A lot of snow!

Last week it was crazy here! I was snowed in and couldn't get my car out of our driveway- even Chris's Jeep got stuck. I'll work on getting those pictures up soon.  Here are some pictures from work that my coworkers took over the course of the weekend.

Bella and McClane scrap

I worked from home the other day and got a peek at what our cat and dog do while we're gone...

I love my job!

Last week my co-worker Autumn set up a field trip to the Minnesota Office of the State Archaeologist.  We didn't meet the state archaeologist, but we met the other employee of the program- Bruce. Yup, there's only two employees for the entire program for the entire state.
We trekked out to Historic Fort Snelling to gather some information information on Native American earthworks and artifacts in our park system.  Bruce quickly set to work sharing information and showing us how to use their system. It's a paper and pencil system... it was a little scary that nothing was backed up digitally.
After we gathered the information we were looking for Bruce asked if we'd like a tour of the facility and our afternoon went from good to AWESOME!
We toured their lab where artifacts are brought back, sorted and cataloged. (Nothing like CSI.) We walked through Indiana Jones-style vaults with artifacts that date back 9000 years and fingered beautiful rocks and stones from all over the world.
And finally, as Bruce was telling us what he loves most about our job. I learned about this:

 

It's an omar! You can't see the second hole in it, but there are two round depressions in this chunk of basalt that Chris and I found a couple of summers ago. We kept it because we thought it was cool and thought perhaps it was a cool Native American artifact, but it's not.  However it does have a cool geologic story!

While this chunk of basalt were cooling years and years and years ago it collected, attracted, or received a mineral deposited that wasn't as structurally sound as the basalt.  Over the years that deposit wore away leaving a very round depression.  

That's way overly simplified, but you get the idea!  And that's why I love my job. I get to meet people with all sorts of cool backgrounds and will learn new things when I least expect it!

Halloween

Each year our friends Katie and Carmen host a Halloween costume party.  Usually it's your typical random assortment of costumes.  This year they acted on an idea they've been holding onto for a very long time... X Men comic book superheroes.

Chris's first marathon

Chris ran his first marathon earlier this month and he did amazing!  A great group of friends and family cheered the runners on at near mile 15 (and near our house).

After a quick post-race massage, lots of water, a shower, more water, a nap, more water and a quick snack of noodles we met friends for a all-you-can-eat bonanza of meat at Fogo de Chao!  YUM.

Fun at work...

My co-worker has been asking me to order these Program Check-In signs for weeks. I finally had a chance work on that yesterday, and the company was SUPER easy to work with. I ordered them on Monday they were in our hands by 3:15 pm Tuesday.  I wish all of my orders went that easy.

She's out of the office today, today. So she'll have a little help finding her desk tomorrow morning!

Gypsies in the news!

My friend Angie submitted an article to a local paper about our recent camping trip.
Check it out: Gypsies on the St. Croix

5 years!

 

Bella: The Insect Whisperer

Switcheroo

While I was gone on our annual Girls' Weekend Camping trip Chris kept himself very busy. He took all of our furniture and moved it around. Our bedroom was upstairs but now it's down stairs (again).

The guest bedroom furniture moved to the old computer room:

The computer room moved upstairs (except for the green chair):

The TV and couch also moved upstairs:

That leaves our main level open and sunny:

We are really enjoying this new set up. It makes our whole house feel much bigger!

Too much cheesecake

Seriously, is there such a thing?
A couple of weeks ago we had a TON of left over graham crackers at work. (We host monthly family events that end with s’mores.) After a summer of stale graham crackers piling up in the bottom of our bin, we decided to be thrifty and make cheese cake! So, three of us made cheese cake. Here’s a sampler shot:

Autumn made cheese cake with a homemade blueberry topping:

Katie made cheesecake with a homemade strawberry topping:

And I made cheesecake with a cherry pie filling topping (it was no-sugar added though!):

None of us had made cheesecake before, so we all had our own equally hilarious disaster stories, as well as completely different recipes!  
 We did not eat all of the cheesecake ourselves, we shared with our coworkers and they judged our desserts!  Autumn’s cheesecake was judged Best Topping, Katie’s was judged Best Crust, and mine was judged Best Cheesecake Consistency.

Reboot

The Minnesota State Fair has ended, school is starting and I wore a scarf for the first time in a long time.  Fall is just around the corner...

Ch-cha-cha-changes!

Stay tuned for some changes to my blog...
I know it's been forever! I'm dedicating some time this weekend to catching up and updating this blog.

