What We've Been Up To

I'm sure everyone is wondering what happened with the Cold Tuesday Morning. Its riveting, I know... Our last entry was posted on Christmas Eve. I really don't like that its been over 3 months since we've written anything, but it couldn't have been helped. Since then, we've experienced several changes and we've spent the past few weeks adjusting to these changes. Lets just start from the beginning.

1. I got a new job working at the University of Memphis. I am an Occupational Safety Coordinator and I started the beginning of January. Many people are very confused about what I actually do as an Environmental Health and Safety employee, and I'm not going to go into a long tangent in this post, but basically EHS people work for your company (in my case the university) for two basic reasons. The first is to keep all employees as safe as possible by eliminating hazards that could cause injuries or illnesses. The second is the save the company money through lower workers compensation costs AND avoiding OSHA fines. As I'm writing this, I've come to the realization that I'm going to write an more in-detail post explaining things an EHS person might do at work. 

2. Because of the new job, we moved closer to UofM, obviously. We found a perfect townhouse that has a wood-burning fireplace, huge bedrooms, and plenty of room for Koba and Yuki to chase each other around. And, its an easy commute to work. Although we have visited Memphis often, moving here has been different, to say the least, moving from a fairly rural area to the 23rd largest city in the United States! We've enjoyed trying new restaurants, doing Memphis things, and meeting new people at church and work.

3. Nathan and my dad went the the NHL All-Star skills competition and game on January 30-31. This weekend had been building up for almost a year since Nashville won the bid on the NHL All-Star festivities. When this season started, we decided to go in with my parents and buy half-season tickets to qualify to buy All-Star tickets. Well, basically we only got to use half of our game tickets before we moved and had to sell the rest, but we made the trip back to my parents house to enjoy a hockey-filled weekend. Nathan and dad loved getting to experience such as once-in-a-lifetime event (for Nashville) and my mom and I enjoyed watching it live on TV also.

4. Yuki turned 1. She's just so darn cute, still. Yuki Koehler was born on February 12, 2015. She enjoys eating, playing with Koba, getting belly rubs, and howling at the moon (literally, she howls like a little dog). Happy Birthday Yuki!

5. Nathan passed the CCNA test, so he is now a Cisco Certified Network Associate. Yay! This is us celebrating:

6. We celebrated Resurrection Sunday. It was a beautiful day to celebrate Jesus rising from the dead! We enjoyed the weekend with Nathan's parents and an Easter lunch complete with steak and pecan pie. Oh. Also, I joined the choir at church, so it was pretty exciting to get to perform during the celebration service.

As far as the next post on Cold Tuesday Morning goes.... I'm not sure when that will happen. We are going to try and post something at least once a month, but it isn't going to be near the amount of content as it was before we moved.

This Christmas!

As you know, we created a 2015 Christmas Bucket List. Well, there's only a few days left before Christmas, so I figured that I would post an update before this get super hectic. Here's a link to our Christmas Bucket List.

Kiss Under the Mistletoe. I'm so happy and blessed to have Nathan to spend my Christmases with. 

Look at the Lights at the Opryland Hotel. I have been to the Opryland Hotel before, and have even been there around Christmas (The first time I'd been there at all was with Nathan, if you can believe that), but I'd never walked around and looked at the outside lights. This year, we wanted to do this together.

Make Christmas Candy. Last year, I made Christmas cookies and candy for our Christmas Party, but this year, when we realized we were not going to be able to host a Christmas Party, I just decided to randomly make the goodies. 

Go See the Dancing Lights. Last year, we discovered the Dancing Lights of Christmas at Jellystone Park in Nashville. The ad recommends bringing your pets, so last year, we brought Koba, and he actually seemed to like it. This year, we were brave and brought both Koba and Yuki. Well, they really enjoyed the light show put to music by staring at the car floor the entire time....

Sleep Under the Tree.... Well, we never slept under the Christmas Tree. Honestly, we wouldn't have fit under this year's 2-footer, but I just wanted to show a picture of our tree ;)

Have a Christmas Movie Marathon. I collect Christmas movies and so every year, I try to watch as many as I can until I get annoyed with the cheesiness. This year, I didn't get far into my marathon. We did watch a few, and we also went to see "How the Grinch Stole Christmas! The Musical." It was enjoyable.

Undocumented Items...

• Go Black Friday Shopping
• Drink Hot Chocolate

Our Christmas Bucket List Failures....

• Watch a Christmas Parade
• Host a Christmas Party
• Sleep Under the Tree

More Mistletoe Photos

Merry Christmas!

Labor Day Weekend as told by Selfies

Saturday Night: Pentatonix Concert. In June, we bought tickets to go see PTX at Bridgestone Arena, and the concert day finally arrived! I had seen them in concert 2 years ago when my parents came to visit me during my internship in Maryland. The venue in Maryland was much smaller, so it was a different concert with a different sound, but the concert this weekend had a much higher energy. 

