Our First Christmas Letter

I've been struggling with how to get back to this blog when there's so much to catch up on so I'll start with posting our Christmas letter. While I figured out our picture and addressed envelopes, Matt wrote our letter. I have to admit, I'm super proud of us. I think Matt did a wonderful job and I'm impressed that we got them sent out BEFORE Christmas.

Dearest Friends and Family –
As can be expected, Christine has been a little busy with all of the holiday preparations, graduation, landing a job, buying presents, cleaning the house, and overall making sure I stay in-line. So, I’ve taken this opportunity to step up to the plate and take a swing at this whole “spreading holiday cheer” thing. I assume you may want to hear about what we’ve done this year, but being a little “outside the box,” I’ll tell you first where we’re heading.

Christine landed a new job with Compressor Controls Corporation out of Urbandale, IA. She is excited (I think….or at least she should be) to start on January 10th, 2011. This is the same company she interned with this summer, where she is taking a job as a “Human Resources Training Generalist.” It’s a new position in the company, so we’re lucky they have nothing to compare her performance to…. (Ouch….I just got punched in the shoulder). Over Thanksgiving, Christine visited her little sister Jackie in Chile, where she had quite the experience soaking in the culture, seeing the sights and having fun.

Christine also just graduated (December 17th) from “that other school” in Ames with her Masters of Business Administration. She made lots of friends and had a great time. I will have to admit I did have a good time at the one and only ISU football game she dragged me to, but that was only because there was free food and I was decked-out in black and gold.

I look forward to burning all of the Cyclone paraphernalia she collected during her tenure there- luckily there’s an awesome fireplace in our basement that’s hungry for fuel.

Which brings me to the biggest change for us this past year….our new house! We moved in to our new place in Huxley, IA on May 15th. I was rudely awakened to the fact that the grass does not mow itself. I was even more astonished that the flowers were not self-watering. On a brighter note, we did find out that lots of great food arrives at your front door when you move into a new neighborhood. All-in-all it’s been great to have a place of our own, and we’re looking forward to making a few improvements and changes around the villa in the coming year.

Now, I know you’ve all been wondering….just what the heck has Matt been up to??? Luckily, I’ve prepared a little something:

I still work for the Dept. of Natural Resources as a Conservation Officer, but transferred to the Boone & Story county territory. A normal “day in the life” consists of waking up when I want to and chasing bad guys. It’s been a change- trying to learn the intricacies of the new area and meet the new people, but it has been worth it to get a little closer to family and friends. I also accepted the responsibility of becoming a Field Training Officer for our bureau. I don’t feel any smarter, but I guess they think I’m a good candidate to “mold the minds of the future generation of game wardens” and generally show them the ways of the world.

Overall, we were very blessed in 2010. We’ve been able to spend lots of time with friends and family. Plus, there’s been lots of fun weddings…allowing me to hone my impressive dance skills. We look forward to having a wonderful 2011, and wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!

Love, Matt (& Christine)

Still alive...

...but barely hanging on. lol! I realize that I'm a complete blogger failure. Yes. My quote of the month is from September and it's almost November. oops. I am completely bogged down with classes, homework, work for my assistantship, and job searching. And I haven't had time to get to my blog or do a lot of things I've wanted to do this fall. Unfortunately, I'm probably not going to be able to put up any good posts until after Thanksgiving break either. Randomly, I was reminded of my complete lack of blogging by both a close friend and my husband over the last 24 hours - weird. So I decided I should probably throw a note out here to let everyone know that I'll be out for the next month but I will definitely be back. And be prepared for lots of exciting posts when I return! Especially about my 10-day trip to Santiago, Chile to visit my sister Jackie over Thanksgiving break! I'm so excited about it but have so much to get through in the next month. Plus there's football games, Wendy's wedding, a weekend getaway to Galena and some fun around the house to post about too! If only all my time wasn't being dominated by school work! ahh! Why did I decide to go back to grad school again??? :)

College football is in the air

I can't sleep. I think it's because I'm so pumped that Hawkeye football starts tomorrow (or maybe it's because I just started on steroids today because the doctors can't figure out why I've had a "cold" for over a month with diminished lung capacity.) But really, I'm way excited to see what the Hawks are going to do this year! Predictions are good and the anticipation is high! Check out Andrew's blog to see what I mean -  http://rollalongiowa.blogspot.com/

Matt and I actually kicked off the fall football season at the ISU game on Thursday night. This was our first ISU game without Iowa being there and, as expected, it didn't measure up. But college football is college football (well kinda) and the tickets were only $10/each. Also, as expected, Matt not only wore his favorite Iowa Bass Fishing t-shirt, he also had his Iowa Hawkeye sweatshirt that is 100% Hawkeye from every angle. In order to balance him out, I wore my one and only Iowa State tshirt (don't worry, it was a gift from Lindsey, I would never have bought it for myself) and a neutral sweatshirt. Matt's cheers for Northern Illinois (ISU's opponent) only succeeded in embarrassing me though because ISU did pull off the win.