Canada! Honeymoon part 1

We're still alive!  We're currently just outside of Vancouver and will be heading into Washington later this morning.  It's been a crazy week, we left last Saturday and headed north along the north shore.  Crossing into Canada at Grand Portage.  One picture before we hit the road again...

Chris and I on Lake Superior.  Well, back to the land of miles, gallons and cell phones...

Just hanging around...

It's been a busy week!  I've been training new staff at work and preparing for my sister's bachelorette party tomorrow night.

I've also been enjoying finding fun places for all of our wonderful wedding gifts.  The wind chimes in the picture on the right was one of my favorite gifts!  They sound so pretty.  It's a very nice sound to hear early in the morning as I'm sipping some coffee and reading the newspaper.

The cat and dog have been spending a lot of time together lately- a lot of time alone too.  They've been funny to watch interact because Bella is totally the instigator.  She get's McClane all riled up and steals his spot!  She's also turning in to quite the climber.  Here's a few shots of her on the the book shelf.

Chris will be home soon and then it's off for our honeymoon!  Wahoo!

Our wedding day

It's been a long few weeks!  I can't believe that Chris and I have already been married for a week.  How times flies!  Here is a collection of pictures that friends and family took of our wedding.  Our official pictures won't be back for another few weeks and I'm REALLY excited to see them!
Until then, enjoy this short slideshow:

The next day

It's official, I'm now a married woman!
Here' we're goofing around the next day after leaving the hotel. 

River Bend 5K

Last weekend was River Bend Nature Center's 5K fun run.  A group of us have been running in it for the past few years- this year Chris joined us!  Here's the crew finishing the run and right before we headed over to the shelter for a pancake breakfast!

The countdown begins...

I said I’d wait until April to start the countdown… and counting down I am!  (It’s 43 days BTW.)

I can’t believe how fast time is flying, but I guess the busier you are the faster it goes.  Our invitations are out, and we’ve been watching our e-RSVP’s like a hawk.  21 confirmed guests already!  And yesterday we applied for our marriage license. 

May 22 is going to be here too fast.  I’ve been having so much fun organizing this- what am I going to do with my free time once we’re married?!

Spring break in Chicago- Day 4

Before our 8 hour trip home, we spent the morning at the Shedd Aquarium.  We took one last walk through Grant Park on the way to Museum Campus. The weather was awesome this whole week!  (Coming home to 30's was brutal!)
We got home around 11 pm on Friday night and I was greeted by Bella and McClane!  Chris's mom had dropped the "kids" off earlier in the day for us.  Bella has been sweetest lap cat ever since...

Spring break in Chicago- day 3

So much to do, so little time!  Chris and I had each bought a Chicago City Pass which covered admission to The Field Museum, Adler Planetarium, Shedd Aquarium, Museum of Science and Industry and either the Sears Tower or John Hancock Observatory.
On Thursday we got up bright and early with the intent of having a quick breakfast and checking out the Planetarium.  We wanted to try and squeeze the Aquarium in too.  But quickly realized that that wouldn't be happening.  Instead we chose to enjoy a leisurely day at the Planetarium, a quiet stroll back to the hotel and a have a nice meal somewhere.
The Planetarium was super fun.  We racked our brains and realized that we had both been to a planetarium at home during our school days- but wondered what happened to it.  (They had the same machine in the center of the room as we had experienced once before.)  I didn't mean to, but I did fall asleep during one of the shows!
We returned to the hotel to watch some TV and to eat a quick bite to tide us over until our 8 pm dinner reservation at l2O.  That dinner was the best meal I've EVER eaten.  The pictures I took on my phone didn't save- which is such a shame.  We will be talking about this meal for the rest of our lives.  All I'll say, is that my second course was served under a "cloud" of cotton candy sprinkled with peppercorn and bee pollen.  Seriously.
Pictures from day 3:

