A Ruby Anniversary!!

Happy 40th Anniversary to my parents!!

40 years ago today, June 27, 1970, Wanda Mae Peterson became Wanda Mae Ward when she married my dad, Terry Lee Ward. They were married at my mom's home church in Omaha, Nebraska, and had a reception at my dad's parent's house after the ceremony. They honeymooned in Colorado and both ended up sick with food poisoning. What a great way to start living our their vows - in sickness and in health :)

They lived in Omaha until moving to Springfield, Missouri, where my dad took a job as a pharmacist at the Cox North Hospital pharmacy. In 1982 they bought the Ash Grove Pharmacy (Ash Grove Drug Store at the time) and we moved to Ash Grove the summer before I started kindergarten. They have lived in the same house for 26 years now. My dad still owns and operates the pharmacy in Ash Grove.

40 years - Congratulations Mom and Dad!!

Homemade Ice Cream: Yummy In My Tummy!

When we started our wedding registry the main thing Ross wanted was a homemade ice cream maker. We found one at Target and added it to the registry, not quite sure if we'd receive it or not. About a month before our wedding we received a box in the mail from Target and were very happy to find our ice cream maker in the box! One of Ross' aunts sent this to us. Ross was so excited!!

We waited until after we were married to try it out. For our first batch we used a recipe that came with the ice cream maker. It was okay but to me it had a slight egg flavor. We used my dad's recipe for the second batch and this is the recipe we will use from now on. The ice cream tasted so good!! I wish there was a button on here for you to push that would automatically dispense the ice cream to you through your computer. Hahaha!!

Here's the ice cream recipe for you to try:

Poppy's Perfect Ice Cream
5 Qt
4 cups vitamin D milk
1 Qt half & half
1 Pint whipping cream
3 Tblsp vanilla
1/2 teaspoonful salt
2 1/2 cups sugar
Scald milk, add salt&sugar stir to dissolve, add balance of ingredients, chill for 30 minutes

Serve and enjoy!

Summertime = Swimmingtime!

A few weeks ago Ross and I, along with the Herndons, went out to my mom and dad's for an afternoon of swimming. It was a great day summer to be outside. The temperature was in the mid-high 80s and the pool was a bit chilly but felt great to cool off in. The boys love to swim and Trevor is all about jumping in and having us watch him.

Watching Trevor brought back so many memories of all the days and evenings when I was growing up that I spent swimming. Each summer I basically turned into a fish...except on ballgame days. (I played softball one-two evenings a week against teams made up of students from area schools). Well my dad had a rule that on game days I couldn't swim. He said the sun and swimming would wear me out too much for the game. (Because you know, there was a lot at stake at these games and we had to be completely focused on the game at hand ;) ). I think for the most part I obeyed the rule but it seemed that as we got deeper into the summer the rule became more relaxed, even nonexistent at times!

I do still love to swim but nowadays I'm more about laying out and suntanning instead of actually swimming.

1818 West Westview

Exactly one month from today we will have a new address: 1818 West Westview!!!

Ross and I signed a contract on a new house a few weeks ago and we are super excited to close on July 21 and start the move in process. We decided a while ago that once we were married we wanted to start fresh with "our" house and have been seriously looking for 3-4 months now. We've looked at several houses online and toured 5 houses that we liked but none seemed like home; until we found our new house, that is!

Ross found the listing online and we looked through the pictures together. I wasn't really that interested in it but he said we should go look through it so I said okay. I sure am glad we did! We both fell in love with it the minute we walked through the door. It is a two-story house with an unfinished basement - tons of storage space! The main level has an office, formal living and dining room, kitchen, "breakfast" area, family room 1/2 bath and laundry room. The second level has four bedrooms and one bathroom. We are so blessed to have found this house and feel it is a house we can definitely raise a family in...in a few years :)

Ross is thrilled to have an actual office! This will be so nice for him since he works out of a home office. The kitchen was recently remodeled with granite counter tops and lots of storage space. There is a covered deck right off of the family room and the lawn is very well taken care of and landscaped. Basically all we have to do is move in and start living. There are no repairs or remodeling that need to be made which is very nice! We will paint some of the rooms but that definitely does not need to be done right away.

I'll post pictures once we move in and get settled. For now you can see what the outside looks like!

Happy Father's Day Dad!

Happy Father's Day to my dad, Terry Ward.

I'm so thankful to have such a wonderful dad. My dad is so good to me and so helpful. I have realized lately how much he has done for me and taught me and I know I would not be the person I am today if it weren't for him.

Thank you, Dad! I love you!

