River Glen

11 days off from work... and then the daughter that hasn't had the world spinning around her says "can you take me to Knoxville tomorrow".  Yes, this is the tomorrow after 11 days vacation.  So what is a mother to do?  This mother emails her boss and says, I need to add one more day to my vacation.  Then I got up at 4:00 am and head to the farm where Tina has her leased horse boarded!  They load the horses up and we take off to Knoxville.  I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.  On Tuesday we headed out and spent the entire day together.  She rode the jumps at River Glen and I was the photographer.  That was beautiful country and great watching her.  However, the better part was I had her all alone for 3 hours each way.  I couldn't think of a better way to spend a vacation day!

Some of the action (and still) shots from the day:

Mr. and Mrs. King

The hectic morning is over.  All the food is cooked and in the warmers, the donuts are arranged in a cake fashion, the balloons have been picked up, many emergencies have been taken care of (like the wrong shirt being ordered for a groomsman - Thanks Seth Hill for literally the shirt off your back!).  It is finally time to put my daughter in her wedding dress and watch her walk down the isle.  I had already cried my tears several days leading up to the wedding, so I was holding it all together pretty well.

Rod gave Tori a diamond necklace as a wedding present

Tina getting her hair done

Rod and his girls

It was time to head upstairs.  The church was getting pack.  Tori was ready and it was almost time.  The ceremony was as beautiful as I could have wished for.  The singing by Tori's college roommate, Abi and her longtime friend Lydia was amazing.  It was sweet, precious, touching, heartfelt, and every other adjective that you would want to associate with a wedding.

Rod giving her away

The God's Knot

You may kiss your bride!

At this moment, my family grew by 1 son.  I am so proud to have Matt officially as part of our family!

The reception was packed and we ran out of food... to say that is hard on me is an understatement.  I love to feed people and so does my Mom.  So not cooking enough was horrible.  We had cooked 2 country hams, 300 biscuits, 8 sausage rolls, 3 loaves of sweet bread, 100 cinnamon rolls, 100 muffins, 12 quarts of yogurt, 4 different kinds of granola, 3 watermellons, 3 pineapples, a full flat of strawberries, and 200 french toast sticks! But from what I hear, everyone loved the food.  I had to rush Tori and Matt out from their pictures so that they could cut the cake and expose the donuts for everyone to eat!

I don't have the pictures from the photographer yet, so I am limited on what I have.  As the mother of the bride I didn't take any pictures myself.  I couldn't end this blog without once again thinking all the people that helped: My Mom and Dad, Laine, Aunt Sandra, My Granny, Bobbie, Scott, Pam, Michaela, Paige, Tina, Peter and a HUGE thank you to the people at Good Springs Free Will Baptist church.  They let us come in for a week and take over.  The youth group were amazing at running the reception.  I am so indebted to them for the way they have embraced Tori over the years.

One last comment - the photographer gave Tori a wedding highlight video.  She is honing her skill on these and it was free of charge.  I think it is great. Here is the youtube link to the 3 minute video
Mr. & Mrs. Wedding Highlight video

Getting ready for the Wedding!

Immediately after graduation was over, we finished packing Tori's apartment in Jackson and headed back to Joelton.  Focus was shifted now to the wedding!  I had taken the Friday before graduation thru the Monday after the wedding off from work.  The church was recently remodeled and didn't require much work at all.  This was a blessing.... But the family life center was a different story.  It is your classic family life center metal building.  Nothing pretty or elegant about it.  So we started off by hanging a chandelier from the ceiling.  Rod and I went up there on Monday night, by ourselves, and tried to get it hung.  It wasn't pretty, but it was hanging from the ceiling.  There were lots of laughs as he and I used teamwork to get the extension cord over to the wall to be plugged in.

In the meantime, Laine was working at her house on the backdrop for the photo booth.  Not saying Tori was optimistic on how much ribbon she bought... but I might have had to buy twice as much on amazon and have it delivered to Laine.  The end result sure is pretty!

