Camping photos! (sorry if you have Flickr blocked - they won’t work)

Pie iron cooking - We made breakfast sandwiches with bacon, eggs and cheese. Yum!

Zoa decided to take a nap in the sunshine. Good idea!

Dave had to do some last homework to finish up his Masters during the weekend. I think his face says “this sucks” quite well.

Spider! This thing was HUGE! At least for spiders in MN. We “ushered” it off into the woods away from our food and chairs.

It rained for a couple hours, so we ended up in Alyson’s huge tent, playing Farkel. And then we wussed out and ran to the nearby casino to get something hot to drink out of the rain (and left poor Sam and Zoa at the campsite-no dogs allowed in the casino).

Dave, Jess and Sam getting breakfast in the AM. More bacon. Yum!

Overall, camping was great. It was too bad it rained, and the biggest problem with that was that our site had a LOT of trees, so even once the rain was done we didn’t get the sun in there to dry it all out. But most of the time the weather was awesome.

ps. Ryan was there - he just didn’t get any photos of himself.

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In other news…I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping the blog updated as much lately. There is a lot going on in our lives right now, but I feel kind of like Jess, where we aren’t at liberty to talk about it all right now, but it’s foremost on my mind and so it’s hard to talk about anything else (no, we aren’t moving half-way across the country, which is what their news was). I promise we will update you once things are decided, though! Hopefully soon!

I just saw this online, and I thought it was funny…gotta love Stephen Colbert, and I especially love that President Obama is willing to poke fun at himself. hehehe.

Some friends of ours that we haven’t seen in a few months came through town tonight on their way home. We were able to have dinner with them as well as a bunch of our other friends from college that still live in town. It was a nice evening of visiting and laughing. Plus I didn’t have to cook or do the dishes, so that was good news too.

It is interesting to think how things have changed since we all graduated college. People are buying or have already bought houses, and a couple of them are already having kids (I like how I say “already,” even though we are in our late 20s. We aren’t that young). It makes me happy that we still hang out with these people, that even though the things that brought us together (college, pep band) are over, we are still friends. I just wish we all had time to get together more often.

We went camping last weekend and it was great. We had a lot of fun, and the weather was mostly nice. It did rain on Saturday afternoon for a couple of hours, but other than that it was alright. Ryan took a bunch of pictures, and I got him to actually take some of the people that we were camping with, so I’ll try to post some later this week if I have time. It is Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth this weekend, and one of Ryan’s high school friends is running in the marathon and staying with us, so we’ll have a busy weekend. There are usually about 50,000 extra people in town the weekend of the race…we’ll see how it goes this year. I plan on staying in the house as much as possible, other than when we walk down to watch Trent run past.  I’ll try to get some photos of the race too.

It is my dad’s birthday tomorrow. I have had a card ready to send to him for almost a week, and I keep forgetting it at home because I am apparently awesome. (I hope you sense the sarcasm there). There is no excuse for this, so I won’t make one.

I don’t talk to my dad a lot, at least by the standards of most of the people I know. Not because we don’t get along - we get along well, especially now that I’m an adult. It’s more that neither of us are really phone people. I talk to my mom on the phone once every couple of weeks, and that’s about it. I think of the phone as a utilitarian thing…if I don’t need something or have something specific to share I don’t usually call. Not because I don’t want to keep in touch or don’t care. It’s more that I feel like I don’t really have anything to say (And yet I have a blog. The irony is not lost.). I love my dad a lot. He is a typical Northern Minnesotan of Scandinavian heritage…he doesn’t express his emotions much (unless he’s really mad about something). I, on the other hand, usually express enough emotion for the whole family. But for some reason it’s hard to tell him how much I care.

I miss my parents a lot when I don’t get to go home to visit them. Ryan and I haven’t been home since the beginning of March, and I can tell. I get more weepy at cute family stuff (on TV, the internet, movies - whatever), and I get a really strong urge to listen to nothing but country music. It’s weird, because I haven’t lived at home since I left for college, almost 10 years ago, and I was never one to go home every weekend (I couldn’t afford the drive even if I wanted to). When I lived in Delaware for almost a year I only got home once. So it’s not like I’m not used to not being there. But the way I start feeling after a couple months is the reason that I won’t move far away.

I’m going to visit my mom’s parents at the end of this month. It won’t be going home, but it will be close (I love going to see them). And I’ll hopefully get to see my dad and his side of the family the next weekend when we celebrate 4th of July. I don’t know where we’ll be, but we’ll be together.

I know most of you that read are relatives, and so I know that you are still close to your parents. But for the rest of you, are you so lucky?

Ryan and I got married one year ago today. The year has passed quickly, and it’s been a good one great one. I am so lucky to be married to Ryan. I know that sounds mushy and cliche, but I really feel that way.

Our plans for the day are to do some light cleaning this morning, then go out for brunch/lunch, catch a movie, and then spend the evening hanging out at home and watching a movie or catching up on TV (we have several episodes of Arrested Development on DVD that we need to watch).  Nothing super-exciting, but a nice, relaxing day, which is what we want.