The Titanic

Ever since the movie, The Titanic, came out in 1997 I have been a fan. I saw it at the theater 3 times and can't even begin to tell you how many times I have watched in on DVD. I even like watching it when it's on TV, when there are commercials!

For years my mom and I would watch it on the day after Thanksgiving while putting out her Christmas decorations and would quote several lines of it. My sister loves the movie, too. In fact I think we had an email string going for several weeks quoting lines from the movie back and forth to each other. My favorite line is from Rose at the end of the movie. She is laying on a wooden door and realizes Jack had passed away. As she watches him slowly drift away into the deep Atlantic, she says "I'll never let go, Jack. I'll never let go." Oh the times I have quoted that line, and even acted it out in the pool a time or two!

I'd asked Ross to watch it with me a few times and he finally gave in sometime this past winter. He had never seen it before and although we had to watch it in two sittings, he said he honestly liked it. Since I loved the movie so much and he was interested in the history of the ship we decided to go to the Titanic museum in Branson. Neither of us had toured the museum before and both found it enjoyable.

Upon "boarding" the ship all "passengers" are given a boarding pass with a name of an actual Titanic passenger. The boarding pass gives history about the person and at the end of the tour you find out if your person survived or not. (I'm happy to say that Ross and I both survived, although he was a first class passenger and I was from steerage...third class). The museum told the history of Titanic and even had artifacts recovered from the ship.

Overall it was a pretty fun time!

Wedding Pictures

Today is our 2-month wedding anniversary!!!! What an amazing, absolutely perfect day we had 2 months ago today! If I could I would live that day over and over and over again!

Flowers

I love planting flowers in the spring and summer. I'm learning how to mix flowers with different types of ivies and am really enjoying that. I would like to plant flowers in the ground but since we are selling our house didn't want to go that route this year, so I planted everything in flower pots Enjoy!

KitchenAid Mixer

I am now the proud owner of a brand new KitchenAid Mixer!

Back in the day when I was single (a whole 49 days ago at the time of this posting :) ) I dreamed of receiving a KitchenAid mixer as a wedding gift. I had never used once before, but knew they were very nice mixers. Of course, anything would be nicer than my $10 hand-held mixer I've been using for the past 5+ years. When Ross and I started our wedding registries the KitchenAid mixer was one of the very first items I put on the list. They are expensive so I kind of figured we wouldn't receive it, but I had high hopes that we might receive it as a "group gift".

Our wedding showers came and went with no KitchenAid mixer.

Our wedding came and went with no KitchenAid mixer.

Although we received very nice gifts and pretty much everything we wanted we, well I, was a little disappointed that we did not get the mixer. Ross being the wonderful husband that he is said we could use some of our wedding money to purchase the mixer ourselves. He also happens to have a friend who works for an online kitchen supply store and he was able to get us the mixer at a discount. Score for us!

I have used the mixer a couple of times now and absolutely love it! It is just so quick and easy. I just throw the ingredients into the mixer and click it on to whatever speed I need and it mixes. I love it!

Wedding Pictures!!

Our professional wedding pictures are back and ready for viewing! To view go to www.pictage.com and search for event #840268. There are about 550 pictures and I love all of them. I have so much enjoyed looking through the pictures over and over and over....and over again!

I will receive a copy of all of the photos from our photographer so will post some to my blog as I receive them. Enjoy!

Got A Mailbox?

Last Thursday night there was quite the commotion on our quiet little cul-de-sac that resulted in our mailbox being demolished.

Around 9:30 that evening I had a knock on my door. I was a bit scared to open the door, not knowing who would be coming by that late and I was home alone. The scared feeling quickly turned to confussion when I opened the door to find a police officer at my door and an ambulance and fire truck in the cul-de-sac, both with their lights flashing.

The police officer explained that the car in the driveway next to our house rolled down the driveway and hit our brick-encased mailbox, demolishing it. It took me a few minutes to understand what she was saying and when I saw the mailbox I just started laughing. It was just the funniest thing to me! The bricks that once composed our mailbox were laying in a pile in the yard.

The ambulance came to the scene because our neighbor lady, all by herself, tried to stop the car from rolling back. I'm not quite sure how she tried to stop it or why she thought she could, but she ended up going to the ER and came home with bruised ribs.

It's been a week now and our mailbox has still not been fixed so we have to pick up our mail at the Battlefield post office which is about 5 miles away from our house. Hopefully it will get fixed early next week.

I'd have to say, though, the most comical thing about this whole event is that this is the SECOND time our mailbox has been destroyed! Ross said a couple of years ago the same neighbors backed into the mailbox and smashed it. Too funny!