Late night adventures with my boyfriend...

If any of you are my friends on Facebook, you have probably noticed that sometimes (ok, maybe 99% of the time), I refer to Seth as my boyfriend. I'm pretty sure some people that don't really know me think that I openly cheat on my husband but we all know that they are WRONG!

Anyway, my boyfriend and I have been on the same schedule (for once) for the past few months. He isn't working on a set schedule and I am on second shift. He waits up for me and we are both wide awake until 1:30 or 2:00ish. Since we are here together...alone...(oh, sorry), we decide to make the most of our time and go on little adventures together. Recently we have gone to Hampton (40 minutes away) to look at a house that I saw online. It is on a main road, is over 100 years old and seriously needs some TLC. The perk? It is pretty cheap and has 4 fireplaces! Anyway, we don't get up early in the morning so we didn't have time to go look before I went to work. While you can't see much at night, I figure if it looks bad in the dark, I probably wouldn't be too impresses when the sun is out.

Another night we went across the street to the cemetery. That was strictly business...a search and destroy mission. Seth and my dad mow the cemetery and they had discovered and marked 5 yellow jacket nests. We went over, at night while the little bugs are sleeping, and eliminated them. We had to take the baby though...she chased rabbits for 20 minutes. She loved it!

The night we went to Hampton, we came back through Limestone Cove and drove through our favorite little stretch of deer territory. We saw a TON of deer and the prettiest buck, still in velvet and so beautiful. Since we had such luck that night (@ 1:30 am), we decided to go back. We have been twice this week and we have seen 15 deer both nights. They are so pretty and most of them are so "used to people" that they just stare at us as we creepily drive by. Unless we stop, then they freak a little bit and get skittish.

Anyway, while our dates are not hours long and don't always involve gourmet meals (although we typically hit up the BP for a snack), we still have a good time and are so blessed to be able to spend these special times together. These are the moments that we will look back on one day when we are up at 1:30 am with a screaming baby and we might even soothe that baby by taking a midnight ride...

Fire Fire!

Monday night was one of those nights where everything just falls into place and works out a certain way.

Background: May 2002...My grandma, two aunts and cousins were in town for my sisiter's graduation. One evening a dominos game was going on and one of the houses down the road caught on fire. It ended up burning to the ground with a woman inside.

Fast Forward: Sunday night, July 2010...while playing dominos with the same people, the story of the burning house is brought up and comments are made about fires and playing dominos.

Fast Forward: Monday night, July 2010...I, Katie, am allowed to leave work early, excused, because our fire suppression system was not working correctly (it worked, just the announcement/warning to get out was broken). Since we could not be in the building (duh!), the company decides to give us the option to go home excused (no points given), unpaid (I am ok with this for 4 hours). I, of course, take the gift and go to my mom's since my whole family is there and my sister and her hubby will be leaving the next day. I surprise everyone (yay!) and we decide to play another rousing game of Mexican Train Dominos. My Aunt Patty was not feeling well so she decided not to play. We start the game at approximately 7:40 pm on the patio.

About 8:00, my Aunt Patty decides to go inside to watch TV with my Grandma, who is obviously not into Mexican Train Dominos. About 10 minutes later, we hear someone banging around in the "stove drawer". We give the "weird" glance but continue our game. About 5 minutes later, a bloodcurdling scream comes from the kitchen "KAAA-TTTHY!!!!" (For those of you that are not aware, that is my mother's name).

Well, from here all I can tell you is my side of the story. I look up and can see into the kitchen. All I see are flames and ALOT of smoke...I mean, we are talking like 50 cartons of Marlboros ALOT.
The first thing that pops into my little brain is, "Oh, there must be a fire! I should get some water to put it out." Good thinking, Kate. As everyone runs in to see what the problem is, I run over to where a 5 gallon bucket is sitting, full to the brim with water. My parents keep them for flower watering. I pick it up (adrenaline does some STRANGE things) and run into the house with it. In the process, I feel the need to tell my brother-in-law to turn on the hose (obviously, we have firefighting skills HA!)

When I get in the house, my mother is beating the burner with a tea towel trying to put out the fire. Everyone is screaming and yelling. My sister yells at me to not put water on the stove because it's an "electrical" fire. My dear husband, who many of you know, has never yelled at me EVER! We have been together 7 years and he has never YELLED at me. He is trying to get my mother's attention to ask her where the flour is. She is busy beating the burner so he finally gets her attention and YELLS, " WHERE IS THE FLOUR!!!!???" She goes about trying to get it while I reach over and turn the burner off...as if it matters at this point. She unrolls the bag of flour and starts pouring it on the burner. Can we say stinky? At this point, I have water all over myself, the kitchen floor and the living room floor. I decide to remove my bucket to the outdoors and may I just say that even though I lost about a quart of water on the way in, my bucket weighed quite a bit more on the way OUT the door. Funny how that works.

After the fire is completely out, we start the task of cleaning up. Apparently, my grandma had been looking for a pan to heat some water for her tea. Since she couldn't find the little pan my mom had laid out for her, she looks in the stove drawer for one (which we heard). She pulls out this item.

This is a plastic micro cooker...for the microwave! She fills it with water and puts it on HIGH! About 3 minutes later, this terrible scent goes rolling into the living room where my aunt just happened to be because she felt bad. She smelled it and went to go see what was wrong. Good thing! My grandma said she never even smelled it. After the cleanup was completed and we were still in the kitchen attempting to slow down hearts and mop up all the water (sheesh), my aunt says that we are no longer allowed to play dominos because everytime we do, there is a fire.



Fortunately, no one was hurt and the only items ruined were the plastic pot (obviously), a tea towel and the one burner. Too bad there was no video footage of this ordeal because I am pretty sure we could have made a killing.







Moral of the story: Don't be around (without a water hose) when the Knupp family is playing dominos!

Rumor has it...

There has been a rumor spreading and I just wanted to make everyone aware that I am going to be an aunt, AGAIN, in January! My sister (Jennie) and her husband (Ben) were in this weekend and brought my parents their Mother and Father's Day presents. My mom received a frame that says I Love Nana with a little ultrasound photo in it and my dad got a Grandpa coffee travel cup that had a picture inside the plastic liner. Just FYI, they didn't have anything that said " My Poppa is the best". Nana & Poppa, Aunt Katie & Uncle Seth...sigh :)

I am so excited! This will be my fourth niece or nephew. I "inherited" my 3 nephews when I married Seth but I have been there for 90% of all their lives. Kristian was 2 when Seth and I started dating, Aiden was 2 months old and Kalin wasn't born until 2005 so I have been there for all of his life (bless his heart).

Secretly I hope it's a girl only because we have all boys on my side and Jennie's husband's(Ben) sister (keep up) just had a little boy in Novemeber and his (Ben's) brother just had TWIN boys in February. Well, he didn't but his wife did. I didn't want to cause anymore confusion. All those boys need a little girl to keep them straight :) As long as he/SHE is healthy, it doesn't really matter but a girl can always hope. She was 12 weeks this weekend so we shall find out soon enough. Too bad they are keeping the names a secret until the baby gets here. Oh, and by the way, they live in FL so I guess I will be having to make "visits" to the "beach" more often, yes?