This has become a great tradition now that we all have kids. Even our neighbor joined in on the fun. I truly enjoy just getting some time to hang out with them and teach the young ones how to carve up a pumpkin.

Sunday we decided to skip church since my mom was willing to watch the kids and allow me and the wife to have a date afternoon. It was a great time. Me and Jess never get to spend time away from the kids and although we love them to peices, having a moment to sit and enjoy a meal with your partner in life is a precious thing. However, you’ll probably laugh, we took our date at Chili’s and then went to Sam’s club to do the weeks grocery shopping

Enjoy the photos.

Over the past two years that we have owned this house we have done a lot to it. Even before we actually closed on the house we had to paint all the baseboards to comply with the type of loan we received. So far we have totally renovated the downstairs bathroom, and laundry room. Those were some tough but fun jobs. We have also upgraded several rooms with new lights, hardware, etc. in order to make the house look like we wanted it to. So this past week my wife commissioned her father George (aka the fixer) to come down and paint two rooms. My wife was very excited, as normally we have always picked paint from the $2 mismatch paint if it was close enough to the color we wanted but this time we bought top dollar high definition paint that was the exact colors she and I wanted.

The downstairs living room was to be painted about 3’ up the wall with a red merlot color and we will add chair-railing towards the end of this week in order make it look like wainscoting. I was at work while the painting was going on and I got a frantic call from Jess saying that while the paint looked fabulous the couch that we have had for more than three years looked horrendous together. She promptly told me that I will be needing a new couch and that she already had the perfect one picked out… Funny how that happened huh? I informed her that it would cost less to repaint the room than to replace the couch, she did not like that. But in the end once the paint dried she was satisfied to keep the couch in place for a while.

The second room to be painted was the upstairs. We picked up a card from the Eddie Bower collection at Lowes that had the exact bedroom we wanted so we got all of our colors from that. A dark blue wall color and khaki trim. The wall color is on and I must say it looks great. I can’t wait until next week when we paint the trim.

Next up is mounting our new 32″ LCD to the wall and sharing an exciting story about my new 40″ LED LCD computer monitor.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

Today was a great Friday. This morning I went to work and had Panera Bagels waiting for me. I love the way Cinnamon Raisin bagels smell, there is always something special about that smell that reminds me of my grandmother. Anyway after that I did some work and before lunch our shipping guy came in and told me that I was not supposed to bring pets into work and that I needed to go pick up my snapping turtle from outside I thought he was just being silly but decided to go and check it out, boy am I glad I did…

Link To Photo Gallery
Check out the tail on that thing it looks like a dragon tail. Anyway I snapped a picture with my iPhone and sent an email out to the whole building to tell them to be careful not to disturb the turtle and to watch out for him as they drove past in the afternoon. Well that got everybody out of their seats and made them come down to see it for themselves. So many people came that facilities thought it best to put him back near the pond. It was a fun break away from work and got everybody talking about it.

Anyway then we headed of to La-Hacienda and had some great Mexican food. I always love to go “Suck Cheese” with my amigos from work. So anyway some more work and then off to the house. I bought Daniel two new Koi fish to put in his tank as his last fish had bit the dust over a week ago. He was super-excited to see me home and even more excited when I told him that today was the start of the weekend. He currently only associates the word weekend with Daddy being home for two days. So I setup the fish and then went outside to grill up some tenderloin as Maw-Maw, Paw-paw, and the girls were coming down to spend the weekend. About half way through the Grilling I notice that we had run out of propane for the grill (go figure). So I packed up Daniel and the propane tank and headed to our local gas station to get it exchanged. Daniel was super grubby from playing in the gravel in my carport but I didn’t think anything about it as we where just heading out for a minute.

On the way to the gas station I got in-behind the very nice looking older car and noticed it was going to the gas station as well. I knew the driver as he lives up the street and thought nothing more of it until I got to town…

As you can see we where very surprised that there was a car show going on… there is always something happening in Madison during the summer. So me and Daniel took a little detour and looked at all the cars. All of the owners were super nice and one even let Daniel drive their car. Take a look at all the great cars they had. If you’d like to see them in person you’ll have to wait until the second Friday of next month.