ISU's winning season won't last for long though because the big Iowa vs Iowa State game is next weekend in Iowa City. Thanks to Becky's 2pm soccer game next weekend, Matt and I have my parents tickets to cheer on the hawks from inside the stadium. Due to Matt's crazy fall work schedule, we don't have the chance to go to many games together and I'm super excited about tailgating in IC and seeing the game live with him! Plus lots of our friends are going to be there too! There's really no better way to spend a Saturday in the fall. :)

Back to School Fashion

Fashion is not - and will never be my middle name. And with back to school displays all around us I'm kinda jealous of all those who can get into the spirit and score some wonderful new items. Besides buying textbooks this week, the only other back to school shopping I've done was for 4 notebooks at $0.15 a pop at Walmart and some new purple pens. Ha ha, I know I'm such a dork!

For the last month or so I've been thinking about all the things I want to get before heading back to campus but I just haven't found the time (or any money growing on trees).  If it weren't for my mom, I would have started my final semester at ISU a complete fashion failure with nothing new. Thankfully she found me this totally cute purse from The Limited! And I love that it is big enough to handle a notebook or two so I don't have to take multiple bags to class. Thanks Mom!

 

I'm back!

I'm back to my blog and back to school! A lot of fun has happened over the last few weeks and I think we'll start back at my birthday -- August 9th.

Matt's been super busy this month with instructing courses for the recent new hires and unfortunately he was outta town for my bday. I can't really complain too much though because I've missed a few of his birthdays because of vacations (his bday is usually over spring break). So with Matt out of town, it gave me the opportunity to have a super fun "girls night out" on my birthday. With my birthday landing on a Monday this year, I wasn't sure what kind of turnout to expect and I was more than flattered to have so many wonderful girlfriends meet me out. I feel so blessed to have such a great network of fabulous, strong and beautiful women in my life! Thank you girls for making me feel so loved on my birthday. You each mean so much to me.

Thanks for taking a pic Liz to document the memory for me!

Tori Got Hitched!

Last weekend we were in Decorah for Tori & Clint's wedding. It was a great wedding and a fun weekend overall which is why I'd love to blog about it. Unfortunately, I completely failed to take any pictures. oops. And after reading Liz's blog about our tubing adventure on Sunday I know I won't be able to write anything more entertaining about that part of our weekend. It was so funny! So I'm going to "borrow" a few pics to post below and refer you to her blog instead. :)

But there were a couple details I wanted to add...

Tori & Clint first hit it off because of their mutual love of movies. They brought this passion into their wedding in the most creative way. All the songs during the ceremony were from various movies. This really made their ceremony personal and brought a fun atmosphere to the day. Also instead of traditional vows, they worte each other promises. It was very sweet and romantic, especially to see both of them show so much emotion.

They also added a lot of personal touches to the reception to make it their own. As neither of them are big fans of cake, they decided to go with pie and cookies for dessert instead. And they also fed one another sushi since they didn't have cake and pie might have been a little messy. Plus I hear sushi is one of their favorite meals. One thing that was really exciting about the pies and cookies is that my friend Jessica made them. I'm not really a big fan of fruit pie but the cherry she made was worthy of a second bite. And the frosted cookies is the shape of cakes were super cute and delish. Plus it was fun to taste some of her "professional" work. Here's a link to her facebook website! Good job Jess!

Isn't she beautiful!?!?

One of Jess's delicious cookies!

Matt and I at the wedding

Book Club goes to the Zoo

Our book club just had our 2nd annual outing to the zoo! Zoo Brew is a weekly event at the Blank Park Zoo during June and July. They have themes for each week and feature different "brews" to try while roaming around checking out the animals. The last Zoo Brew featured local wineries which is why we picked that night to attend. And apparently half of the young adults in the DM mentro area did too. It was totally packed! The wine tasting lines were waaaay too long but we still had fun! Here's a pic of the book club girls who could make it and our favorite men!   