The next day, I called in reinforcements.  One of my dearest friends, Bobbie, came to help.  She and I found a taller ladder and started to work...redoing what Rod and I had done the night before.  We got the chandelier cord hidden better and started hanging the 20 rolls of tulle across the ceiling.

Next came moving the pews and tables around.  This required Tina to call in her "muscles"... Peter came up to help move these heavy pews to the back.  Mom and Tori worked moving the chairs, the lattice and cleanup. Laine was helping to string lights along the top of the lattice and add bows.  Rod was around to bring us lunch.  He even said "I like these wedding projects, I never get to be the "go-for"... 

By Tuesday night we were starting to feel really good at how it was looking. 

Thursday brought the flower delivery.  We were still working in the family life center on the table clothes (they were sewed by my Aunt Sandra and needed to be ironed).  The family life center was fairly hot.  So, Laine took the flowers to the basement of the church...and for 2 days she didn't hardly come up for air.  She had to make 30 vases with flowers and then all the corsages, bouquets, and boutonnieres.  They were all beautiful! 

Friday night brought the wedding rehearsal (which was chaotic).  I don't know how I would get through life if I didn't have amazing friends.  Pam showed up on Friday to help with all the cooking that I was doing and to be the coordinator for the wedding.  She was flying by the seat of her pants on Friday night (having only been giving Tori's timeline 2 minutes before we started).  But in the end everything was done and we were ready for Saturday morning.

Saturday morning started with my Dad going to get 375 donuts!  Rod going to pickup 100 balloons, and crazy busy morning.  I got up at 4:30 to cook sausage rolls and get all the food to the church.  Just a few more hours and it would be wedding time.  I didn't know how it would all go, but I knew the crazy week was about to be over and Tori was becoming Mrs. King.  My last task before getting ready for the wedding was the cake... a little pressure to arrange the donuts into a cake on my first try just 1 1/2 hours before the start of the wedding... but I think it turned out just fine and tasted so very yummy!

Hardwood floors

The week before the wedding sounds like a GREAT time for Tori and Matt to have their floors refinished.  After looking around there were 3 criteria that needed to be met.

#1 Cost
#2 Experience
#3 Could do it the week of the wedding

When she found a man that hit all three criteria it was a bingo!  So the week of the wedding he came in and sanded and sealed all the hardwood floors.  Tori wanted them stained dark, but because of the red pine upstairs, he told her the stain would not cover the red.  In the end, she left them natural.  The end result is very beautiful for floors that are over 70 years old.

Drywall is going up!

Matt's uncle does drywall for a living.  He agreed to hang and finish all the drywall for a good price.  Tori and Matt just had to buy all of the supplies.  So this was the start of two hard weeks work for both of them.  They both have full time jobs and would come work afterwards in the evenings for several hours.  However, in the span of less than 2 weeks, all the house has drywall now!  It feels so good to be in there and have real walls again.  It feels like we have turned a corner and are one the downhill run now that we are putting back rather than ripping out!

Union Graduation

August 2013 - Just barely less than 3 years ago - this was a stressful time.  We were dropping Tori off at college for the first time and she was sick.  We didn't know what was wrong and it took several trips to Jackson to go to a few doctors.  The diagnosis was mono.  She never missed a SINGLE Class.  This was to foreshadow her college career.  No matter what the obstacle, she faced it head on and full steam ahead.

Three years later, we are the proud parents of a double major - graduating summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA.  The academic medal (highest GPA) in Teaching and Leaning and a 2nd major in Interdisciplinary Studies. All of this accomplished in 3 short years.

We are grateful for her time at Union University where she felt embraced by her professors, met great friends, enjoyed the christian atmosphere, and is prepared to teach the next generation.

Tori is now licensed to teach K-8 in any core subject. Her current aspirations are to teach in a school that is both high needs and serves a low socioeconomic population.  She wants to work in a school where these kids need a strong, loving, and passionate role model. Yeah, I can't say it enough...I'm proud.