Also, the PTX's song library has definitely grown, so they had more songs to choose from at this concert. It was a great night and an awesome concert!!

Sunday: Relaxing at the lake. My family was camping all weekend at Bumpus Mills campground on Lake Barkley, so we decided to drive up for a few hours and relax with them. We decided to decline actual camping this year after last year's Nathan-being-miserable and me-getting-food-poisoning fiasco. 

Anyway, the main events at the campground on Sunday included riding around on the boat for a bit, eating grilled chicken legs, and me starting a fire with flint! I had a good time, and Nathan didn't die from being outside (although he insists he was close), so it was a successful day.

Sunday Night: Mission Impossible-Rogue Nation. Last week, we worked our way through watching the first 4 Mission Impossible movies and capped the marathon by going to Bowling Green to watch the newest installment, Mission Impossible-Rogue Nation. We both liked the movie a lot, and I would recommend people to go see it.

Since all of the movies are fresh on my mind, I will now rate them all based on how much I liked them. Warning: Spoilers for the first 4.

1. Mission Impossible. You literally don't figure out who the bad guy is until the very end! If this wasn't the first movie, I might not rate it number 1.
2. Mission Impossible-Rogue Nation
3. Mission Impossible III. I liked this one because he actually had a more of a motivation to complete the mission, since his wife was abducted.
4. Mission Impossible-Ghost Protocol. This one is good. I liked the high intensity scene when Ethan is climbing the building and his suction gloves stop working and the scene after that.
5. Mission Impossible II. This was the only one that I really didn't like. I have no idea why, I just didn't like it. Maybe its because there were too many instances with face-pulls.

One thing to note with Mission Impossible-Rogue Nation is that Ethan Hunt is looking pretty old...

Monday: The Historic Railpark Train Museum. Even thought we and Nathan's parents have been talking about going to the Train Museum in Bowling Green for months, Monday's events were an impromptu adventure! We loved the history and interesting aspects of going through actual train carts (even though it can easily induce claustrophobia!) and the neat intricacies of the huge model train setup. 

We spent quite a bit of time learning about how the railroad system influenced so much of American and Bowling Green history. Afterwards, of course, we got ice cream.

It was a good weekend!

Double Dose Date Night

While I was searching for fun things to do on 4th of July weekend, I stumbled upon the USA v. Guatemala Men's Soccer Game. Now, I don't claim to be a soccer guru or fanatic, but hey if our Nation's soccer team is playing in Nashville the day before Independence Day, then you-bet-ya I want to go!

And so we went! It was really exciting to go to our first soccer game, and also to witness so many people's passion for soccer and team USA. Although I was a bit nervous about the predicted weather forecast, the clouds held the rain until after the game. USA won the game 4-0! As an added bonus, I could actually follow the ball (which is more than I can say for hockey) and I actually saw a goal without watching the replay!

Weird Al has been providing fun songs for me to listen to for longer than I've been alive, so getting to go see him live seemed like fun! Al put on a very good show, and I have to say that I'm impressed with his musicianship, as well as his band's. He played a hodgepodge of his greatest hits, including one of my favorites, White and Nerdy, and even rode out on a Segway which is mentioned in his lyrics. 

From Left to Right, Top to Bottom: "Lame Claim to Fame," "The Saga Begins," "Eat It," "Amish Paradise," & "Now That's What I Call Polka!"

Brown Paper Packages #8

BUSY BUSY BUSY! Its that time of year where winter has faded and all of the fun stuff starts happening! 

Cherry Blossom Festival - We got to celebrate Melanie's Birthday at the Cherry Blossom Festival (click here to learn more). It was a REALLY nice day and good company, which made for this lovely picture. 

After we left the festival, we went to the Cheesecake Factory. There, we had our very own body guard. Seriously, he stood there exactly like that for a minute straight.... It was weird, so I snuck a picture.

5K - This is our 3rd year to do the Russellville Book it 4 your Library race as a family. This year, we all just walked.

But we still ALL got medals. BOO YA, slower walkers and non-participants!!!!! Not Pictured: Nathan, 20-29 Male Bronze Winner.

Something Blue Bridal Shower - It was great, even though it stormed pretty bad that day. My aunt Melissa is awesome, by the way! Click here to read a full blog post about it.

Predators vs. Black Hawks Game 5 - Our readers may or may not know that the 2015 Stanley Cup Playoffs are currently happening. If you've ever spoken a word to Nathan, you probably know! Click here to read Nathan's analyses of all of the first round matchups. Anyway, my parents, Nathan, and I decided to go to game 5 of the round 1 for the Preds. To be quite honest, I was not really looking forward to it.... please continue reading...

THE GAME WAS AWESOME! Probably the most fun game I've ever been to! Here are the highlights (in order).