Link to Photo Gallery

After the show we went back home grilled up the tenderloin and enjoyed the evening with the family.
One more thing I’d like add is that finally the old truck is gone! I sold that thing about 3-4 months ago and the new owner had never picked it up… What a perfect ending to the day.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

Hi All,

I know it’s been awhile but we sure have been busy around here. I have been hard at work securing websites for my side business as well as maintaining my current websites and of course the most important one rfmd.com So far I have several new sites mediabrewer.com, The Neal Tractor Museum, Frye Heating and Air, and Paul Milam. They are all in different stages of completion like mediabrewer is up but not with the right theme, the tractor museum is in design, as well as Frye heating and air, and Paul’s site will be managed by me with a third party doing the actual development. So this is an exciting time to see if I can really handle doing all of this without letting my home-life or my work slip. So far I have been able to handle it all but it does cause me to be very busy so well see.

Jess has been hard at work trying to get into the groove of now having two babies to care for. We recently had to switch formula from one labeled advanced to one labeled good start because baby Same has been very fussy and gassy. We also switched bottles so that we where sure to knock it out. He seems to be doing much better now. Daniel is taking to the new addition very well. There are times that he requires one of us while we are trying to take care of Sam but for the most part it all seems to click together. At least he hasn’t asked us to send him back .

So about this weekend we started off visiting my mom’s (me-maw) so that she could get her baby fix and then set off early Saturday for a trip to the mountains. This is the first LONG trip we have decided to undertake after having baby Sam. Steve one of his paw-paws or his great grandmother (Maw-Ri) had never seen him before so we hoped to have him all dressed up for the occasion. When Daniel this would not have been possible as he used to get very car sick on long trips. I must say the trip went very well. He was fussy sometimes but for the most part he just hung out and looked out the window. We found an awesome yard sale along the way and got a pack and play as well as a mirror for my car that mounts on the headrest all for under $10. We then visited with Steve and his Maw-Ri for awhile Daniel amused himself there by throwing bottles around and they never looked happier to see a new baby. We then visited Steve’s brother as they had just bought a house. We then took a beautiful trip through Floyd and then went to maw-maw and paw-paw’s for a visit and to relax a bit before the hour and half drive home. Daniel and the girls played really hard and Sam kept Jess and maw-maw very busy. She will surely blog about this trip as well on merryheartcrafts.com so there will be some really cute pictures on there. We had a lovely outdoor meal. it was so nice, cool, and serene up there I didn’t want to have to come home. I also got to fix Maw-Maw’s computer so she could post to her blog. We stayed as long as we could before driving home and the drive home was very nice, Jess and I always love to be able to spend so much time together we get to catch up on each others lives without interruptions for the most part.

Today we are going to try and pick up the house from the tornado called Daniel that came through it and then rest and relax before I have to go back to work.

Hope your weekend went as well as mine.
David Bates

Update: Maw-Maw must be slacking as I got this post up before she could… and she said I never updated my blog

Heres to a bright future and much daddy play time
David Bates

We then went to get strawberries, a new tank for the grill, and some hamburgers. We all eat and played until about 1pm when the mountain folk had to go. Daniel was very sad afterword… Until we informed him that he would be spending the rest of the afternoon playing with his cousin Zach.

We went to my Mom’s where I had a ton of son duties to perform as Jess, my mom, and sister prepaired the house for her baby shower next weekend. We all had a great time and the boys got super nasty playing in the sand. We had steaks and salad followed by icecream. It was an awesome Saturday.

Thanks for reading
David Bates

Stolen from Donna

Thanks for reading
David Bates

Once he saw the Doctor the theories began to fly… Pink eye, dust, chemical reaction from shampoo, and many more. Finally after two doctors we were told that it probably wasn’t pink eye and that it could be a scratch on his eye so they would prescribe antibiotic drops. So me and Daniel go home and Jess goes to CVS to get the drops. Let me just say that whatever drops they are they where like wonder drops. Daniel instantly started to feel better.

Upon a closer inspection from the Hawk (Jess) we saw the scratch on his eye. He is doing much better now with his eye… it is no longer red and he doesn’t try to hold it closed anymore.
I hate that the little guy had to go through that, but I am also glad that there was no permanent damage.

Thanks for Reading
David Bates