I know, I know.  I’ve been a bit quiet lately.  There’s a great number of reasons why, but the main one is that my job has kicked into high gear for a bit of a “season,”  so I’ve had next to NO time extra to even think about blogging.  Sad day.  Not only that, but we’ve made pathetic progress on so many things I was hoping to check off my list.  Still to do:

- build a bench

- paint our house

- get our roof replace

- PICK a roof color and paint colors

- finish installing bathroom hardware

- patch the wall in our master bathroom

- paint the hideous red room

- shop down a bunch of bushes I hate

But, lots of non-house stuff has been happening that is WAY cool.  For instance, my husband went to Turkey!  How cool is that!?!  I was majorly jealous, but it was a quick work-related trip and would have been a huge sacrifice for me to go in terms of money and work.  But, he brought back fun stuff – a pillow!  Yay!  And a fancy hand painted bowl.

Cool thing number 2:  I was asked to photograph another wedding!  And with that, I am now seriously SERIOUSLY investigating starting my own business. SCARY.  I love the idea of it, and I love photography, and the more I learn about business, the more I’m actually excited about it.  But.  It’s hard to go through that much transition and change.  You have to be pretty sure.  And I’m still not at 100%.  Any words of encouragement or advise from anyone who has started something new, taken a big risk, or just understands business would be MUCH appreciated!

Cool thing number 3:  it’s fall!  And that means tomatoes and peppers and CANNING!  I need to learn to can first, though.  Ha!  Perhaps this weekend I’ll try pickles since I have about 30 cucumbers in my fridge waiting to be used…

The trip to Chicago to help my grandparents out with their move was a success!  Sure there were some tense moments, but I’m really glad I was able to help out a bit.  I ended up coming home with a few wonderful treasures:

• a paper parasol from when my grandparents lived in Japan in the 50s
• a silk jacket from Japan that belonged to my grandmother
• my mom’s childhood teddy bear
• a steel garden decoration from Japan
• 5 wine glasses (what happened to the 6th?)
• a blue glass hurricane thing from Washington Island where my mom spent summer vacation when she was a little girl
• a small crystal vase
• two small leather purses

There were a few other odds and ends we found.  Hopefully I can get some pictures up soon!

I’m headed to Chicago tomorrow.  My Nana & Papa are in the process of selling their home and moving into a retirement community, and so that means sorting through 50+ years of belongings, furniture, and memories.  I know it will be a tough job filled with emotions, but I’m also looking forward to all of the stories from the trinkets they got while in occupied Japan, or the hand made clothing my Nana made in the early 50s.  There are quite a few treasures in their cute split-level.  And I’ll be sad to leave when it’s time – I have many memories of Christmas’s spent with the cousins there, and brief overnights on my way to and from college.  I love my grandparent’s house, and I’ll miss visiting them there.

Hopefully it will go well!  Pray for good tempers and a a whole lot of patience!  With 3 generations of women sorting and packing and moving things, I’m sure things might get tense more than once.

My very generous mother is a quilting fanatic – her basement is full to the gills of fabrics, machines, and cutting boards.  Here’s what her sewing room looked like a few years ago…

Isn’t that unbelievable?  She has SO much fabric!  And of course, Celeste the kitty keeps her company often.

My mom has been sewing for probably 35 years, and she truly is a pro.  When I was younger, she made dance costumes for hundreds of little girls.  There were sequins and spandex all over the place!  Now, she focuses more on quilting.  It’s her form of art.  At least, that’s what I think

For the past 10 years, mom has been quilting projects for friends and family, often giving away quilts as gifts to commemorate special occasions like graduation, marriage, anniversaries, or births.  Not all of them get there “on-time,”  which is to be expected when 5 out of 8 cousins get married within a year and a half of each other!  I don’t think any of us mind waiting, though.  The quilts she makes are beautiful!

After waiting a little while, it was finally our turn for our wedding quilt.  My husband and I decided we wanted something with batik fabrics – they look like watercolors sometimes and are very beautiful and modern:

and a pattern that was a mix of modern and traditional, sort of like our house!  Here’s the pattern we chose:

I asked my mom to be a little creative with the border and make some changes, and obviously different colors will make it look quite a bit different, but I’m excited!  It will be a king sized quilt so that we can use it on our bed, so it will have 16 blocks instead of 9.  I’m guessing it’s the largest quilt my mom has made!