 

 

While the boys don't ever attend our book discussions (gossip sessions), I bet they could name many of our favorites from hearing us gab about them before and after we meet up with the ladies. I think this may because we rarely talk more than 20 minutes about the book when we get together since we're spending too much time just catching up and having fun! At our June get-together we took the time to write down all the books we've read since we started this club almost 2 years ago. Some of our choices have been outstanding, some interesting but not worth rereading, and some I didn't even get to due to being busy at school. Here's our reading list from the beginning:

October 2008 – The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

November 2008 – Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
December 2008 – We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
January 2009 – Three Cups of Tee by Greg Mortenson
February 2009 – Forget About It by Caprice Crane
March 2009 – Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
April 2009 – The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
May 2009 – My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Piccoult
June 2009 – The Boy in the Striped Pajamas by John Boyne
July 2009 – Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
August 2009 – Oxygen by Carol Cassella
Sept / Oct 2009 – Always Looking Up by Michael J Fox
November 2009 – Some Kind of Different as Me by Denver Moore
December 2009 – Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
January 2010 – Push by Sapphire
February 2010 – A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog by Dean Koontz
March 2010 – Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
April 2010 – Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert
May 2010 – The Help by Kathryn Stockett
June 2010 – Little Bee by Chris Cleave
July 2010 – The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
August 2010 – The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

 

Decorating my Desk

I only have 2 and a half weeks left at my internship but I finally found something worthy to use to personalize my desk. Better late than never, right?!? :) I've actually never been good at "decorating" my work desk. I had the same desk at UP for 2 years and never brought in any trinkets or pictures. I think I had one picture of Matt and I on my desk at DAS but that was after a coworker made fun of me for not having anything. It's weird because in my previous apartments and at our house now, I looooove to decorate with photographs. I'm not really sure what that says about me as a person to have a de-personalized desk at work but I'm sure there are articles out there on it.  What do you have on your desk to make it your own?

As I mentioned in this post, Matt and I attended TC & Laura's wedding last month. We had a fantastic time! Laura recently got her professional pics back and she emailed me this photo this morning. This is a classic dance move for Matt but I've never been able to catch it without him noticing the camera. Even though it's wasn't taken at our wedding, it definitely reminds me of ours because he was being the same fun-loving guy there. It reminds me of our fun and crazy times without being too crazy. :) I can't help but smile each time I look at it. 

Organizing my Closet

Did you know that people only wear 20% of the clothes in their closet? That means 80% of my closet is being wasted, in regards to both space and moolah! How terrible is that! Unfortunately, I know it's true for me. I'm terrible at going through and purging. I always think "i just haven't found the right occassion for this yet" or "maybe i'll like it better if I lose 10 pounds". With 2 moves last year, I had plenty of opportunity to let go of some clothes, and while I did let go of some things, I know I should have let go of much more. I've had some clothes since high-school but I just can't give them away.

I recently attended a workshop called "Image and Influence - Polishing your Professional Look." I was there to "test it out" to see if it would be a good program to offer to our employees. I'm so glad I got the opportunity to go because it was definitely an eye-opener. Most of the things the presenter said seemed obvious. Of course I shouldn't buy a shirt (even though it's cute and on sale) if I have nothing else in my closet that I can wear with it. It's just going to sit there in the 80% and be wasted. I learned A LOT during the 3 hour workshop and one of the biggest take away's was about reorganizing my closet. So this past weekend, I decided I should try and implement some of the things I learned. It's not going to be an easy (or short) process but eventually I'm going to get there.

Hang up everything
It's ok to have bras and undies, as well as jeans and workout clothes in your drawers but everything else needs to be on a hanger. So that means during the winter, I need to hang my sweaters up instead of stacking them neatly in a drawer or on a shelf. The thought is, if you can't see it, you forget about it. And if it's slightly inconvient to get (you need a chair to step on, or it's a the bottom of a pile and you'll have to refold everything) then you won't take on the hassle to wear it.
It took awhile but I went through all the drawers and pulled out all my tops. I also hadn't made it through all the boxes yet so I took the time to do that this weekend too. My closet isn't big enough to allow me to hang up all my winter tops but when the seasons change, I'll need to rotate my clothes around. I also moved all my "party" dresses down to the basement bedroom closet. I obviously don't need those on a regular basis so it's better to use their space for clothes I could be wearing.

