Golden Birthday

    Tomorrow is my golden birthday (I turn 27 on August 27th). I have been looking forward to this birthday since my dad’s golden birthday when he turned 27 on January 27th 19 years ago. My mom threw a big surprise party for him, and my brother and I had so much fun being in on the surprise.

    Because we are spending the weekend with the Smiths UpNorth, Jesse and I celebrated tonight. It all began with a gift scavenger hunt. Jesse left me three clues around the house. Each clue eventually held the code to a padlock. Inside was my very own MACBOOK PRO! Many of you remember when Jesse got his MacBook Pro last year. He had saved up for it forever and was so excited. Well, I have been jealous ever since.

    Jesse together with his parents and my parents bought me a laptop as a joint birthday/grad school graduation gift. I’m using it to complete this post. The best part is that Jesse completely surprised me; I had absolutely no idea for probably the first time in our marriage (I’m pretty observant and always catch some kind of hint or clue from Jesse). After starting the set-up on my new computer, we enjoyed dinner together at The Melting Pot. I love birthdays…

    I am heading back to school next week but will try to post about Mexico soon. Let me preview it with it was fabulous and, of course, I puked on myself…

      Detours…

      We thought we had the summer planned but this past week we have taken a few less exciting yet necessary detours. When moving into a house, it is easy to revel in all the added space. With four bedrooms for two people, we soon began using the “red bedroom” (it is currently painted red) as storage. This summer we acquired an extra guest bed and began converting the red bedroom into a second guest bedroom (believe it or not, we often need two separate sleeping spaces). This involved organizing my seasonal decorations and selling some items on Craigslist.

      This past weekend we tackled a lingering project we lovingly dubbed The Office Closet. For three years we dumped any extra paper work or spare computer cord into one closet. Needless to say, it was a jungle. We took the time to finally take everything out. Some things found different homes…some things were thrown away…all of it was organized.

      Next weekend we hit the road again. Mexico or bust!

        Kubb Cup

        Last weekend, we went camping with Carl and Kristi Hagen and Noah and Katie Haas (great friends of ours from Eau Claire). This is an annual camping trip, and we love the chance to reconnect every summer.

        One Big Happy Family

        Noah loves lawn games and introduced us this year to Kubb. To make it a little competitive, we decided to play boys versus girls.

        Ladies Warming Up

        Game One: Quick and easy victory for the girls. One of the boys accidentally knocked over the King. Whoops!

        Game Two: Slow defeat for the girls. The boys easily knocked down all of our Kubbs (or wooden blocks).

        Jesse's Game Face

        Game Three: The girls began the game with a few bold offensive moves, but the boys quickly created many obstacles. With a few missed opportunities, the girls began a quick comeback to win the championship 2 games to 1.

        We are the Champions!

          Summer’s Bounty

          One thing I love about summer is growing my own fruits and vegetables. As I posted before, all of nature seems destined to defeat my attempts to grow green beans, but I am pleased with this year’s strawberry crop. These are the first fruits.

          Last year, I found this recipe for Strawberry-Rhubarb Bread and have made it many times since. It starts with a brown sugar base, and even the batter is delicious.

          Plus, it uses rhubarb, and you can never have too many good rhubarb recipes. As my nephew Cody would say, “Delicious!”

            The Good Times and the Sad Times

            After our anniversary trip to The Creamery, Jesse and I stopped in Eau Claire for the 25-year Navigator reunion. The Navs are very important to Jesse and I as it is the Christian organization where we met one another as well as many of our dear college friends.

            At the reunion we had the opportunity to connect with many of those friends. Three of Jesse’s former roommates were in attendance and four of Andrea’s. It was great to gather and remember all the great times we had when we were all college students (including dinner at Mancino’s).

            This week, though, we are having to say good-bye to Ross & Megan. We have lived together in the Twin Cities for the past four years. Megan and I went through finding jobs together. Ross and Jesse introduced a friend to Christ together, and we have all watched many episodes of Survivor together. We will be at a loss without these amazing friends close but are excited for the next leg of their own journey.

              The Creamery

              This past weekend Jesse and I had a blast at The Creamery in Menomonie, WI. We have not had great experiences at bed and breakfasts (if you know a good one, let us know) but still like a place to be homey. The Creamery Inn personally welcomed us with a tour. The rooms were large with a large bathroom of tile (Mom, can you imagine how expensive that would be???). But the best part was a screened in patio area. Both mornings and evenings we stayed at the inn, we sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful weather as well as one another’s company.

              The other fun part was The Creamery’s proximity to the Red Cedar Trail. We were proud of ourselves in that we completed the entire trail in both directions. We began the morning biking 7 miles into Menomonie for lunch and shopping. Then we biked back and did the next 7 miles to the Chippewa River for some swimming.  We biked a total of about 30 miles.

              Acoustic Cafe!

                Life in the City…

                We really enjoy living close to Minneapolis and St. Paul (about a 30 minute drive). For our anniversary we drove to Minneapolis with our bikes. We completed the part of the Grand Rounds route entitled The Chain of Lakes byway. We stopped off at Punch Pizza (they bake pizza the way they do in Nepal). It was very fun and we felt very urban. Plus we were practicing for the Red Cedar Trail in Wisconsin, which we are headed to right now!

                  Four years later…

                  Today (and this weekend) Jesse and I are celebrating our wedding anniversary. We often talk about our marriage as a journey thus our blog name. This week someone found out about our anniversary and asked, “So, how is marriage?” What a question…with so many answers.

                  I simply wanted to take the opportunity to let others know it is not an easy journey, but marriage is worth the commitment and  blessings as well as the sacrifices when you find the right person to journey with. I love you, Jesse!

                  Just for fun, here’s a wedding picture of how happy we are at the start of this journey and one testifying to how great it is four years later…

                  July 22, 2006
                  July 2010

                    Home

                    No matter how long I live in Minnesota, I still talk about going home when we travel to Neenah, WI. This past weekend we visited my family in my home town. Our first stop was Scott & Melissa Matson’s new house in Neenah. They moved back after being in Florida for 3 years. We are so excited to have them closer to home.

                    On Saturday we visited Eric & Alaina’s garden plot. I was very jealous of the huge space they have to grow vegetables, but, alas, I live in the suburbs.

                    Eric and Turnips

                    Today is Eric’s birthday (happy birthday, brother), but we were able to celebrate last week at our family’s favorite restaurant. My dad claims we were celebrating the rest of the birthdays for the year (lucky for him and my mom who got their own celebrations in January and May while all of us kids have birthdays in the second half of the year). Hopefully, he won’t stick to it.

                    Texas Roadhouse

                    Sadly, we never have time to visit all of our favorite places and people when we are in town, but that is why we will visit again soon!

                      I lived…

                      As many of you know, I had dental surgery on Tuesday, July 13. I have had surgery one time before when I had my impacted wisdom teeth removed. Thankfully, this time the surgery went much better.

                      I had a receding gum line on my lower front teeth, so the dentist took skin from the roof of my mouth and grafted it to my lower gum. The procedure requires two stitches and two graft packs (one on my lower gums and one in the roof of my mouth).

                      My mom was able to come over to Eagan to help Jesse take care of me. She drove me around, made all of my soft foods (yummy mashed potatoes) and made sure I was following the dentist’s orders. My mouth is still sore, but I am no longer needing the heavy pain medication.

                      Still not sure when I can start eating normally again…sigh…good-bye corn-on-the-cob.