Here’s som photos of the fabric we chose:

And some progress being made…

Eeeek, it looks great, doesn’t it?  I’m so excited!  I know it will be a little while until my mom is finished, but I can’t wait to see the finished quilt

A look into our anniversary weekend…

He makes me work hard for my food.

Really…

Really…

Hard.

No, he didn’t make me do it.  I actually voluntarily decided it would be fun to chop wood with a hatchet.  Good times.

We had a civilized weekend as well, complete with indoor plumbing, showers, and wine.  So don’t worry, we didn’t spend the entire time roughing it (even though I would have LOVED that!)

Cute little B&B we enjoyed.

Fun stuff in Dubuque – 4th St. Elevator.

This guy built it so that he could get home for lunch without taking his horse/buggy on the hour long RT trip up the bluff.  And then his neighbors caught on…and it burned to the ground…and he rebuilt it.  And now it’s just this cute little elevator!

Going up…

Not the most stable and secure mode of transportation, let me tell you…

Still on our way…

The cool old turnstile, which was from fair or something…I forget now.

The view…

The little elevator car on it’s way up.  If you look closely, you can see that the left side of the elevator (the side closest to the top of the hill) has no door or window – it’s completely open!  You could just jump right out!

We walked around a bit, and of course DH engaged in one of his favorite pastimes – berry picking!  They were EVERYWHERE!

And then we stumbled upon this lovely terrace – who wouldn’t want this for a nice place to enjoy the view?

Seen around town…

The lock & dam

We also enjoyed a little window browsing while we were there, and a delicious dinner out on the town.

Happy anniversary!

A few things <3′d in July:

Family visits and their creative gratitude.

Adorable puppies!

Finally seeing my sister’s new house, and meeting their new dog, Max.

And celebrating our first anniversary!  (pics to come soon…I promise!)

My adorable niece and nephew with my Aunt Pam and her new puppy Daisy.

How cute are they?  Eeeeek!

After a fun weekend away celebrating our anniversary (yay for one year!), I headed up to MSP to spend some time with my family while my mom is recovering from knee replacement surgery.  I’m helping take care of my niece and nephew, which is always…interesting.

For instance, today I got to try to figure out how to explain some tough things to my 6 year old niece.  Her grandma’s cat ran away from home and my niece was just absolutely devastated and heartbroken over this.  Tears flowing, lots of crying, lots of asking if Sam the cat might turn up at a store or shelter…so praying with her about the runaway cat was an interesting lesson in communicating God’s sovereignty to a 6 year old.  How do you comfort her and yet not totally feed her lies that the cat is gonna be okay or be in heaven one day (all dogs/cats go to heaven?).   It’s actually pretty tough!

Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit more light hearted.

I mentioned in a previous post that we had started planning our wedding before I had a ring on my finger.  Now you get the details of how it all went down when DH popped the question!

It’s actually quite a complicated and dramatic story, one which includes me traveling via plane to 5 different states in less than a week, and then the official proposal several weeks later.  Unfortunately whenever I tell this story, there’s so much that happened that it takes FOREVER to tell.  And there’s probably way more detail that I remember that y’all don’t care about.  So I’ll try to keep this concise.  (Note that I said try.)  It would be super neat if I could get a map with all of the flight routes taken for this…but I don’t know how to do that.

Late Nov/ early Dec 2007 We start talking about engagement because DH is finishing grad school and applying for jobs all over the country and has interviewed at one very promising college.  Internally, I am fuh-reaking out because I need to know the question that every girl would want to know: what does this all mean for us?

Dec 19th, 2007 I fly home to MN to be with my parents for Christmas for a few days, while DH sticks around in Massachusetts for a couple more days.

Dec 21st, 2007 DH gets a phone call from the dean with a GREAT job offer, and he has until January 2nd to decide!  Yikes!  We both start getting nervous and anxious and realize we have some big decisions to make, but we’re on opposite sides of the country.  Ahhhhhhh!  After much discussion, we decide that we need to spend some time talking through stuff in person. A very expensive last minute plane ticket is bought, and many complicated travel arrangements are made.

