O. M. G.

Dave and I got married November 1st, 2008.

Yes, it was beautiful - the tent was tremendously gorgeous. Our guests were fantastic - some of them even helping out prior to the ceremony.

We did start late - people kept coming upstairs to see ME of all people, who was trying to finish getting dressed - and people in the house kept TELLING the guests where I was getting ready, and they kept coming upstairs to visit! lol

The food, provided by my friend Josh and his lovely and patient wife Kim, was AWESOME!

Our menu:

Fruit Board :
Pears, Plums, Grapes, Apricots, Apples, Pineapple

Cheese & Nut Board:
Swiss, Pub cheese, Caramelized Onion, Truffle, Dubliner, Tomato Basil Gouda, Herb Gouda
Walnut, Almond, Pecans, Figs, Dates

Salad:
Apple & Pear Waldorf on Baby Greens

Soup 1:
Lentil (Vegetarian)

Soup 2:
Pumpkin

Entrees:
Roast Buffalo
Turkey
Smoked Turkey Legs

Vegetables:
Cinnamon Roasted Sweet Potatoes
Wild Rice & Mushroom sautee with Vidalia Onions
Roasted Butternut Squash
Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Gravies:

Turkey

Dark Beef

Roquefort dressing

Bread:
Petite Baguettes, White Buns (made by Linda), Dark Rye Buns, Wild Rice Buns.

Oy. It was a lot of work for Josh and Kim, and my parents who helped out by letting them use their commercial kitchen for food prep because it was much closer than anything else in the area.

April, Dave, and Allison

I was abducted by aliens!

Just kidding.

I think we all know and realize that time flies when you are having fun...and sometimes not so much fun.

For the past two months, Dave's been getting used to the new schedule - up at 4am, out the door by 5 am to ride the bus to St. Paul for nearly 2 hours. Work for 8.5 hours respectively, and wash, rinse, repeat in the opposite bus order to get home.

I am still getting up with him at 4am.

We are both exhausted.


However, wedding planning still moves forwards. We've had a couple adventures and a few moments since June:

• We went to WineHaven (Chisago City, MN) & Eichtens (Center City, MN) and enjoyed a day of food and wine tasting. Eichtens raises their own buffaloes and cows and make their own FABULOUS Gouda cheeses and buffalo summer sausages amongst their delicious bistro/cafe and shop area. WineHaven happened to have a wine tasting the same day we headed out to Eichtens.... and so we tried a few varieties. We've already decided to get the Honey Wine and the Merlot from there for the wedding.
• Dave, Alli, and myself headed out to Howard Lake, MN for the 3rd Annual Garlic Festival; put on by the MN Sustainable Farming Association. They did a wonderful job and we enjoyed things ranging from
• demos from Minneapolis area chefs that work with the understanding of sustainability,
• belly dancers (not what I'd have thought - a few white chicks doing some pop music moves, more power to 'em - I've seen REAL traditional belly dancing though...),
• kids games & art, garlic ice cream (YUM), fresh raw gourmet garlic (It BURNED!)

Then... we hit the MN State Fair this last weekend. On Sunday early morning, we headed out on the Southwest Transit to the fairgrounds. It was a long day full of sunburn, good food (elk burger, porcupine meatballs, beef sticks, funnel cake, cheese curds, strawberry smoothy), and needing more water than I got which resulted in my crabbiness for about an hour. Yes, poor Dave. lol

We saw most of a wood chopping competition, walked around one end and saw the skate park portion with guys on bikes, hunted down food favorites (cheese curds), and waited in line for Sweet Martha's Cookies for about 15 minutes. Well worth the wait. It was fun to see the sights and smell the wonderful foods.


We also hit the Little Farmhands area for kids. Cute! Alli got to put on an apron and pick up some corn kernels, and 'feed the cows', 'milk the cows', drive the hay on the 'tractor' - John Deere of course, and 'grow' vegetables.
Here, we have Alli and Daddy. They gave the kids free John Deere sun visors made from a foamy material and emblazoned with their symbol.

Seriously, they had sunflowers that were REAL
and taller than Alli! Heck, they were even taller than me.













