Archie, The Three-Legged Cat

I mentioned my parents' cat, Archie, in my last post. Here he is in his Christmas finery :) The missing leg would be in the back on top. He gets around really well. Missing a leg doesn't seem to bother him at all!

Funny People

I will be the first to admit that I'm not really funny. I'm sure that's evident from reading my blog. Informative, maybe, but it's definitely not funny. I do know some funny people, though. I'm even related to a few :)

My husband, Ray, has a pretty dry sense of humor that really cracks me up. He's especially good at writing zingers in emails. Ray sent out one of these emails recently.

My immediate family (parents and siblings) picks names for Christmas. Before picking names, we each write a few ideas of things we might like for Christmas. These lists then go into a bucket and that's how we pick names. We do this on Thanksgiving Day every year and then my mom spends from Thanksgiving until Christmas trying to figure out who has which name.

Recently, my mom sent a silly email out saying that she knew which name everyone in the family has. In response, Ray sent a "picture" of his person's list, to show that Mom had guessed incorrectly. This is what Ray sent:


To explain, my parents have this really cute cat. I wish I had a picture of him, I would have posted it. At any rate, the cat's name is Archie and he's an indoor/outdoor cat. This past spring, Archie showed up one morning with a broken leg. My mom took him to the vet and they said that they couldn't fix the leg. The only thing they could do was to amputate it.

I grew up on a hobby farm, so usually a case like this would have resulted in the cat being put to sleep. My mom had grown really fond of Archie, though, so she had the vet amputate Archie's broken leg. Thus, a new leg is the only thing on Archie's Christmas list this year!


To continue with the funny people theme, I started reading a cute blog recently. It's just called Big Mama and chronicles the life of a wife and mother in Texas. How can you not love reading a blog by someone who can come up with the sentence "She rolled out the dough with the grace and precision of a monkey after too many shots of tequila."?! Too funny :)

Orthodontic Update: Bad News Bears

I had my most recent orthodontist appointment at the beginning of December. I got bands around my last molars on the bottom (fun times).

At the end of the appointment, I asked Dr. Olsen where we were in the process and what he is currently doing with my teeth. He said he's currently turning and lining teeth up. After that, I will get new impressions done (more fun times), and then he'll see if my teeth are lined up properly for the surgery... yeah, the surgery. Dr. Olsen said that it's currently not looking like he'll be able to get my teeth where they are supposed to be without the surgery. Needless to say, I was pretty bummed.

It took me a day to recover from that news, but I'm ok with it now. At this point, I just want to hurry along with things and get the surgery done as soon as my teeth are ready. Let's get this over with already! I'm guessing it still won't be until Fall 2009, but I didn't ask (I think Dr. Olsen is sick of all of my questions!).

*sigh*

ps- How weird is it that I'm trying to look at the surgery positively by thinking that it will be an easy way to lose some weight??? (I'll be on a liquid diet for a couple of weeks after the surgery)

The Schommagel's

Last weekend, I attended my last wedding of 2008. This year has been a busy wedding year for Ray and I. We were invited to at least ten weddings and attended seven, one of which was in Arizona. I stood up in two weddings, and Ray was an usher in one.

Last weekend's wedding was one of the ones that I stood up in. There are three of us girls that went to high school together, Julie, Leah, and I. Julie got married in 2005 and Leah and I stood up in her wedding. Then, I got married last July and had Julie and Leah standing up in my wedding. This past weekend was Leah's wedding, and (of course) Julie and I stood up. Pretty cool!

I don't have a picture of the bride and groom (yet), but I do have one of the beautiful bride before the ceremony:

Me, Leah, Julie

Also, Leah was hoping that her thank-you gift to me would make it into my blog. I'm very happy to oblige since my gift was pretty awesome:


The slippers and socks are from The North Face, where Leah works. The slippers are made of down, and I have been wearing them constantly since I got them. They are really warm and comfy, I didn't even want to take them off long enough to take the picture of them! I don't think I'll ever be able to wear $5 Walmart slippers again :) The bag is also from The North Face and all of the little goodies were inside, a kind of "emergency" bag for the wedding day. Very fun!

