Officially Wisconsinites

This Memorial Day weekend marked the official two year anniversary of our time in Wisconsin.  Andrew was the one who moved us here and he was the last one to get WI plates and actually register his truck here.  Seriously?  I've been rocking the WI plates for a year now and he FINALLY did it.
Although my driver's license, my license plates, and my address say that I live in Wisconsin, I will always be from Illinois.  And I would be lying if I said I didn't miss it!

Andrew and I went back to our parents' houses this weekend for a friend's graduation party.  We also had a 12 mile walk to complete as well as a 7 mile walk.  So I had 19 miles of thinking and pondering.  We walked the Fox Valley River Trail and it made me think about how much I miss it.  How much I miss being in Geneva.  So here are my random thoughts for 19 miles:


What I miss about IL/Geneva:

• Living close to my family
• Living close to my high school and college friends (Not a surprise that we were the only ones who moved to WI)
•  My IL license plate.  It looked so much cooler than these WI plates.
• The Fox Valley River Trail.  I love walking by the river (and everyone else did this morning too)
• My favorite kiddos to babysit
• Swedish Days! It's total nostalgia 
• The Christmas Walk
• Meijer: Grocery stores around here don't even come close
• Having 3 Super Targets in a 5 mile radius
• Randall Road: Seriously, every store that I could want to go to is on that road
• Von Maur
• My rollerblading buddies
• Brookfield Zoo

What I don't miss about IL/Geneva:

• Randall Road: It's a pain in the butt when it's busy, and that road is always busy
• Swedish Days: I love the thought of it, but that's about it.  Want to drive down State Street in the end of June?  Good luck.  Want to find a parking spot in downtown Geneva, ha!  
• High taxes
• High gas prices

 However, IL is lacking a lot of the awesome things that WI has to offer:

• Dane County Farmers' Market
• Amazing friends
• My beautiful house
• Baby Maddie (we adopted her at the Dane County Humane Society)
• Awesome trails
• Lower gas prices
• EPIC: Andrew loves working there and it is seriously amazing

All in all, I really can't complain.  I have a lot to be thankful for and I'm enjoying WI.  And this is coming from the girl who vowed that she would always live in IL.

And we had such an exciting weekend at Gma and Gpa's, that we slept the whole way home...

I think I want to marry you

Happy Memorial Day!

I love three day weekends.  Who doesn't?  Sleeping in, lounging around in pjs, watching the Today show.  Well, today on the Today show, they highlighted this awesome proposal video set to Bruno Mars' "Marry You."

Here is a link to an article.

And the video.

So cool!  Now I never got engaged.  Andrew never had to get down on one knee to ask that four word question.  He never even had to pick out a ring!  I really shouldn't complain because we had the wedding we always wanted and we didn't want all the hoopla of getting engaged and planning a big wedding.

But part of me wishes that I had that.  Now I know that my wedding proposal wouldn't have been anywhere near Isaac's wedding proposal to Amy with elaborate dancing and a video on YouTube, but I know it would have been special.

But when you have a surprise wedding like this....

You really can't complain ;)

What is your proposal story?

Home Sweet Home

***Be prepared for lots of pictures :) ***

In 2010 Andrew and I moved to Madison because he got a job at the infamous EPIC.  Now two years later, we are home owners.  Before we made the move, I always said "I want a house.  I don't want to live in an apartment.  If I'm going to move, I'm moving into a house."  Well, you can imagine how that went.  We moved into an apartment.
Now it wasn't the worst thing in the world.  For being my first apartment (that's right, first.  Mom and Dad's to dorms to sorority house, back to Mom and Dad's), it really wasn't all that bad.  But I knew it wouldn't last forever, and it didn't.

We started looking for houses in January and found a few that we loved, but we weren't ready to put in an offer, and they went fast.   We spent two months going to showings every Saturday.  It got exhausting.  After putting an offer in on one house that was rejected, we found our dream house.  Well, so did three other people.  After putting in an offer and waiting a weekend, then adding a last minute counter offer, it was ours!  And 45 days later on May 20, 2011, we signed on the dotted line and got the keys.  We were home owners!

We own this!  CrAzY!

Here are some pictures from before we moved in.
THEN

Kitchen

Looking into the dining area and living room.

Looking into kitchen
You know that blah color in the kitchen went out immediately!