Spring break in Chicago- day 2

On day 2 we donned our green (it was St. Patrick's Day) only to learn that Chi-Town celebrated the lucky leprechaun the previous Saturday night. Booo!  We were kind of bummed about that- St. Paul celebrates St. Patty's day on March 17th- no matter the day it lands!
Anyway, on Wednesday we took a cab to the Museum of Science and Industry where we explored a German submarine among hours of exhibits and walked to Millennium Park before dinner to marvel at "the Bean".
We put some serious miles on our feet this week, we only drove (or took a cab) twice. 
The night before Chris had woken up to the sound of a little girl laughing and it bugged him all day.  After returning from dinner Chris picked the brains of the bartender, bellhop and head of security. He quickly discovered we were staying in haunted hotel!  The barkeep sent us to talk to the bellhop, the bellhop shared us a few of his experience and then sent us to the head security guard.  The security guard sized us up and kept his cards close to his chest at first.  But Chris's experience and sincere interest must have won him over.
He nodded his head to our laughing little girl, she had been noted in their files thousands of times.  (Thousands!)  They keep track of all of the things guests report, but they don't get concerned about things until they get in the 100s or so. 
The security guard, who was missing two fingers!, shared several stories, but my favorite is about the the time he assisted ghost hunters in analyzing that room.  The first few rounds of setting up tapes, securing the room and the area resulted in all of the recorders being turned off. Finally, one tape caught foot steps approaching the recorder and a low raspy voice asking "what are you looking for?"  Chills. 
Pictures from day 2:

Spring break Chicago- day 1

This past week was Chris's spring break.  With the wedding around the corner we knew we couldn't do anything too extravagant, but we thought Chicago would be a fun trip.  So Monday morning we packed up my car, dropped off the "kids" at Grandma's and headed (south)east.  About 8 hours later we arrived in Chicago. 

We walked just about everywhere and had the best weather.  Our hotel was on Michigan Ave and had a great view of the lake, Navy Pier, Museum Campus and Buckingham Fountain.

Later, we found out that that the hotel is haunted, but more to come on that later.  Here's a slideshow for day 1.

March: The muddy month

I love the spring and fall transition seasons!  They smell crisp and earthy, I can wear less/more layers and I love the feeling of change. 

The highs have been in the upper 30’s to mid 40’s the last week or so, which has been absolutely welcome after a long snowy Minnesota winter.  I loved this winter!  It reminded me of the winters of my childhood- it’s been awhile since our region has seen this much snow. 

Now Minnesota is shedding its layer of snow in preparation for another growing season.  The snow melts a little more everyday and each night creates ice skating rinks on sidewalks and roads, thaws into swampy mud in our yard (while unveiling countless piles of, uh, “gold”) and causes me to use a ridiculous amount of windshield fluid. 

But, I know in just a few short weeks the wildflowers will emerge, the sap will stop running and the trees will bud and well… I’ll be a few weeks closer to being married!

Bring on spring!

Another milestone

It passed without much fanfare, but Chris and I have been living together for over a year now!  I moved in last year over President's Day weekend.  Every day with Chris (and dog and cat…) continues to be an amazing and loving adventure!

Chris's sliver

I pulled this from Chris's foot with his Leatherman.  The tweezers didn't work, my fingers didn't work... Only a Leatherman could do the job.

Wedding bells... in my dreams

According to our wedding website on TheKnot.com the countdown is down to 92 days until the big day.  Yikes! 

About once a week now I’ve been having a random wedding dream.  I thought I’d start recording them- they ought to get even crazier as the date get’s closer.

Dream #1:  A few weeks ago I dreamt that it was the day of our wedding, but that the wedding was tomorrow.  Everything was ordered and planned out, but nothing was ready for tomorrow.  The most stressful point of that dream was realizing my dress wasn’t even in yet…

Dream #2:  I dreamt the other night about our ceremony.  I dreamt that we had just finished our ceremony and I looked around and realized that only a handful of our guests were present, the photographer was missing and that it was cloudy.  Apparently we had started our wedding way earlier than intended.    

Dream #3: Finally, I had a dream last night about forgetting to cut the cake, having a “first dance” and Chris not doing a garter toss.

Enjoy- I’m sure there will be many more to come…

Five years!

Other than being alive, playing soccer and school I don’t think I’ve ever done anything- or stayed in one place- for five years.  But some way, somehow, I’ve been working at the county for five years already!  Well, not quite five years as permanent staff (my anniversary date is in February), and just over five years including my three months as a temporary employee.

I just got notified today, it was five years ago that I was preparing for an interview and wondering if I would really be lucky enough to land a permanent full time gig!  Ha!

Time flies when you’re having fun, or are so busy you forget to notice…

New Year's Resolutions

I told Chris yesterday I wasn't going to do resolutions this year.  I do believe that if you can't make yourself start good habits during the year then what good is waiting to start on a specific day?  I contemplated doing New Year's Resolutions on my birthday... but then I'd have to wait until October...
But then this morning I thought of a good one.  I need to start taking my vitamins, and there's no time like the present!  So here's to Day 1 (I know I'm a few days late already) of taking my vitamins in the New Year!

Christmas pictures