Organize by color
When you try and decide what to wear in the morning it's usually decided by the mood you're in. And that relates to color. I'm feeling fun and energized so I'll go to a pink top. Or I want to crawl back into bed so I'm going for a grey or black cardigan. Sorting by color makes it quicker and easier to find an outfit in the morning. The other important reason to organize by color is for buying new clothes. It's much easier to visualize what clothes you have when they're sorted by color. Then when you consider buying something new, you can think, "what do I have to wear with this?" and "do I really need another one of these because I have 5 like it already?" This way you don't purchase something that ends up in the 80% of unworn clothes.
Before my clothes were (loosley) organized by function - pants, skirts, sweaters, short-sleeve tops, etc. Sorting them by color was only slightly better than having to alphabetize files, because I discovered a few shirts that were hidden. Now that it's done though it's kinda neat to see how many and what shade of color I have. I realized that I have very few prints. (If you have lots of prints, she said to organize it by whatever color is most dominant.) And I don't have any yellows or oranges. Which I remember she said was ok. 80% of people look good in cool tones while only 20% look good in warm tones. I'm a cool tone girl.

Flip the hangers backward
This trick is for people, like me, who have a hard time letting go of clothes. Flip all the clothes around so that the hangers' open ends curl towards you. Then as you wear an article of clothing, flip the hanger back around normal (away from you). As you continue through the season you'll flip more hangers back around normal but most likely at the end of the season/year/whatever stopping point you want to use, you'll be able to easily see which clothes you didn't wear. If you didn't wear it this year, you're probably not going to wear it next year so it's ok to let it go.
This also took a while to do. I would suggest doing it before or at least at the same time as organizing by color. If you wait to do it last, you'll have to do each hanger individually otherwise if you do it as a group it might mess up your flow of colors. I'm really hoping this well help me purge at the end of each season. Even though I might really love a shirt, if I passed it by every morning for 6 months then it needs to find a new home where it can actually be worn. The Pioneer Woman just did this and gave out all her new or almost new clothes to her readers. I think she's gifted them all already but here's her first post about it.

Well, I think this about wraps up my longest post ever! :) Here's a snapshot of my still-chaotic-but-with-a-little-more-purpose closet. Organizing my shoes are next on my list.

Home grown!

Aren't they beautiful?!?! 
Matt got them for me. (It's ok to be jealous.)
He picked them from our yard. (It's ok to be even more jealous.)
Having a yard is so awesome. And thankfully the previous owners spent lots of time and effort on the landscaping. They did a great job of timing all the different plants to bloom at different times so that we've had flowers throughout the summer. Unfortunately, all the heavy rain and wind this past week took down some of our beautiful plants. Including our tomato plants. :( Cross your fingers that the flowers and veggies all bounce back! Here's a few more pics of the flowers we've had in our yard.

DM Arts Festival

It's been a few weeks now but better late than never, right?  On June 25th, my parents and I hit up the DM Arts Festival after work. Despite the fact that I've been going to it for many years, I've never bought anything. (We do have 3 bowls we love by George Lowe from Decorah, Iowa, curtesy of Jackie at last year's festival!) Now that I have a house to decorate I thought for sure this was the year I was going to buy some amazing. Well... I did buy something that tasted amazing but no painting.  

About to enjoy my first gyro!

It's not for lack of trying that I didn't come home with a beautiful new piece of art. We did the loop twice and stopped at my favorite ones a couple time. My absolute favorite artist there was Michael McKee. He creates landscape paintings with pastels but the colors are bright and filled with joy. They also are WAY out of our budget. :( But hopefully someday I'll be viewing one of these on the wall in our home. Until then I'll just have to get by with viewing them as the background on my computer.  

Happy Birthday America!

What a wet Independence Day weekend! So much so that fireworks were cancelled on the 4th and 5th. Luckily, we got to see some on the 1st at the Yankee Doodle Pops concert. I absolutely love fireworks! The bigger the boom the better. I love when you can totally feel the fireworks deep in your chest! We watched from the top of a parking ramp. This was our 2nd year in this spot and it has great views.

Downtown DSM before the sun set.

All the people at the Yankee Doodle Pops Concert.

Let the fireworks begin...

Boom!

Perfect timing!

Grand finale!

Even though the rainy weather cancelled our fireworks plan for tonight, it did allow Matt to come home early from work and spend some time with me. And he was even able to catch a few dry minutes tonight to make burgers. It was his "perfect 5th of July meal".

Mushroom swiss burger, cherry tomatoes from our garden, busch's baked beans & a Miller Lite (or two.)