Family room
It looks totally different now!

Guest bedroom

Guest Bedroom

Loft

Master bathroom

Master bedroom
Much to everyone's dismay
(apparently this color was a big hit with our friends?) It didn't stay :)

Sun porch

back of the house

deck :)

Dining area with our new rug
(And baby Maddie)

Kitchen with bright blue walls :)

Our IKEA family room

Lucy showing off one of her favorite sun spots in the living room

Family room

Family and living room

guest bathroom

loft/office which is not exciting at all

master bath

master bedroom
Who refinished those dressers? They are beautiful! ;)

Master

guest bedroom

Guest bedroom

My favorite part of the house: an "engagement" gift from the Nichols which is proudly displayed in the front hallway

Daddy and Lucy

My babies

Baby Maddie sleeping with her tennis ball :)

It's hard to believe that it's already been a year since we signed on the dotted line.  And to think that in that year we bought a house, got married (twice! but that's another post), and got another dog.  And there's still so much to do!

Always use sunscreen

You would think that in my 26 years of life that I would have learned this by now.  I got a lot of things from my mother, but her skin was not one of them.  I am my father's daughter.  Ever since I was about two years old, we would go to Cancun, Mexico for spring break every year.  Every year my mom would come back beautifully tanned and I would be a lobster.  The best was when I would miss a spot with the sun screen or have a hand print in the middle of bright red skin.  You know it was bad when I couldn't even sit down without wincing. 

Fast forward a few years and here I am sitting in Verona, WI, looking like a ripe tomato.  We had really lucked out the past few weekends with some cloudy days for our long walks.  Yesterday was beautiful and SUNNY.  After a morning at the Dane County Farmer's Market buying tomato and pepper plants, we headed out on our 3 mile walk around the neighborhood with the girls. It was too hot for the 11 miles, so Lucy and Maddie only lasted the usual 3.

After our walk with the little girls, we set back out for another 8 miles. In the sun. Without sunscreen.  But we did remember a water bottle!

Yep, red ripe tomato

 Let this be a lesson to you, kids.  Always wear sunscreen :)

To blog or not to blog....

That is the question.  Such a conundrum isn't it?  I remember seeing that Julia Child movie with Amy Adams, Julie and Julia, and thinking "I am so going to blog."  Bahaha, yeah right.  I read all these blogs and am just amazed at how well written they are and how interesting they are.  I don't live the most interesting life, so what the heck am I going to blog about?  Is anyone actually going to read this?  Follow it and check back every few days to see if there is a new post like I do with the blogs I follow?  Eh, probs not, but you never know.
I've never been much of a talker, in fact I suck at story telling.  I'm the listener.  I love listening to other people and stumble over my words and never quite get all my thoughts out when I'm talking, so I usually just don't.  Great skill for a teacher, right?  However, when you're talking to 5 and 6 year olds all day in Spanish, it doesn't really matter. 
I do a lot better writing everything down.  I have time to think through my thoughts and figure out what I actually want to say.  The "delete" button is a magical thing.  Don't like something?  Just delete it.  I love it.
This blog started as a way to chronicle our 3Day training, but I have a feeling it will be much more than that.  I would love to be able to blog about our first year of marriage (it hasn't been that interesting), our house, our girls, and our journey through life.  It will be my way to remember the little things that happen along the way.  So stay tuned...
Coming up: our first anniversary as homeowners.  Maybe I'll actually get some pictures up of the house :)

$3000 in 90 days

It's hard to believe that in exactly three months from today we will be completing the final 22 miles of our 60 mile walk and our 600+ mile journey.  While August still seems light years away, I know it will be here before we know it.  And there is still so much to do!  Like raising $5100!

We have officially raised 41% of our goal of $5100.  All of this was because of all of you and your generosity!  There is no way that we could do any of this without the support of our friends and family.  We chose to do the Susan G. Komen Walk to support Andrew's mom and all of the women in our lives, and have found that we're the ones who have asked for support and have received more than we could have ever imagined.  There is no way that I can ever thank you enough for the donations, the kind thoughts, the encouragement, etc.

And even after all of the support that you have already given us, I'm posing a challenge to you.  $3000 in 90 days; that's $1000 a month, $30 a day.  It's a big challenge, but I'm confident that we can do it.

Donate!