We also went to the Eco Experience - where Dave had been working for most of that week previously. Since Dave works for the Pollution Control Agency, he offered his volunteer services to help out at the Eco Experience photo booth - essentially, he was the 'man behind the curtain' running the technology aspect and making sure that as people came through, had their photo taken with signs saying why they promised to bring their own bag, and made sure that those pictures showed up on the Reduce.org website.

As a momento....

All said, we probably spent about two hours just going through the Eco Experience. Sustainability is something that everyone should think about. Compost when you can - we live in a townhouse and we are looking for ANY way that we can do that. We have been recycling and separating as needed with all our waste as well for a while already, but still, you feel like there's always more you can do to contribute to a healthy Mother Earth.




Alli, hugging Bernie the Burn Barrel at Eco Experience. Bernie tells people how bad for the environment burning your garbage is. He has a lot to say about keeping the environment and air clean and clear - and that just because your parents and grandparents did it - doesn't make it right!






In other news...
We finally met with my friend and the caterer, Josh, this week. Wonderful meeting. Unfortunately I think we made it a tad too long - I didn't get his email about his wife feeling poorly and could we make it a short meeting until the day AFTER. I sure felt like an ass. Sorry Joshy! My email at work apparently dislikes me intensely - but only SOMETIMES.

Thursday night this last week was Alli's Open House. She's heading into Second grade and frankly, her teacher seemed nice, but I'm a bit worried about Alli and her Math skills that we worked SO hard on last year... and haven't used much of this last summer. Her reading is perfectly fine though as she loves to read anything and anywhere.

Time will tell I suppose.

Dave and I went on our first date in about a month last night. To the Claddagh Pub in Maple Grove. It was wonderful! The food was plentiful and delicious - melt in your mouth good. Dave had a drunken steak that was a prime piece of meat with Jameson whiskey. I had the more mellow but still fantastic and homey shepherd's pie. Accompanied by a Guinness for myself and a Newcastle Nut-brown Ale for Dave, it was truly an enjoyable dinner only made better by our dessert of Tipsy Bread Pudding. Yum!

Afterwards, we headed out to the local mall to have our ring fingers resized - I'm a 7, and he's an 11.5. I'm putting it in print so he doesn't argue with me later right before we order our rings. lol

Anyways, we need to get the invitations printed out tonight and things addressed. We need the RSVPs by October 6th and are offering the option of RSVPing online or by phone, or lastly, by snail mail.

Still so much to do, but we are looking forward to it!

The Tardis Cake Fiasco

I wanted to do something nice for Dave for his groom's cake.

We had seen a while ago an "action shot" on the Thinkgeek.com website a bride and groom and a Tardis cake. Yeah, notice that their cake and mine look NOTHING ALIKE.

Now, for those of you whom aren't familiar with what Tardis is, it's basically a dark blue phone booth that has the words "POLICE BOX" on it. Dr. Who uses it as his time traveling vehicle as he visits the future and the past.

Not familiar with Dr. Who? Don't worry, I wasn't either. It's a pretty neat BBC show that Dave loves. So.... me, being the loving, devoted fiance and having time on my hands and having watched one too many Food Network Cake Challenges.... I did it.

You'll see the slowly sliding frosting that pulls down my perfectly square designs. I didn't expect it to be easy mind you, but even the slight amount of frosting to coat the sides was slooooowwwwwllllyyyyy sneaking down towards the cake board on the bottom. Stupidhead cake.

At least it tasted good, despite the 4 wooden skewers:

• 4 boxes of Betty Crocker Spice Cake mix. Prepared as stated on the back of the box.
• 4 containers of Betty Crocker Cream Cheese frosting
• 1 jar of Trader Joe's Pumpkin Butter
• 1 entire squishy thing of Blue food coloring (needed at least 3 of them to make it as blue as it should have been)
• 9 inch square cake pans
• over 5 total hours of free time

I mixed 2 of the containers of cream cheese frosting with the 1 jar of pumpkin butter and used that as 'cement' between the 6 layers total that I made. Cut it down a bit, frosted the whole thing, had Dave scold me, put in skewers to make sure the whole thing stood up.... and then, when he saw the finished product, he said I should probably do a 2D version instead of the 3D version I made. Arrrrrgggghhhhhhhhh!!! *L*

Don't worry. The cake was gently dismantled and one part was put in a container and frozen, another part set aside for me to take to work, and then the remaining part was turned into what I like to call a "Franken-Cake". It's a sad sack of deliciousness with scary blue frosting and looks like a small hill under the frosting. The side is tilting the to left. It feels like I look: defeated.

