

So a few things that we’ve discovered since we moved here to LR. 1) We live in Fern Gully  2) locusts are reeeeealllyy loud    3) We need to stay away from the sweets and hit the gym instead….mood killer.

But really, the fern gully thing is for real. Kasey insisted that I write specifically on how we are being overtaken by crazy animals and bugs and whatever else that’s creepy crawly crittery insecty. I may have exaggerated the part on how he insisted I write this, among other things. We have had a bird nest go through an entire life cycle on top of our breaker box, which is extremely unfortunate for both us and the bird family since we have been changing out all the light fixtures and switches in our whole house. We had this routine every time it was time to turn off some lights, I would grab the broom and protect Kasey’s head and eyeballs while the mama bird swooped down for the kill. It was pretty cool to see little blue robins eggs turn into little (ugly) cute baby birds and finally fly off though.

We’ve had a frog infestation too, in our backyard, in this little pond that was already here. One night Kasey was trying to study and they were soooo loud that he really could not focus, and so he dropped everything and went out there, captured them in this little fish net we have, and walked down the street to the rain runoff drain and dumped them. This happened like 5 times. Then, he got stung in the face by a wasp, and so of course he had to lay down the law. 32 wasps carcasses later, it’s finally safe to go in the backyard. Which is exploding with green plants and weeds and strange flowery things.

So , as much as all of you are loving hearing my rants about bugs and weeds and stuff, here are some cute pictures of the birds we raised on top of our breaker box.

Kasey thinks the birds when they’re little look like the ‘creatures’ from Fraggle Rock. Go here to find out.

Hey everybody, so sorry I’ve been MIA for a while now!!!  Let me update you on everything that’s been happening since mid-June around the Kasey & Ashley King household.

As you all know by now, Kasey and I are new homeowners, yay! We moved into our new house June 14th and are finally getting settled! It really does take a while to feel settled in a new place, but it’s so nice once you get to that point! We’ve already started getting our hands dirty in the remodeling department. Nothing too major, but we’ve ripped off lots and lots of wall paper and textured the walls in the living room and hallway, and also are giving everything a fresh coat of paint. And I can’t tell you how much this house needed some new paint!! WOW! We feel so accomplished. We may start flipping houses from now on, who knows!    There is still some work to be done, but we feel at home now!  Arkansas is an interesting place to be. We like it so far, but there are some adjustments as with any place. The scenery is beautiful, the weather hot and humid (bless you FrizzEase), and the roadways crazy!!!! Note to all of you out there, if you ever come up, especially to Jacksonville where we are, please be careful and watch the signs! I’ve never seen more 2-way access roads or stop signs off of the highway exits until now. It’s strange.

We were really lucky to have our families come and help us get started on all of our home projects this past week. My parents came up for about 4 days, then Kasey’s for the following 5 days, and my best friend Samantha for 4 days over the 4th! Kasey and I really enjoyed having everyone, not sure how much our guests enjoying working all day and sleeping around chaotic clutter and boxes though!

Kasey started his first day at the AF Base today, which by the way is a great base! He’s pretty excited about it, and I’m excited to meet some other spouses from the spouses club, which meets pretty often and has already contacted me and invited me to their events! So nice!

Well, that seems like a pretty good recap of most things that have happened here over the past month! Still no work on whether or not Kasey will go to Florida for water survival, or if I get to go with him! I will post some before and after pics soon of the house!

Sad, sad, sad-sad-sad. That is me right now. Because we are NOT on our way to Florida today to have a mini-vacation / chill on the beach while Kasey is in training. We found out Thursday that water survival is cancelled until they can decide whether to move it to another location, or what to do in light of the oil spill now washing up on Pensacola Beach. Sad sad sad. Kasey is one of those good people who can always look on the bright side, however, and made me realize how much less stressed we will be this week since we are moving a week from today, and if we went to Florida we would only have like one day to really get the leftover things packed up. He is right. He is smart. I guess I will just be pale when we are moving!

Another sad thing — I need new brakes. BOO!

OK, happy time!  We went garage sale shopping today and I swear there were like 25 garage sales around Enid. CRAzy! We got some deals out of it too.      1.) a nightstand from an estate sale, that we will repaint.  2.) a china cabinet that is super charming and a great size for what we wanted. We are going to strip down the old paint layers and either stain it or do a sleek pearl paint finish–can’t wait!   and    3.) a kitchen chair that’s really cute already but will look better with cuter fabric, for FREE!    What a successful day!

I will take a picture soon and post, and then do updates throughout the re-do process.

Have a happy weekend! Oh yeah, and did you know that Friday was national donut day? Ha! If you are a good person and don’t ever indulge in sugar or flour concoctions, just think of eating a donut as honoring a national holiday! Free Pass!

Home Sweet Home is on the brain for several reasons…first, Kasey got home on Saturday after being gone to Washington for most of the month of May. YAY! He was at survival training, and well, survived! So glad he’s home, I missed him!  Reason number two, we are closing on our first home today! It’s crazy and overwhelming, but we are really excited! The planned move date to Little Rock, AR is June 13th or 14th and I’m so ready to move that I’ve had our place pretty much packed up for about 2 weeks now. Hey, I had to keep myself busy while being home alone for several weeks!

On Friday Kasey and I are leaving to drive to Pensacola, FL for about a week because Kasey has to be there for water survival training. He said there is a possibility the training may be moved to Cocoa Beach, FL because of the oil disaster, which would be okay since that’s near Disney! I’d love to go to Universal and check out the new Harry Potter theme park…anybody else? Come on, you can admit it, you wish you could’ve gone to Hogwarts too! Back to the leaking oil well, it makes me so sick to my stomach everytime I think  about it. I just hate it so much, and keep praying that someone will listen to all these creative and ingenious scientists/inventors and come together to stop it. So tragic.

On a happier note, Kasey’s cousin Katy King was married on Saturday to a sweet guy, Brody Gustafson at OC’s campus. It was so beautiful and we were so happy that we could be there to share it with them. Katy’s been blogging about her wedding planning journey at GirlToBride. She’s a funny writer.

Well, I wish I had more interesting things to talk about, but…….I’m all out. I guess I need to do something with my life! Have a nice week everybody!