Birthdays

Marc and I have birthdays two days apart on the calendar - April 3 & 5. Further to be complicated by the fact that this year those dates fell on Good Friday and Easter. Which I suppose if you aren't working for a church, or your wife isn't working for a church it is probably pretty fun dates to have your birthday on. These days/weeks are pretty chaotic. However, for us not so much. We did manage to squeeze in a little bit of celebrating in the midst of the madness - here's to next year when our birthdays aren't during holy week.

Friday after worship we did go out for Marc's birthday, we went to a great wood fire pizza place here in town and then over to Cold Stone for ice cream. Marc's mom and my mom were both in town already and were able to join us for the fun. Marc picked both places to celebrate. Cold Stone even gave him free ice cream, technically I think you are suppose to print off a coupon online or something to get free ice cream but this woman was just nice and gave it to him.

My birthday I was at church from about 5:40 am till about 1:00pm and I was EXHAUSTED afterwards. Marc and my dad had picked up a Dairy Queen peanut butter cup blizzard cake for my birthday. After we had Easter dinner we had blizzard cake for dessert. YUM.

Marc did squeeze away Sunday night to go and see Fast and the Furious 7 with a couple friends - he was anxiously awaiting the movie but with the chaos of the weekend he wasn't able to escape until Sunday night.

We had fun. We celebrated a little bit and rejoiced that we survived Holy Week. Here's to another trip around the sun.




What is your favorite kind of birthday cake?

Eight: Goals for this Month

For the next few Tuesdays I am linking up with Lauren at Life. Love. Lauren and Tiffany at The Austin Family Diary for their Tuesday Topics. This week's topic is "Eight: Goals for this month."

Family Arriving

MOM is here. She arrived Thursday night. Seriously, why is everything better when mom arrives?!
Since she has arrived she has been putting massive amounts of mason jars through the dish washer and spoiling my dog. Perfect all around - except Dakota goes through withdrawls when she leaves - for one reason or another Dakota can't figure out why when my parents come she gets to hang out with them all day and eat people food. When they leave however she spends time in her crate when I am at work and only gets to eat dog food.

Marc and I have family coming in from all over the country for our wedding. We were attempting to make a list of the states that will be represented at our wedding and here is what we have come up with so far:

Minnesota
South Dakota
Wisconsin
North Dakota
Colorado
Connecticut
Arizona
Texas
Illinois
Montana
Iowa
Michigan
Alaska
Tennessee
Idaho


*This list represents not necessarily where people are originally from but rather where they are currently living and coming from to get to our wedding - this also does not include the people that we sent invitations to who RSVPed and said that they couldn't make it.*

As we thought through our list of family and friends and how far some of them are traveling to be with us we were humbled for sure. Our. Families. Rock.

Mom is here

Whoop Whoop! Late last night mom arrived, seriously there is something absolutely wonderful about having Mom at my place. She has been snuggling my sweet puppy (and feeding Dakota all sorts of things I wouldn't) and hanging out and helping me with projects. We also have come up with a list of miscellaneous wedding type projects that we plan to work on during the week she is here. It is WONDERFUL to have family around. I give thanks for my family who is willing to travel to see me and understands that I can't necessarily travel home and gather like we use to.

There is something about mom's cooking, or maybe it is just that I don't have to cook. Either way it is wonderful, my dog thinks she has died and gone to heaven because she hardly ever has to go into her kennel, someone is generally home with her. I do love the holidays but I particularly love time with my family.

Now slowly but surely my family will continue to arrive, Cubby and his girlfriend (brother and girlfriend) should be arriving sometime today with Cub's dog Nala. Marc will come back to northern Minnesota tomorrow after spending a little bit more time with his family. And dad will roll in on Monday evening after working. Christmas day we will all travel to the cities to hang out with my uncle and three of my cousins. I LOVE my family.

Seriously I think having many of my favorite people together is one of the exciting things I am looking forward to about my wedding. Super excited. Now to go work on wedding type projects with mom and have her quit feeding the dog all sorts of food.



Who are you gathering with this holiday season?
Any family traditions that you look forward to every year?

Sweet Party Mix

1 large box of crispix
1 can mixed nuts
Mix in a brown grocery bag.
Mix 2 sticks butter (no margarine)
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup Karo syrup


Boil this for 1 1/2 minutes &; then pour over mixture in bag.
Place bag in microwave & microwave on high for 1 minute.
Take bag out &; shake well.
Put back in microwave &; cook for 4 minutes.
Pour on cookie sheets or sprayed wax paper to cool.

Here is another of my mother's recipes that I loved growing up as a kid, I  made it this morning to take along to our fall theological conference as my snack to share. Now the problem is keeping my hands out of it until then.

Exhausted

It has been one of those months in which all I can fathom at the moment is sleeping. This is Dakota and I last night after a long day. My mom caught this picture for me, we both managed to fall asleep on the couch all snuggled up, we were watching something on tv with mom, but you can tell Dakota and my opinion on it. Life has been going full speed lately!

Major house project: my mom came up and we have been painting my kitchen cupboards, I absolutely can't wait to post pictures when it is all finished. It looks 1000 times better than it did before. I had some gross old cupboards which functionally worked great but in terms of looks it was bad. I will post pictures when we are done and attempt to explain the process.

Major travels: I just got back this past week from a nearly week long trip to New Orleans to the youth Extravaganza! It was an outstanding trip, fabulous speakers, wonderful friends, amazing city. It was great!