Dec 25th, 2007 DH somehow manages to have his flight to Denver canceled and ends up spending Christmas in MA, and then flying to Denver the next day and getting stuck there with his cousins on his way home to western Nebraska.

Dec 27th, 2007 I fly from MN back to Massachusetts to photograph a wedding the next day.

Dec 28th, 2007 I photograph the morning wedding, and then leave straight from the reception to go back to the airport.  I spent less than 24 hours in MA!  My flight takes me to DC and then out to Denver, where DH is staying with cousins because there was some screwy flight stuff going on.  I arrive at some unGodly late hour and receive a very welcomed hug.

Dec 29, 2007 DH and I fly to Alliance, Nebraska and are able to finally relax after an exhausting week of travel.  We ended up spending the next few days talking, praying, going for some walks, hunting, and hanging out in the hot tub.

Dec 31st, 2007 We both realize that this job opportunity is too good to pass up, and that DH’s life would suck alone.  Mine too.  And I don’t want to move halfway across the country without some kind of commitment.  SO…..we decide we want to get married!  Eeeeeek!

Jan 2nd, 2008 DH calls my dad and officially asks him – my dad is super encouraging and gives us his blessing. We then call the dean and DH accepts the job.  Then we run upstairs and gleefully tell DH’s dad and stepmom.  They were so adorable and got all teary-eyed!  We toasted with some squirt, and then DH had to take me to the airport  I proceed to fly to St. Louis (you tracking still???) for our IV staff conference, arriving a day late…thanks Scott for approving that!

Jan 5th, 2008 I arrive back in MA after a few days in STL, attempting to hide the fact that DH and I are getting hitched from all of my coworkers until we can tell some more of our family and close friends together.  I actually fooled quite a few of them who thought we were breaking up!

Jan 12th, 2008 After telling friends and family, we go ring shopping together.  We purchase my engagement ring, I get it sized, and then DH gets it to officially pop the question.  I know, this probably seems silly, especially since at this point we had already decided a date and a location, and I’d reserved the photographer.  But, I’m old fashioned and wanted DH to actually ask.  *shrugs*

Jan 19th, 2008 After guessing and hoping all week long, DH surprises me by getting me all dressed up and taking me up to the top floor of the UMass library (it’s the best view!) and then out for a fancy dinner.  He starts saying all these wonderful and sweet things during dinner (sorry, you don’t get to hear that part) and proceeds to pull the ring box out of his jacket…..BUT I fuh-reak out and ask him to wait!!!    Ummmmmmm.  Yeah.  I’m a dork.  I just could not handle such a big moment happening in front of all of those strangers!  And I still can’t believe I interrupted him!  DH was super sweet and immediately understood.  We finished dinner, stopped by the grocery store to pick a few things up, and back at his house he gave me flowers and proposed to me!  Woohoo!

Yesterday was an exciting day for us on the prairie – we used on of my most favorite wedding gifts!  So I thought I’d just share about it real quick as part of our little wedding week.

We received some really amazing gifts from our guests, we were so blessed.  One of my favorite gifts was a hammock swing that someone got is.  Unfortunately, there was no card, and so we still have no clue who gave us that, and I feel terrible for not being able to thank them!

But probably the gift I was (and continue to be) most excited about was one we found out about after our wedding.  We found out at Christmas that DH’s dad was going to give us a gift for our wedding/Christmas/DH’s PhD graduation/and many other reasons all in one – a grill!

And not just any old grill, a really awesome super fantastic grill!  He did a little research for us, and FIL thought the best bet would be a Big Green Egg.  I had no idea what he was talking about and proceeded to do my own research and was COMPLETELY convinced that this thing was going to be awesome.

You’re probably wondering why it took 7 months for us to use the thing (you can use it in winter!) – well, part of it is because DH wanted to build a table for the Egg.  And that just plain took a loooooooooong time.  There were some acquiring-of-wood issues that had to be dealt with.  But FIL came to the rescue and brought wood all the way from DH’s hometown when he came out for a visit last week, and so there was a little bit of father-son bonding over a building project.

We finally grilled for the first time last night on the Egg – burgers!  :-)  Here’s our lovely new grill, and the beautiful redwood table/island for cooking and serving.

We’re going to grill-host (that reminds me of the friar’s roast…) our first guest tonight!