Project 2 is Complete

A few weeks ago I posted here about my art project for the wall in the family room. Well I finally got a pic uploaded and here's what it looks like! It really isn't hanging crooked on the wall. Apparently I just can't take a straight picture. :) Lots of thanks to Matt for helping me hang all the frames and space them so evenly! I would never have been able to do it myself! So, now that this project is officially complete, it's off to the next one. Mostly likely it will involve lots of painting! :)

Happy Belated Father's Day, Dad!

I didn't get a chance to blog about Father's Day... We came home from the wedding, moved a bed from our house to Lindsey's new loft downtown, ate dinner at Fong's Pizza with Matt's parents and then picked up my old bed at my parents' house. So we both got to see our dads. And luckily when we were visiting with my dad he was feeling well. Unfortunately, after we left my dad started having severe abdominal pain. It continued throughout the night and a trip to the ER was necessary on Monday morning. Appendicitis. yuck! He went in for surgery right away and was able to go home that afternoon. He rested a couple of days but is back to his usual self now. :) So glad that he's ok!!!!  I saw this video this morning and couldn't help imagining my dad right there with these guys! Too funny! Love you, Dad!  Hope you enjoy...





Or check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2_9H0jzXRM

Congrats TC & Laura

What a fabulously exhausting weekend filled with wedding festivities for TC & Laura! It was so great to be included in such a wonderful event - well Matt was included as a groomsman and I got to tag along and feel a part of it all. We're so happy for the two of them and had such a wonderful time celebrating! Matt decided it's one of the best weddings he's ever been to, besides our own. :) I took many photos and flip videos but these are a few of our favorites!

Teacher Envy

It's days like today that I wish I was a teacher. It is GORGEOUS outside right now. 82 degrees and sunny with a slight breeze. And this morning as I drove to work there was a ridiculous thunderstorm. All those teachers with the summer off got to sleep through that and can go out and enjoy the day now before it turns nasty again tonight. I'm so jealous! I am kinda considering bringing a foldup lawn chair to work. That way during lunch I can plunk it out in the grasssy part of the parking lot and enjoy the summer weather. The only thing that's holding me back is what my boss might think - I don't want this to be the reason why I might not get a good recommendation at the end of the summer internship. :)


But speaking of teachers... My co-instructors and I just figured out our schedule for the fall! yay! There are 4 of us with an assistantship at ISU to teach two required introductory business courses. One is on different majors and careers within the business world and the other is about professional development (cover letters, resumes, interviewing). I'll have 3 classes to teach on my own in the fall and I'm excited to see how they go! This last year we "co-taught" our classes because they ended up not having as many sections as they orginally thought. I really enjoyed it though and am excited to do more. I've also discovered that with a masters degree many colleges will let you teach as an adjunct professor or lecturer. Once I graduate in December I think that's something I'll definitely consider pursuing in addition to a full-time job.

Our first guest!

We had our first real guest tonight! (Sorry family, you don't count.)  TC is back in Iowa for his wedding this weekend and had some time to visit. Unfortunately, his soon-to-be bride has to teach another day before she flies back to Iowa. TC was in our wedding last summer and Matt is in his on Saturday. We are super happy for TC and Laura and can't wait for them to move back to the Midwest in a couple years.

After Matt gave TC the guided tour, we settled outside to chat. We just got our patio furniture last week and we're super in love with it! And it was fun to find out tonight that it works great for conversations. I'm bummed that I didn't think of taking a picture until after TC left but here it is. 

Tonight we also checked on our cherry trees. We know the cherries are starting to ripe because the birds are hanging out there more than usual. Matt grabbed a couple of the riper ones so we could taste them. They're still a little sour but I think they'll be ready soon. Now we just need to find some cherry recipes to try out. Any suggestions?

House Project Number 2

This weekend I decided to start my second project on the house. My first was our bathroom. (I'll do a separate post about that once I put up the new towels.) We have A LOT of wall space to fill up in our family room. For our wedding my grandmother gave Matt and I a beautiful painting that matches wonderfully to the wall color the previous owner's picked out. It's in the most prominent position when you walk in the front door but it's also on the wall with the least amount of space because of the kitchen opening. We've also got a wall of windows without any curtains but I'm not ready to tackle that. The two remaining walls are big and completely bare. After searching around a bunch I've decided the professional artwork I’m most drawn to is just not in our budget right now. I've found a DIY artwork project that I think I could handle. This is a sample pic from Michaels. They have a template you can buy and matching picture frames that are labeled A, B, C...  to match up with the template.  

