Happy Birthday, Ashley!

It’s my baby sister’s birthday today.  Hope it’s a good one, Ash! (just for fun, an old pic of us on the beach)

there are no words…

to describe how I feel about this.

But I am pretty darn excited about this.

More from my travels later… it’s time for me to do some science!

Up North!

I visited one of Minnesota’s 10,000 lakes over the weekend, and stayed at my aunt and uncle’s fabulous cabin.

They have delicious donuts here.

The food was delish! The entertainment was fascinating! The accommodations were luxurious! And the price was certainly right!

I hope they’ll invite me back!

Friday, my cousins, Barley, and I headed up to the lake house after work. We met my parents and brothers who had been camping up on the North Shore (of Lake Superior) last week, and my aunt and uncle who were already up at the cabin. We didn’t get to the cabin until late, and ended up sitting around a campfire for a while, roasting marshmallows and whatnot. Then, the kids (myself included) and Barley retired to the bunk house for some much-needed sleep (at least, I needed it… I can’t speak for anyone else).

Saturday was a bit cold and rainy in the morning, but cleared up enough for us to go tubing in the afternoon! Tubing wars were a blast (tubing wars means there’s 2 tubes dragged behind the boat and you have to knock the other person off of their tube)!! Even if I lost to cousin Catherine, she proved to be a fierce opponent!!

Look how tough Catherine is (she’s on the green tube)!

Robby takes on Catherine (this time she’s on the blue tube).

Saturday night, we went mini-golfing. I’m not that good, but I can talk a big game. And! I got a hole in one on the “secret hole” and won a free round of mini golf (guess I’ll have to visit again to claim it…).

Jennifer and Trevor get hungry on the mini-golf course.

Sunday morning was more of the same – rain and cold. A thunderstorm came through early in the morning, and wimp dog was freaking out. So he crawled under the bed (I still cannot figure out how such a big dog squeezed into such a tiny spot!).

Barley hides under the bed in the bunkhouse.

But it cleared up in time for us to go waterskiing. Jim and Uncle Doug barefooted, Trevor showed off his waterskiing (he is REALLY good), Jennifer wakeboarded, and I tried slalom (one ski) skiing. It was tricky! I think I’ve only been waterskiing once before, so I fell quite a few times…

Jim waterskiing sans skis.

Trevor shows off his waterskiing skillz. He was even zooming back and forth, in and out of the wake!

Jennifer is super-awesome at wakeboarding… much better than my unsuccessful attempt in Kentucky!

Check it out – don’t I look like I know what I’m doing!?! (ignore the ugly face I’m making… not sure what that’s all about…)

30 seconds later… crash!

Then, Sunday night, we had to head back to the city. But not before we talked the land dog into trying his hand at water. He’d only go in until his belly touched the water…

He’s a water dog now!

The rest of my pics from the weekend can be found here:

Woman Lake

cow shoes

Let’s be honest: this week was tough!

I’ve got a huge to-do list at work that doesn’t seem to be shrinking by itself. The truth is, many of the things on the to-do list are things that I’ve needed to do since I left Kentucky — 9 months ago. But papers take time to write, new experiments at my current job have been started, and I’ve taken on a little lot more than I can handle.

Not to mention, there is this little event called MY WEDDING that is taking place in exactly 11 weeks and 2 days. When it was 3 months away, it sounded like I had a whole bunch of time. But 11 weeks does not sound like a whole lot of time to put together the biggest party I’ll ever throw. Panic ensued. Only, I’m not sure why, because in all honesty, I think I am pretty on top of most things wedding-related. Our next task will be putting together and sending out invites. We’ve made the parts of the invites that we needed to make (I only have a little cutting to do – we printed 4 sets of directions/sheet and need to cut them apart). It’s not going to be an easy task – there’s about 150 to send out, and in an ideal world, I’d like the time to do calligraphy on each one. But still, I think we are on top of things – we’ve still got at least 2 weeks before they need to be sent out.

And I think that having the house in Kentucky is really starting to wear on me. I mean, I am trying to be patient since I really have no control over the situation, but let’s be honest: I am not always very patient. I just wish it would go away so that we can move on with our life here.

Jeez. Now that I list all that out, it doesn’t seem that bad. We should talk more often, blog friends.

But, these things have kind of worn me ragged this week and I’ve been cranky and generally no fun to hang out with.

But then! These showed up with the mail:

The note reads: Hi Jen! Thought these were fun and would brighten your day.  Love, Mom

I have the BEST. MOM. EVER.

gardening and more yard work

I know that the title of this post has you on the edge of your seats. Much excitement here to start off the work week right. Yes.

Anyways, while I was busy posting about every wedding I’ve ever been to, and you were busy snoozing on your computer because it was terribly boring, nothing much happened.

And now I am going to tell you about it.

First, our garden. It’s growing. See? Here is a shot of the garden from last weekend:

And here is one from today:

Notice how the pumpkins are ready to take over our entire property. Crazy pumpkins. Yes, you were right, should NOT have planted them in our 4-square-foot garden. I still maintain that I am shocked anything grew, and if you’ve witnessed my track record with house plants, you would know why.

In addition to giganto pumpkin plants, it looks like we’ve got some promising tomatoes and peppers growing. Which is exciting, because I’ve got a million leaves of lettuce (picked out of the garden, of course) and could definitely use something to put on them.

Second, we did some more yard work last weekend, and finished up one of the planting beds near the new brick patio that we built. This was actually quite entertaining, as part of our gardening experience included visiting coworker and friend, Dan, and his awesome wife, Cheryl. Really, we went over to their house to help pull some perennials out of their perennial garden so that we could plant them in our own. (We have to be frugal with our plant spending since we blew the budget on the brick pavers). We ended up staying and hanging out on their deck for the afternoon, drinking iced tea with mint and beer, just relaxing. It was excellent… their house overlooks a lake, and the back yard was designed for privacy, and also to attract all sorts of wildlife. We saw a bunch of birds and whatnot while just chillin’ on the deck. Very nice and peaceful.

So that was last Saturday. We then spent much of Sunday finishing up the brickwork on the planting beds and then planting said beds. But I think it looks much better now, even if the plants look like they’re dying in the photos.

This is what it looked like last time I shared pictures:

And now:  (much better, no?)

And here is a view of the back yard from our side door.  Please ignore how horrible our grass is.  Jason assures me that we will fertilize and seed in fall and everything will be better next year.

View from the North, looking South.  That big ugly firepit was left here by the previous owners.  I would love to put it on the patio, right smack dab in the middle there, but it’s all rusty and will ruin our new pavers every time it rains.  So, instead, we will let it kill the grass weeds until we get a new one.

During our trip to Milwaukee 2 weeks ago, we managed to score some free lilac plants from my mom and grandma.  I was particularly excited to plant the ones from my grandma – they were off-shoots from her lilac bush, which she transplanted from my great-grandmother’s farm before the farm was sold.  Isn’t that amazing?  You should all know by now what an obsession I have with all things old and heirloom-y, so I am just pleased as punch to have these little guys growing in my yard.  Now let’s just hope JT can keep them alive.