one day with this boy

Look at all the different faces he makes. And, let's get a round of applause for him because we learned on this visit that (among other things) he can lift his own head and can grip things (like my camera strap) and find his own thumb. And we just learned yesterday that his mama went into his room and found him on his belly which means he rolled over. Yay for UJ!!

it will be nice.

Today I was reading over this post and I really liked what Kelly had to say about her and her husband's relationship and how it's changed over the years that they've been together. She referenced The Beach Boys' song "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and that song has always had a special spot in my heart when I think about how Chad and I will have our married life. We don't live together right now, so it's never a good feeling when he has to drive me to my house at the end of the night. We always say to each other "It'll be so nice at the end of the night when we're done watching a movie or something when we can just turn off the TV, brush our teeth and just go to bed." That will be our future soon. I think that is one of the things about being married that I look forward to the most. Just being together and not having to worry about when I should be home in order to get a good night's sleep for work the next day. There are so many other little things that I'm looking forward to after we get married-just simple things that will make our relationship and lives together even greater than they are now. I love you.

Wouldn't it be nice if we were older?
Then we wouldn't have to wait so long
And wouldn't it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong
You know its gonna make it that much better
When we can say goodnight and stay together

Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up
In the morning when the day is new
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night through
The happy times together we've been spending
I wish that every kiss was never ending...

Wouldn't it be nice?

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray...it might come true
Baby, then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do...

We could be married and then we'd be happy,

Wouldn't it be nice?

You know it seems the more we talk about it
It only makes it worse to live without it
But let's talk about it...
Wouldn't it be nice?

a musical proposal.

Chad didn't propose this way, (and I don't wish that he had) but I can't help but smiling when I watch it.

5.15: what we know..

Here's a {rather} short run-down of what we already know about our wedding:
When:5-15-2010
Where: Our church starting at 3 pm
Color scheme: Dark {gunmetal} gray, pink and orange.
This is almost exactly what I'm thinking.
Dress: Found! and ordered {today!} I will not be posting the dress, because Chad reads this blog, but if you are interested you can email me or you can see it if you come over four months from now (that's how long it takes-can you believe it?)
Guest list: Done
Favors: Both of our mom's make really tasty canned goods {his-salsa, mine-strawberry jam} so then both are fine with adding a few extra hundred jars to their normal canning time. I would like to find some pink and orange fabric and do what the couple did in the picture below:


Flowers: Gerber daises. Nice big fat ones. Like these-


Wedding website: Done. We have a Knot website {go to the homepage and type in my name to see the website in the *find a couple's wedding web page box} Apparently, over 70 viewed our wedding website before we even realized that we had one. If you were one of those people, I'm sorry and it's up and running now!
Reception venue: Booked! We have a meeting with them on Wednesday to sign the contract. We are both so relieved that we got the place we wanted.

Well that's all for right now. There are a couple major things that we will be tackling with in the next couple days, so stay tuned:)

{sources: 1/2/3}

during the week

Have you ever taken a vacation during the week? I highly recommend it if you haven't. Two weeks ago, I along with my friends Shannon and Danielle, I went on a Wednesday afternoon and visited our friend Jenny. She's getting married in a little over two weeks and we all wanted one last girl sleepover before her wedding. It was so wonderful to eat Jenny's yummy peanut butter chicken stir fry, catching up and talking about weddings and marriage, spending the day at Elkhart Lake, and just simply being a girl and talking to some of my closest friends. You know you missed a great time when you look at these pictures I snapped:







Shannon, I can give you a copy of the last picture if you want:)

cute kiddies

I've been scouring the internet for over a week trying to find pictures of the Home-Run Derby. The reason? The winner of the derby, Prince Fielder of our favorite team, Milwaukee Brewers, has amazingly cute boys. While Chad and my dad would comment on the stats and how far the last home run was hit, I would squeal with glee every time I would see these little guys (or any of the other players' children for that matter). I'm such a girl. My search has not been very successful since these seem to be the only pictures I could find-I guess all the photographers cared about were the players. Darn.



See? What'd I tell you, cute, right? If you happen to come across any pictures of these lovely dolls that aren't blurred or far away-send me the link:)

Sorry for the lack of posts in the last couple weeks. It's been a combination of things-engagement, summer, trying to master Diner Dash. It's hard to pin point what's been going on but there's definitely been a shift in my life. It might be the wedding planning. I'm over the moon that I will be marrying Chad soon. Believe me. I just have this feeling that it's not really happening. Whenever I look at a bridal magazine or a pretty wedding post, I sometimes think "oh, that will be nice for my wedding" and store it away in my picture file. I've been doing this for so long, that it's hard for me to actually think about our wedding and how it's actually going to happen. This isn't pretend anymore-it's real. That has been hard for me to grasp and honestly, it's given me such a weird feeling. Not a bad feeling-it's just so...adult. Life-changing. It makes me doubt myself. It makes me feel that I'm not ready for such a big change and that I need to stay in my parent's house forever. Nevertheless, this is my life. It's been a struggle for me to come to grips with the fact that I can't plan this part out, no matter how hard I try. I'm kind of a huge planner. I like to know what will affect me and what I can do to prepare myself.