1. The game was sold out, so it was a great and very spirited atmosphere.
2. The intermission entertainment was Phil Vassar. Usually on the intermission entertainment, you just really don't know what you're going to get.... But since he's famous, he was pretty darn good!
3. We got a free frosty! Whenever the Predators score 4 or more goals, every spectator with a ticket from the night gets a free frosty! **cue the scene from Christmas with the Kranks...."Free Frosty! Free Frosty! Free Frosty" **
4.There were several fights. I'm not talking about the players, I'm talking about the fans. In one, some girl even pulled out a knife... It was crazy!!! Nobody is saying fighting is a good thing, but it definitely was a highlight. In fact, its almost sickening of some people's response to this (preds) fan having a weapon surrounded by emotional fans, half of which are drunk. Her actions were celebrated by some simply because of a sports rivalry. This is one of the main reasons that I don't particularly like sports. People get WAY to emotionally invested into something that is LITERALLY just a game... and win or lose, there is no reason why anyone should get hurt or their safety be threatened. This happened about 10 seats away from us, in our row, so we saw the whole thing go down. I'm not going to go on and on about this, because these BPP posts are supposed to be positive. Leave a comment below about your opinions about this.
5. There was a fight on the ice. Its always kind of fun to see them fight down there, you have to admit it.
6. One of the players had a hat trick. This means that he scores 3 goals in one game. Nathan said he has been coming to hockey games for 12 years, and this is the first one he has seen! Whenever the players 3rd goal is scored, all of the fans throw their caps down onto the ice. It was pretty cool! If I had been wearing a hat, I would not have thrown it down....those can get expensive!
7. We won!! Yay! We're still in the playoffs.
8. Nathan has a Predators Twitter account where he tweets only about preds stuff. We have been managing it trying to grow it into a well-known account. Well, last night he broke several personal records:

• 91 Retweets
• 161 Favorites
• 136 Mentions or Replies to unique Tweets
• 42 New Followers

For anyone who doesn't know about twitter, these are AWESOME stats. I know its just twitter, but I am so proud of him! Its the small things, right?!

It was a great night.

Cherry Blossom Festival

This weekend, for Melanie's birthday weekend, we all met up at Nashville's Public Square to attend the Cherry Blossom Festival. This year was the 7th annual Cherry Blossom Festival. Each year the city plants 100 new Cherry Blossom trees and celebrates spring and Japanese culture with this festival.

"The Candyman." This dude was street performer who made sugar sculpture and did other Japanese culture "tricks." Nathan and Kevin were chosen to participate in parts of his act. Both were thrilled, of course.

Taiko Performance. The Taiko are large Japanese drums and other percussion instruments used to create high-energy rhythms. I really enjoyed this musical performance!

Kamakura-Nashville Partner City Band. Picture this: Elderly Japanese people dressed in cowboy hats and stirrups, singing country music. It was unique to say the least, and quite entertaining! They were great! Sadly, I did not get a picture of this.

Arts, Culture, and Marketplace. Vendors were set up all over the square giving information about Japanese culture. There were many tents where you could buy Japanese arts and crafts. It was neat! There were bonsai trees, origami, Japaneese jewelry and clothing, etc. The only thing I looked for and couldn't find was a tent where someone writes your name in Japanese. They also had a whole section called "Taste of Japan" with tons of Japanese food vendors. 

Nashville DoJo Isshinryu Karate. I honestly think this may have been an advertisement to get people to sign up for karate, but they put on little exhibition shows, which I thought were awesome!

Throughout the day, there were other events that were happening. We decided to go have lunch, so we didn't get to experience some of these neat events. Some include: other music and dance performances, Japanese culture lectures, and Sumo Wrestling (people dressed in sumo costumes, not actual Sumo wrestlers). We barely missed the Cherry Blossom Walk, which happened at 9:00 through downtown Nashville. 

It was a really fun experience, and we all had a really fun time experiencing Japanese culture and celebrating Melanie's birthday! Happy Birthday, Melanie! 

Bachelorette Party Festivities

So.... I'm not really the "lets go out to the club and dance the night away" kind of girl. I'm not really the "lets drink wine and watch chick flicks all night" kind of girl either. So what kind of girl am I?...

I'm the "lets go run around in black clothes shooting lasers at each other" kind of girl.

For my bachelorette party I wanted to do something fun where we didn't have to dress fancy and everyone could have a fun and relaxed time. Now, I'm not saying that going out on the town, or watching chick flicks all night is not fun, I'm just saying I would rather shoot my friends with lasers in the dark.

We all met in the afternoon and headed to Nashville to go to Laser Quest. Lauren, Kaitlynn, Zack and I had been there for Lauren's 21st birthday (We know how to party), so I knew it would be fun. And it was! We had to pick a code name to play, so we each picked a bird reference to celebrate my future maiden name (Birdwell). I legitimately thought I was going to walk out of there with an awesome score...

Apparently, I'm confused about how to score in laser tag, because I definitely had one of the lowest scores of all. Regardless, it was a great time and I'm glad we acted like ninjas instead of anything else we could have acted like at a bachelorette party!

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