The Johnston Family

Sunday, September 28, 2008

We're Expecting!!!

For those of you who don't already know, Tim and I are expecting our first little one in May. Thursday was my second trip to the doctor and our first ultrasound. We got to see the heart beat, which was really awsome. It is so weird to have something alive inside of me and not be able to actually feel it yet. With that being said though, I definitely feel the waves of nausea the baby sends to my tummy. As of right now, I am eight weeks and am due on May 10, which is Mother's Day. Although this ultrasound picture just looks like a blob, on the actual ultrasound machine, things were way more defined and actually looked like a mini human. Enjoy!

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Jack Daniels anyone?

For Labor Day weekend, Tim and I drove down to Huntsville, Alabama to visit our friends Dani, Mike and their daughter Kyleigh. On the way there Friday night, Tim saw the sign for the Jack Daniels distillery and insisted we stop on our way home. So, we left Monday morning and headed straight to the distillery, which I must say was pretty darn neat.

Mike and Tim leaning on the charcoal tanks.

These are the oak barrels they char and then put the whiskey in to soak up the oak flavor. The whiskey actually gets it's color from the oak and char in the barrels.

A really neat display of single barrel Jack Daniels. You can actually purchase a whole barrel of single barrel whiskey from the distillery for a small fortune, but you get 420 bottles of the whiskey all from the same barrel, in addition, you get to keep the barrel.

Mikey in heaven...also known as being next to all the barrels loaded full of Jack Daniels.

Tim and I in front of the distillery.

This is the cave where the spring water that is used in Jack Daniels comes from. Apparently they only use water out of this spring because it is the best quality for the whiskey. Interesting fact to know is that the county where the distillery is located happens to be a dry county, however, they have managed to make it legal to make whiskey, you just can't buy it there.

Tim and I with the statue of Jack Daniels. He was only 5'2"...the same height as me.

Fermentation tanks.

The mash inside of the fermentation tanks. I really wanted to stick my hand in there to feel what it felt like, but I controlled myself.

This is the charcoal tanks. After fermentation, all the whiskey goes through the charcoal. Each time the whiskey runs through this, it is called mellowing. For those of you Jack Daniels fans, Gentleman Jack differs from the old No. 7 in that it is double mellowed.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Cardinals Baseball

Last night Tim and I went to the St. Louis Cardinals game with Rob, Monica, and Alex, who are some of our new friends here. Rob works with Tim. Anyways, we enjoyed watching the Cardinals cream the Atlanta Braves something like 17-1. We also discovered that Tim had never had cotton candy before!!! Monica bought some and Tim wasn't quite sure what to make of it, so we made him try it. Needless to say, he is hooked. Some of the pictures came out a little blurry. For some reason all the humidity in the air was fogging up my lens on my camera.

Tim, me, Monica, Alex, and Rob

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

A New Job!!!

As many of you know, I have been searching for a job lately. I have been going a little batty being at home all the time, so my plan to take a few months off only lasted a week tops. Any how, after a few job interviews and then a working interview on Monday, I was offered a part-time position with a great office only 12 minutes from our house. I start on Tuesday and am very excited because this office is running all the fancy stuff that I used in school and is completely paperless! I hate writing in chart, I type much faster. :)
-Jami

Monday, August 18, 2008

Congrats Timmy!!!

Tim finished up the last of his coursework for his MBA from Norwich University yesterday. We are both very excited, although, I am not quite sure it has sunk in for him yet, that he has no more assignments due. He actually got his last assignment done earlier in the week, but it was a group assignment, so he had to okay the paper before it was submitted last night. So, basically, this was his first weekend where he didn't have to do school work all weekend. I took full advantage of this and had him help me with cleaning this too big of house. He also enjoyed going to the driving range to hit some golf balls, and watching the Olympics.

On another note, we finally have grass! The sod guys showed up bright and early on Thursday and by night time, we had a yard. Now it is a never ending deal of watering. You have to water each spot for 3o minutes twice a day. Needless to say, we don't have a sprinkler system, so that thirty minutes turns into two hours twice a day by the time the sprinkler is moved around to the various parts of the yard. I have taken on the task of being the water girl, due to the fact that Tim just sinks into the sod and messes it up when he tries to bring the sprinkler out there. Although, each day it is looking more and more like real grass, so hopefully my watering can slow down soon!

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Softball

We are finally settling into life here in Missouri. We closed on the house July 31, and promptly had the movers here on August 1 delivering all of our stuff. Luckily we aren't missing anything, but we did have a few things damaged. Nothing too major though. Tim is one group assignment away from having is MBA!!! Yeah!!!! I have been going on interviews for jobs. I am going nuts sitting around here all the time. I managed to get through all the boxes, along with be home for all the random service people that have had to come over to connect stuff here and there. Now we just have some organized chaos around the house, and are awaiting our blinds to get here so we don't just have open windows all the time. Tim also started an adult co-ed softball league last night with some people he works with. Last night was their first game, which they won by the ten run rule.