I won't be using Michael's template becasue even their DIY project is a little too spendy for what I think is reasonable. So I'm going to do it all myself. I like that the frames are all different sizes and the number of photos in each frame is varied too. It’s keeps the look more casual plus I think it’ll be a bit more forgiving if I don’t get them spaced perfectly when I hang them. I plan on using photos from our honeymoon and other trips we’ve been on. It’ll remind us of the fun places we’ve been and hopefully encourage us to continue to put money aside to go on more vacations.

I’m really not all that crafty so I hope this works out! I’ll post pictures when I get it complete.

Cold Beer on a Friday Night

Yesterday Matt and I started our weekend early and drove up to the lake to hangout with our friends Matt & Renee. They have the cutest little girl, Natalie. She's only 6 months old but you can already see her daddy's expressions in her face. She was super smiley but she always saw me coming with the camera. But still, what a cutie! And her mohawk is amazing!

After play time with Natalie, we left her with her grandma and the four of us had a fun evening of "adult time". A few beers (amaretto sours) on the deck, a boat ride around the lake, dinner and drinks at a local restaurant on the water and a late night swim followed by a dip in the hot tub. We wrapped up our super short trip with cinnamon roles and more play time with Natalie in the morning. Matt and I always have a fun time with Matt & Renee but it's hard to coordinate our schedules to get together since we live 2 hrs apart. Even though it was only for a short time, it was a wonderful mini vaca!

Time to dust off the bike

Today at work I organized our monthly lunch and learn. It was on Bicycle Safety and it was my job to setup the speaker. Since I have this weird aversion to talking to strangers on the phone, I used email to set everything up with a presenter from BikeWorld. I don’t know if it was a dream or I was just thinking about this last night before I went to sleep but this morning I woke up slightly freaked out. What if the presenter didn’t show up! I’m not really sure why I was so worried - he said he was coming and he even asked for directions and instructions for check in. But the thought kept nagging me so I ended up calling the shop this morning just to confirm. I guess it was more reassuring to hear him say he was coming over the phone than over email. But I shouldn’t have worried at all because the lunch and learn went off without a hitch! The speaker was entertaining and I learned a bunch. I definitely want to get my bike tuned up soon so I can get out and ride!

Some tidbits I learned...

· There are over 450 miles of bike trails in Central Iowa!
· If the tire become underinflated there's a good chance that you'll get a "pinch cut" in the tire. The inner tube of the tire gets caught between the ground and rim and can cut a hole in the tire. So it's important to check the tire pressure frequently.
· One employee at one bike store in Des Moines hears 3 to 5 stories each year of how wearing a helmet saved someone's life. These accidents are people just taking their bike around the block and a ball or something rolled onto the sidewalk. These stories aren't publicized like car-bike accidents are but are much more frequent and can cause many injuries including brain damage. So, always wear your helmet!
· Bike shorts are made to be worn without underwear. :)

Raindrops keep falling on my head

We thought the rain was through when Matt and I left our place for a walk tonight. But apparently it was not. Ha ha! Our plan was to stop by Casey's to pick up a bottle of wine for our friends who just found out their offer on a house was accepted. Then we were going to walk over, drop the wine off and loop back towards our house. We were only a couple blocks past Casey's when it began sprinkling on us. Luckily it only lasted a few minutes so we continued on our walk. But 10 minutes later it started up again. Again, it didn't last long but we definitely got wet. We were almost back to our house when we felt raindrops for the third time. This time it was accompanied by a full rainbow. So beautiful! We grabbed our camera from in the house but the rainbow had faded a bit. This pic definitely doesn't do it justice.

Jumping on the Blog Bandwagon

Oh my gosh! I can’t believe how many of my girlfriends have such cute blogs! I know mine will never be as adorable and fun as theirs but hopefully there is no harm in trying. :)

I’m not really sure where to start so I guess I’ll start with the most recent and exciting. We bought a house! Our offer was accepted back in February but we didn’t get to move in until the middle of May. It was such a loooong wait but soooo worth it! It’s only been a few weeks but we really love the house.

I think Matt is most excited about the yard and landscaping. The previous owners were known on the block for their green thumb so we’ve had a great palette to start from. We added a lot of annual plants - flowers, tomatoes, peppers and chives, the first weekend we moved in. We haven't even been here a month but it's been really neat to see everything grow and bloom.

Our rhubarb and strawberries are both ripe so I decided to try my first strawberry rhubarb crisp this afternoon. I made homemade pizza for dinner and Matt cooked it on the grill. Both the pizza and crisp were amazing and Matt complimented with "I think this is your best cooking day ever!" LOL! I think it may have been too!