By the way, the title of this post is something that Leah made up. Her husband, Craig's last name is Schommer and Leah's last name was Pagel, so before they were married, Leah smooshed their last names together and they called themselves the Schommagels. Pretty cute, huh? Now, of course, they are Craig and Leah Schommer! Congrats, guys :)

Memoir of a Carwash Manager

My brother Neil (the one who recently got married) works as a manager at a local full-service carwash. As manager, he is in charge of the hiring and firing and deals with some interesting people. Here is a story he recently shared with the family:

The following is a completely true story. Liz found it to be very funny so I thought I would see what the rest of you thought. I'm thinking of writing a book. Ok, not really. But I could because things like this happen to me quite regularly.

I employ any where between 30 and 45 employees depending on the time of year. On average I’ve hired 120 people every calendar year over the last three years. I have to increase our staff in the fall to accommodate an increase in volume. Since we have a short period of time to hire a good amount of people, we end up just about hiring anyone. I’m telling you this to justify to myself that it's not my fault that I am surrounded by complete idiots.

On a cold fall morning I had an individual come in to fill out his new hire paper work. He was interviewed by my assistant the day before so this was the first time I was blessed by his presence. I was not surprised by his appearance though. He was 6’2” and maybe 250 lbs. Caucasian. Blonde hair and in his mid twenties. The sides of his head were shaved down to his skin and the long hair on top flowed over his sides and down to his shoulders, a style that was probably cool in the mid 90’s. He had one eye that shot off to his left and was missing a tooth in front of his “grill”. I use the word grill because I assume that is the word he would use to describe it. I had him fill out his W-4, I-9 and other basic paper work, not an easy task as I have found out in time here. He forgot to write his name. His name was James. I figured it would just be easier to fill it out myself. I started to write his name down and asked him if he had a nickname, as James sounds kind of stupid in my opinion.

“Eclipse” he responded. I stopped writing mid word and just sat in my chair for what felt like an hour, more likely it was several seconds.

“What?”

“Yeah, Eclipse. All my friends call me Eclipse."

I continued to sit silently staring at him. I assume he must have thought that I was unsure how to spell it on his W-4 because he stood up, turned, and lifted the hair off the back of his head. Right there, clear as day, tattooed across the back of his head was the name “all his friends call him.” I am glad he showed it to me because I would have made an ass out of myself by spelling it wrong. Of course he spelt it E-K-L-Y-P-S-E. He turned back around seeming very pleased that he was able to settle this miss understanding.

“I was looking for something more along the lines of Jim or Jimmy.” I said with a bit of a smirk.

“No, You can just call me EKLYPSE.”

I took a deep breath, stared him in the one eye that was pointed in my direction and said, “There is no way I’m going to call you EKLYPSE.”

We both sat there silently while I filled out the information he was too stupid to do himself, like his name and address.

Finally I asked. “How did you get the name EKLYPSE?”

He quickly replied with a tone as if it was obvious and I was the idiot, “Well I just came up with it one day.”

After he left I just sat in my office and stared with the light turned off looking into the vast darkness of my meaningless job.

Living Room Remodel

Ray and I have been working on our living room all summer. Ray spent many hours repairing a ton of cracks in our walls and ceilings. That was, by far, the most time-intensive part of this project. My mom helped out a lot once we got to the painting stage. We have a huge living room, so we went through a lot of paint!

The living room is more or less done now (I just have a grate and some shelves to paint, yet... and pictures to decide on and put up). I figured it's time for some before-and-after pictures!!!

Before:

My mom came up with the idea to do an accent wall, and after going back and forth on it for awhile, Ray and I decided to go ahead with the idea and make these two walls the "accent" walls.



We have "blonde" woodwork that definitely has a yellow tone to it. The walls AND the carpet in the living room also had a yellow tone, so everything just kind of washed out. On top of that, the carpet was worn and the padding underneath was almost non-existent. It was time for an update!


