Hey Now!
What a week it has been - and boy am I thankful for the Christmas holiday and the time I have off this and next week!!!
So here's my story.
Sunday morning, I take a 36 hour run to Chicago, IL. I get back 9ish Monday night.
Tuesday morning they have me scheduled out at 8am for Baton Rouge, LA. Cool.
Get to the bakery and the guy I'm running with wants to drive all the way down, we unload, and I drive all the way back. Fine, it's only 500, or so, miles. No big deal.
So we get to Baton Rouge about 4p and I'm hearing every time he hits his brakes, a serious air leak. Turns out, on the interstate, he was following a doublewide being transported. Well that doublewide blew two tires and rubber was flying everywhere. It just so happened that one chunk flew under out trailer and broke an air hose to one of the brakes. So everytime he stepped on the brake, pffhhhhhssssssssssttttttttt!
Once we got to the warehouse, the first thing we did was call the shop back at the bakery to get us someone to come out and fix it while we were working. They did, and called back to let us know they'd be out soon. So the towing company calls and my co-driver tells them we'll be working here for 4 hours just to make it in that time. Mistake!!! They didn't end up showing up until 10:40p. Of course it only took 10 minutes to replace the broken airline, but meanwhile we sat for 2 1/2 hours waiting. I of course saw no need to just sit and wait, so I climbed in the bunk and slept.
We finally got to the 2nd drop, emptied out and I started driving us home a midnight. At 3am I crossed the state line from LA into MS and had to pull into the weight station. I got the green light and as I worked my way up through the gears heading down the on ramp, I hear this extremely loud 'Pop' under the hood. Well, that got my adrenline a pumpin. The by product of this pop was that I had no power. The truck wouldn't go more than 45 miles per hour.
I pulled over at the next off ramp and looked under the hood for problems. None to be seen. So again I called the shop at the bakery to let them know of the problems. I found a truck stop at exit 15 and pulled in and shut it down. This truck stop was also 'shut down.' Nothing open. So the bakery calls back telling me they're trying get in touch with the Supervisor at our Pervis, MS outstation to get them to bring us a tractor. I figured it was going to be a while, so I climb into the bunk to snooze. They call back at 7:20a to say a replacement tractor is on the way and after it's delivered, we need to hang out with the broken down tractor until the tow truck picks it up.
All right. At 9a, the replacement tractor shows up. We talk with the guys for a few minutes, then they take off. We swap tractors, and the gear inside, then settled down to wait for the tow truck. It was supposed to be there by 10:30a. That time came and went, 11:30 came and still no tow truck. I call the bakery, "Where's the tow truck?" They call the towing company, um He had and emergency run for the police and is leaving to get our tractor right now. Should be 40 min. An hour goes by, I call again - still no tow truck. They call - Oh he's getting close - should be there soon. We wait 40 minutes, still no tow truck. Another call, and then another call. The tow truck didn't get there until 1:30p. We sat there for 14 1/2 hours. Over all we got close to 17 hours of delay time on this trip for the 2 breakdowns.
Aarrrgh. What an annoying trip!
I am thankful to be home for the holidays!!!
Merry Christmas you all!!!
Wednesday we had a snow here in TN. Our first of the season. Of course we had to get out in it and have some fun.
Here's the little 'creators' making a snow man.
What a cute little guy, and wearing a Denver Broncos hat in TN, what a snowman!
Here's an artsy fartsy pic of one of our deck posts for my brother in law! :)
We've got ourselves a ferocious little beast! One evening this week, I was playing with Mocha on our bed and Doreen snapped a few photos of our little cutie! Enjoy!
So Joelle's hair has been a 'sticking up' point lately. We have her comb it, etc and it never would lay down right. Eventually we had to do something about it! So Doreen looked around and found a haircut that would accent her face.
She really loves it and we do too! What a precious little girl!!!
Friday we got our new family member. Mocha, 5 1/2 weeks old, came home! 
The mother was a mixture of Jack Russel and Beagle and the dad was Heinz 57. So she is a pure mutt, but precious! Very, VERY precious!
She loves to cuddle with us and more importantly loves ALL of us as a family! Awsome!!!! Look for more pics of our expanded family later! :)
I love it when we get things accomplished around the house. Of course, sometimes the hardest thing is to either find the time or the energy (And the money) to do all the projects we have to do. I remember our first place in S. Illinois - we had a whiteboard on the wall in the laundry room with a list of everything we needed to do around the house. It seemed like everytime we got it whittled down - we'd start adding to it again.