Happy anniversary, honey!

So my aunt on my dad’s side of the family started this thing a few years ago that we call “Ladies’ Culture Club”, where the women on that side of the family over the age of 16 are invited to go to a play and then dinner down in Minneapolis. The first year we went to Hamlet, the next year they went to The Wedding Singer (I missed that one), last year we went to Jesus Christ Superstar, and this year we are going to Phantom of the Opera. I’m so excited! I love going to see plays, and it’s a great chance to catch up with people I don’t see often. Most of us don’t live in the same area (NO ONE lives near Ryan and I. Ha.), and so we don’t see each other often.

I will fill you in on what I thought about the play (and about dinner at Hell’s Kitchen) when we get back in town.

Have a great weekend!

It’s 72 degrees outside. The PERFECT summer temperature, in my mind. Not too warm, but not cold enough that you even need a sweatshirt or light jacket. I’ll be comfortable in my short-sleeve shirt.
Now just to decide what to do for lunch that entails somehow being outside as much as possible…DQ and reading on the Lakewalk, maybe???

Photo courtesy of The Not So Daily Blog.

I finally got around to getting our camera out and uploading the photos to Flickr (ps - our account was about to expire, which reminded me that it’s been almost a year since Ryan and I got married. CRAZY!). Here are some of my favorites. The rest can be seen on our Flickr site here. The campgrounds at Scenic State Park sit along Coon Lake, which connects to Sandwick Lake by a little straight, I guess you would call it. We rented canoes for 4 hours while we were there and were able to canoe around both of the lakes most of the way. We also stopped a couple times to check out some of the canoe or hike-in sites that are on the other side of the lakes.  There’s a map of the area here (PDF document), so you can get a better idea of what I’m talking about. There’s a point that goes out in between the two lakes, and there’s a hiking trail out to the end of it. I think it’s about a mile out to the end. You can get some really nice views of both lakes from there, and there are a bunch of informational signs about the kinds of trees and stuff.

The straight between the lakes from the point hiking trail.

Red pines (aka Norway pines) cover the entire point, along with cedar, birch, aspen, spruce and other trees. But the red pines are the most numerous.

Fish along the shore in Coon Lake.

Sandwick Lake from the point.

As you can see, we didn’t get many pictures of the actual people camping - Ryan took all of the photos, and he likes the nature ones. I’ll have to work on that with him.

Camping was awesome. I will try to post pictures later (I need to get all my photos moved to my laptop so I can do that kind of thing). The weather was gorgeous during the day Saturday and Sunday, and we got to go canoeing and hiking through the red and white pines, birch, spruce and aspen trees. The first night was cold (I think it got down into the 30s), but the second night was cool but comfortable. And it didn’t rain before we got everything packed up, even though the forecast said 80% chance of rain and thunderstorms today. So that was awesome.

The loons were crazy, yelling at each other at night, and diving in one place and coming up in a totally different one during the day. Loons are really interesting birds - they have a hard time taking off flying, and aren’t at all good on land. Read more here. After hearing them at night, I can understand why people are creeped out by their calls or think they make a lonely sound. I totally agree. We didn’t see much other wildlife, though - just the loons, some crows and bunnies and LOTS of squirrels. Very friendly (or aggressive, depending on your point of view) - they were running around in our camp all weekend, picking up crumbs and seeds and stuff and chattering at each other.

We put our Pie Irons to really good use this weekend too. We made apple and cherry pies, breakfast sandwiches with eggs, bacon and cheese, and Elvis sandwiches (I hadn’t heard of them before, but everyone else was familiar with the name) with peanut butter, bananas and honey. And we made potatoes and carrots in them the first night, to go with the brandy-marinated arm roast (which was a HUGE hit - thanks, Aunt Janice!). We have decided that we want to try camping for a weekend and doing something with the pie irons for every meal for the weekend. Like dutch oven chili and pie iron corn bread one day, and hot ham and cheese, or sloppy joes or something for lunch. And they are the best kind of cooking utensils - you just wipe them out with a dry paper towel. In fact, you AREN’T SUPPOSED to get them wet/wash them. Awesome.

Anyway, Ryan and I are super-sore from all the canoeing and hiking (and eating), so I think I’m going to call it a night and head to bed.

Ryan Seacrest to Katrina aka “Bikini Girl”: “I was going to ask you what’s new, but I think I know,” (after seeing her obviously bigger boobs compared to when she was on the show previously).

*Idol Spoiler ahead!*

Why can’t I figure
out how to make
more space in here?
The HTML tags aren’t working.
Gah!

First of all, I totally want the soundtrack to tonight’s show. Do you think they’ll put it out that way? I wouldn’t be so lucky, would I? Also, seriously? KISS, Carlos Santana, Queen??? AWESOME. Especially because Ryan’s been talking all season about how Adam reminds him of Freddie Mercury. hahaha. I’m not disappointed that Kris won, because I know that Adam will be signed immediately.

Anyway, yah. Totally awesome. We are saving the recorded show so we can watch it again later because we are awesome like that.