It's also something else. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's there. I know it's not melancholy-I think it's just the shock of the events and knowing that it's actually happened to me. Last night, I was cleaning out my email and I found emails from Chad in 2005. It didn't even seem like we were the same people. It's obviously better how things are now and maybe I'm just thinking about our so-called roots. We were such different people back then-different priorities, different worries, different ideas. I think that overwhelmed me that throughout all our personal changes, we are still together and in love with each other.

I've also been thinking about how I don't want to be one of those people that all I do is talk about my wedding. It's hard not to be consumed with it, when it's such an easy conversation starter for people. I like thinking about it and planning it-believe me. I just don't want to go out of control. I'm going to try to limit the posts that I have on here about our wedding. I'm not saying that they will go out all together-I'm going to try to limit them to no more than three a week for a little while. When we get closer to the actual day, I'll probably post more and more, but this is my way of being in control of the craziness.

I do apologize if that was a lot of things for you to read in one post-but I do appreciate a place where I feel safe to broadcast my thoughts and unload on you guys. Please feel free to comment on anything (especially if you fellow ladies ever felt like this when everything engagement-wise was so fresh) and I will read them all with a huge smile on my face. Thanks doc, how much do I owe you?

hey sister?

Can you have a girl next? I love UJ but I bet he wouldn't let me put this on him. I'm thinking Eli wouldn't like it too much either:)

{Kenziepoo}

Wedded Bliss: Bridesmaid Cards

When I saw how Elise had asked her friends to be her bridesmaids, I loved how clever she was. I decided to make my own cards for my girls. Something simple that would give them a clue as to our colors, and also a note telling them how much we want them to be in our wedding party.


These aren't the exact colors that I have in mind (stay tuned for that post), but we are having dark gray, pink and orange-just not these shades.

Part two

(This post was supposed to be out a couple weeks ago to go along with the post about Chad and my engagement story, but I forgot about it. Sorry if you were waiting long!)

Not only was this weekend about Chad and I getting engaged, it was also the weekend we went down to Milwaukee for the Brewers game. Everything about the day was amazingly smooth. We had no trouble getting there, the TomTom was so precise that at one point, Steve (Chad's dad) exclaimed "I love you, TomTom!" It was the perfect two days to have right after we got engaged. There were no overbearing questions, we just got to get away from the limelight for a little bit and spend time with the family. We had a blast tailgating, watching the Brewers in one of the best baseball games of the night, drinking some beers (aka Diet Coke for me), and just relaxing and knowing we had no place to be.

It was fun to get calls from family and friends who congratulated us on the engagement. I got to talk to my brother and a couple really close friends which was a nice treat. We just kept saying to each other how perfect everything went and how it was simply some of the best days we've spent together.

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure:

Summer Delight

I came across this picture when reading The Kitchn and it made me think of summers in Mankato. My dad grew rhubarb in our garden and I always loved what my mom would make with it. She just recently made rhubarb upside down cake and I won't even tell you how many pieces I had. Here are some more irresistible recipes that I found (and I wish she would try:)-

*Strawberry rhubarb crisp
*Rhubarb cobbler
*Rhubarb crumb bars
*Strawberry rhubarb crumble

Dear July-

You have been around for 6 days and I haven't really told you how I feel about you.

You:
are muggy and humid.
are when I will party on the fan deck for Sara's birthday.
are when I will work the entire weekend of Country Jam.
are when I'll want to move after the first shift of CJ since I hate having to deal with these people.
are the month before my birthday month.
are when my summer class is done.
are when I get to visit my dear friend Jenny with my other dearies Shannon and Danielle.
are when I nurse sunburns.
are when I drink iced tea and go fishing with Love.
are when my clothes can be on the clothesline pole for 5 minutes and they are completely dry.
are when I want to eat Freez.e.pops.
are when Chad and I grill meat about twice a week.
are wonderful even though you make me sweat.

{source}

We are now getting married on

May 15, 2010


Only about 10 months away! Here's what we know:

*Wedding date set.
*Reception venue booked almost completely (just have to sign the contract.) P.S. Those of you who know the area, it's at Wild Ridge.

I will have more details to share maybe in a month or so. Yay!

{source}

This past weekend...

I-
toured our future reception site and got penciled in. (We are no longer getting married on June 5th, instead it will be May 15th due to the fact that it's rather impossible to book a reception site in June since nothing is open. So, we've decided on May 15th since our lovely reception site had an opening-the only unfortunate thing is that it's the day after my graduation. Yikes.)

-floated down a river with some friends. Unfortunately, it was raining and cold for over half of the float.

-ate grilled brats with the family before viewing some fireworks.

-"ooh"ed and "ahh"ed over bright fireworks in the sky

-snuggled with UJ on Sunday. Bliss.

-did no homework and had no responsibility for three days. Then Monday came...

so big

Laura called the house yesterday and said that UJ had his second doctor's appointment. They found out that he is in the 95 percentile of his age group and the doctor said that he was the same size as the average 4-month-old. That is one big guy. I figured that she needed a way to tell how fast he's growing so here are some growth charts that I think she might like-

1-2-3 Grow with me chart by inklore is good because if you ever decide to move you can take it with you. It's not so permanent as a chart on the wall.


This chart found at ohdeedoh is nice as well since it's got more of the chalkboard feel (which I like) and it can be easily fixed if there's ever a mistake made. You can also use it for more than one child.