Well, we've been getting things done around this house and yet the list still grows! :) When we moved in, we stuffed things into the hall closets. Lately it's been bugging me. So we took everything out of the two closets, whittled down what we don't need, or use, then added more shelves and put everything back and it is SOOOO much better! 
As we've done some projects around the house, I've occassionally had to cut/trim/paint/stain stuff in the garage and I don't have a workbench out there with it being a one car garage. We do have a little space at the back, but that is used up with storage. So what to do? Yesterday, Doreen and I built a fold away work bench.
It's actually pretty cool. It's up out of the way for us to park the car in the garage, and then when we need to get some things done, out goes the car, down goes the workbench and off we go!
Geocaching.com has these things called Travel Bugs. They're basically Dog Tags with a tracking number that as the Travel Bug (TB) is moved from cache to cache one can keep up with its travels.
GC.com has come up with a promotion for the United Nations cause against Diabetes. They're sending out all these TB's to encourage people to learn about diabetes.
My brother-in-law, Scott and I got a couple of these TBs.
The plan is for him to start on in Colorado, and I'm going to start one in Tennessee. We'll see which one gets to the others home first. 
It's 1552 miles from TN to Colorado. Driving it would take around 24 hours.
I guess we'll see how long it takes for these TB's to make it - that is if they don't get ripped off, lost or misplaced.
So keep an eye on these Travel Bugs, see where they travel and which one arrives first. 
The search is over. We've finally found our newest family memeber. She is still too young to leave where she currently lives, but by the end of Jan, 1st of Feb we'll have a new addition to the Pester Family!
After Geocaching since 2004, we finally put out 4 hides. I've been wanting too for a very, VERY long time, just haven't ever gotten 'around to it.' I've had the containers and the the SWAG to in the containers and stuff, just haven't ever done it.
#3 GeoTrucker - Fast Travel
Last week Natalie had her 4 year old well child check. She's growing 'on schedule.' Like a little weed! Anyway, at the same visit we had the doctor look at what turned out to be a bad sinus infection she had.
My last couple of trips out it has worked out that I've been doing most of the driving in the middle of the night. Of course the toughest time for me is between 3:30a and sunrise. That's always brutal. Sometimes I get so sleepy. However, chewing ice, gum drinking coffee, Vault or just listening to different stuff on my Sirius radio really helps.
It is now time to crown this years champion of the Nelson/Pester Annual Pigskin Pick'em family challenge.
The Nelson/Pester Pigskin Pick'em Family challenge winner is, Tim. Tim, we salute you. "Salute." Be a good champion! Enjoy your reign! Bask in the glow of knowing you outpicked the rest of us. Then know we will ALL be after you next year!!! :)
2007 has had a sad beginning for the Denver Broncos!
For starters, they could have been in this years playoffs. All they had to win was one game against the San Francisco 49ers, a team with a sad losing record. They didn't, they lost and lost bad. So the season is suddenly over. Boooo hooo hoooooooo!
Secondly, and even sadder, one of the bright stars of the Denver Broncos Defense, Darrent Williams was shot and killed in a drive by shooting. How sad is that. This young man was 24 and a rising star in the NFL. 
His life and career has been brought to a screeching halt by some thugs who think they're big men. Unfortunatly this is an awful indictment of today's society!
This pose was actually 100% Joelle's idea! CUTE!!!
We recently hit a big milestone in our hobby of Geocaching and I'm extremely suprised that I neglected to mention it at all on my site here. Shame on me. Wonder what else I am failing to post about?? Probably quite a bit because I don't have the time or the access as I once had to update on a regular basis.
Today, we just found our 1st "First to Find." Basically that means that someone hid a geocache, published it on the the geocaching.com website and we were the first to go find it! Sweeeeet!
We finally were able to get our Christmas stuff put up this week. We were gone for Thanksgiving, which is typically when we put up our holiday stuff. So - when my trips for work finally finished for the week, we had Thursday afternoon to put up our Christmast stuff. Of course the girls HAD to put on the Santa hats we have. It was so VERY cute that I had to snap a quick photo of my little elves! What precious cuties!!!
I've always wanted a 'Denver Bronco' room - and NOW, now I have it.
We've been working on painting it and getting stuff - read "JUNK" - cleaned out of it and getting it fixed up to be the ultimate 'Pester's' Bronco room.
Today we put most of the final touches on it by hanging my Bronco memorabilia, putting up a curtain (Which is Bronco Navy Blue) over the closet and hanging a new window shade, which is also Bronco Navy Blue. 
We've still got a few small things to finish and stuff, but for the most-part it is all done and just very, VERY cool!