Back to the drawing board!

End of School Year Notes

Alli, practicing her spelling words. Yes, even in first grade they now apparently have spelling tests!

Just a couple things to brag about, seeing as I feel we are so fortunate to have our little girl:

* Alli is showing reading and comprehension above 2nd grade level

* She is meeting her Math skills and most of the comprehension things they start teaching in 1st grade. Considering we were really worried about her lack of aptitude with Math in the middle of the year, Dave has spent a wondrous amount of time and devised countless study tactics to help her. Apparently it's paid off! :)



And a couple months ago, I thought it was hilarious when Alli decided to take some old monster Ziploc bags that were empty and play with them. Talk about recycling!

She said that She was "going to the Fuuuuttuuuurreeeeeee!!" Can't you tell that the hanger is her steering wheel?

For some reason, it reminded me of Conan O'Brien's skit "In the Year 2000" where the guy in the background is singing that phrase in a the high falsetto voice.

We actually decorated the inside of the "helmet" and "space ship" with red circles that are all "buttons" that help her drive. It was so flippin' cute!

Due to her cardboard playtime, Dave keeps telling Alli and I that this Yule/Christmas will be a "Cardboard Christmas". Kids are kids are kids. Give most of them bubble wrap or cardboard boxes... wrapping paper, ribbons, and bows... and they are happy enough to sit for hours with just themselves for company. As any parent knows! :)

Mother's Day (late!)

Okay, so it's a bit late, but I have to say, after suffering a miscarriage right around her 7th birthday, my little pumpkin was sure to keep giving me hugs and kisses whenever I moved towards her for one or two. Well on Mother's Day, Dave and Alli let me sleep in. At one point I went to the potty, and had to walk by her bedroom door. In her doorway, I saw this beautiful sign that she wrote ALL BY HERSELF! She spelled everything correctly and it brought absolute tears to my eyes. Such a sweetie!

Little Evie!

Kathleen & Evie


Evie & Alli

We went to visit Kathleen and Charlie and Evie a couple weeks ago and oh my GODS how she has grown! She's more adorable than she was when she was born. Enjoy!

Evie

Updates

Things have healed much here. :) We are focused on the future and the near wedding.

Dave has also had a job offer from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. So, yippee! A continual income instead of the contracting will be a huge benefit to our family. Also helps that he's getting paid WAY more than peanuts. *G*

The downside is that I'll be assuming all pick up and drop off for Alli during this summer AND when she starts up school again in the Fall. This means that my schedule is now changing from 7:30am to 3:30pm, Monday through Friday to 8:00am to 4:30pm Monday through Thursday, and working 8am-2pm on Fridays. I won't be able to flex a lot of time, but at least Alli and I can have our Friday afternoons/evenings together this summer and do mommy-Alli stuff.

Dave will be taking the bus from Minnetonka to St. Paul which means he'll be leaving extra early and coming home barely before 6pm each night. More of the daily routines will be my responsibility - getting dinner on the table, helping Alli with homework, etc. - whereas before they were shared. It'll be a hard adjustment, but nothing I haven't already done as a single mom before. And Dave, you better read this and realize that just because you are working outside the home doesn't mean you're excused from HELPING! So there! :P

And onto the wedding/handfasting planning. Oy! Who knew napkins and linens were so expensive? Probably every other woman who's done wedding planing.

It's all in the details, you know? Each person's table setting is going to amount to around $10 each - including glass goblets, coffee cups and saucers. Don't forget the coffee pouring items, and the salad forks tongs, the wicker bread bowls, and OHMYGOSH, don't forget the TENT and sidewalls! We'll also need a tent heater, and while we're at it, crap, we might as well find a generator to beg, borrow, or rent. *L*

So yes, it's been exciting. We have an appointment to see Aarcee Tent and Party Rental
on Monday at 5:30pm. Because of Dave's analytical nature, I even made a spreadsheet detailing everything. Holy buckets. There's way more than I anticipated. I will say this though: the price isn't nearly as bad as I thought for what we've listed so far.

Anyways, Alli starts summer camp on June 12th, Dave starts his new job on June 11th, and the fun really starts then.