ER Visit

The problem with going to the ER is that the other person has the bragging rights of "at least I wasn't the last in the ER".... Rod has held the ER visit award for a while until the night of May 10th.  We had been at Tori's house working.  It was getting late (around 9pm) and a storm was coming.  After getting home, we were hurrying to get all the animals fed and looking for one of the ducks.  Rod had fed the pigs and I was walking back over to to help him.  When I got there, Henry was taking off for Dolly's food.  I went to run after him to tell him to stop and tripped.  I went down hard on one of the river rocks that we use as stepping stones.  My first thought was I had hit and scraped my face.  It was swelling immediately and was hurting.  After Rod helped me get to my feet and into the house, we realized there was blood on my pants.  That is when we looked and realized that an ER visit is in order.. Anytime you can see the bone...yep, you need the ER.

We loaded up and headed to Skyline.  During the X-ray I told the technician that even if it was broken - just lie to me... the wedding is in 2 weeks and I did not have time for this crap.  Luckily it wasn't broken and I just needed 8 stitches.

For those that know Rod's story during Tina delivery - (yes this is the story where he faints)... he managed to watch them wash the wound and stitch it!  Around 2:30 am, I was stitched up and headed home.

The days following the fall were somewhat hard.  I started running a fever within about 18 hours.  My knee was very hot to the touch (about 10 degrees hotter than my right knee) and was very tender.  We went back to the doctor and he worried about an infection in the bone.  He was threatening to do a debridement if my fever didn't get under control.  After changing to a stronger antibiotic and two more days, my fever broke and I was on the mend!

WARNING - Below are the pictures of the wound.  If you don't want to see, scroll real fast now!

Sycamore Academic Awards

Academic awards are something that I have been used to my kids always earning.  This year was no different, awards time came around and Tina's name was called.  I am proud of the awards that they earn, but I am more proud of the fact that she has the ability to "coast" through but instead she still applies herself to do her best.  With a 99 average in all her classes combined, I would say she is doing good.  I was proud of her for earning the academic award in Animal Science III/IV, Chemistry, and Spanish II.

Drywall

Drywall is some heavy stuff- even if it is labeled "lite"... The drywall was delivered to Tori and Matt's house on 5/6/16.  It was 70 boards that 4X12 foot boards  and 37 4X8 boards.  The 12" weighed 60 pounds a piece and the 8 weighed 40 pounds.  Keep you calculator put up, I'm going to do the calculation for you - that is 5,680 pounds of drywall.... Yep, all this had to be carried into the house.

Matt and Rod headed over there in the afternoon and started carrying them in.  My Dad didn't want to be left out of the fun so he had to come help.

Going up the steps was not easy.

Taking a break and stretching out their back.

Union Awards

Friday morning had us getting up early and heading to Union. Tori had been notified that she was getting an awards on Senior awards day.  We didn't know what the award was until we got there.  Very proud of her for bringing home the academic medal (that she gets to wear at graduation ) for the highest grade point average in her major.  She is graduating college in 3 years with a 4.0 GPA.  She has worked hard and is very deserving of her award.

While at Union, they were handing out the printed edition of their magazine.  We knew that there was an article about Tori and her Spanish ministry in the magazine.  I was very proud to read about her servants heart in serving this under served Spanish prisons. If you have 2 minutes, click on the link.  It is a quick read. http://www.cardinalandcream.info/2016/found-in-translation-letter-ministry-reaches-out-to-prisoners/

FFA Banquet

FFA has been very special to Tina.  She loves the organization, but she especially loves the adviser.  Mr. Silvey has been a big part of her high school career and has been a stable force for 1st period for three years in a row.  This year as the President of the Sycamore Chapter, Tina has worked hard to help make the club the best it could be.  At the awards banquet this year, her and Peyton spent a lot of time setting up and making it a success.  Tina got both outstanding Junior plaque and the Leadership Award.  Proud of how hard she has worked for this club.  She will miss both FFA and Mr. Silvey next year!!!