After:

We love how the accent walls turned out! As an added plus, our tv is here, so it makes for a good dark movie-watching background. I still have to find something really cool to put on the wall over the fireplace. Ideas, anyone???


The new color in the living room is a very light gray, with the carpet also having a light gray tint. This really dresses up the woodwork! The room looks a lot more elegant, and the carpet actually has padding under it!

Ray and I are both very happy with how the living room turned out, and even happier that it's over!!! We don't plan on repainting this monstrous room again for a long time :) Ray is especially excited to get back to the bathroom project I dragged him away from. It's quite awhile off yet, but those before-and-after pictures will be really awesome!

Orthodontic Update September 2008

The Hyrax came out last Wednesday and top braces went in! The top braces made my mouth a lot more sore than anything else has so far. Hopefully it won't be this bad every time they get adjusted. Today was the first day I could eat normal food without wincing in pain.

My next appointment isn't for two whole months. That surprised me. I guess things are going to go more slowly now that the braces are on. Bummer.

I asked my orthodontist for an update on the likely-hood of surgery. He said he wouldn't know anything more until next year at this time. Grrrr! I hate not knowing! *sigh* I guess the Lord needs to teach me patience somehow. ;)

A New Jochman

Welcome to the family, Liz!

My little brother, Neil, got married on Saturday, August 23rd. I don't have any of the professional photos yet, so the candid above will have to do! It was taken in the limo, which the wedding party took to the photo shoot and then to the reception hall.

It was a fun, busy weekend! I took a half-day on Friday and got a pedicure with Liz, my mom, Liz's mom, and the bridesmaids. There was a quick rehearsal at 5:30 and then we all spent the evening out at my parents' place. Very fun. :)

The ceremony wasn't until 3:30 on Saturday, so I didn't need to get my hair done until 11am and then I got to go home until 2! That was pretty sweet. The ceremony was really neat - Neil and Liz wrote their own vows. Then, they did their signature "high five" before kissing when the pastor said, "You may kiss the bride". Those two are hilarious!

Ray and I had to do a dance for the grand march that we were pretty nervous about. We practiced a cha-cha on Friday night and it went over pretty well on Saturday. We also did some swing dancing and decided that we need to take more ballroom dancing lessons!

And now we have a new Jochman, and a cute, funny one at that! :)

ps- Here's something interesting I realized recently. Three Jochman kids are now married. All three of us have married a middle child that has one older sibling and one younger sibling. Weird, huh?!?

I'm An Aunt!!!

Malia Jane McKnight was born on Saturday, August 2nd, at about 3:20pm. She weighed 7 pounds, six ounces at birth. She's tiny and absolutely adorable, but she has really long feet! She definitely doesn't take after her Aunt Becky in that department. ;)

Malia with her mom, Julie.

Malia with her Uncle Ray.

Malia's Almost Here!

Way back in March, I mentioned that Ray's sister, Julie, was going to have a baby. Well, she's almost here! The baby's name is going to be Malia Jane McKnight and she is due on August 7th.

Ray's family had a baby shower/picnic for Julie and Duke last weekend. At that time, Julie had just had a doctor's appointment and found out that Malia was breach. Not good. Well, Julie had an ultrasound yesterday to check on Malia and she's back to the correct position! I'm thrilled for Julie as a breach baby makes for some difficult decisions for Mommy.

I'm really excited to meet Malia. I am sooo looking forward to being an aunt!

Orthodontic Update July 2008

I went in for my first braces-tightening today. My teeth are a bit sore! Dr. Olsen checked out the Hyrax and said that it gets to come out next time!!! Yes! I hate that thing.

My next appointment is August 27th. I will be getting the Hyrax out, but a bar will be going across the top of my mouth in it's place. I'm not really excited about that, but at least I'll be rid of the Hyrax. I will also be getting braces on my top teeth at that appointment! We're moving right along. :)

We Made It!

On Tuesday, Ray and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary! I can't believe it's been a whole year; the time has just flown by. It's been an awesome year :)

Ray and I both took the day off of work to celebrate our anniversary (Ray had the whole week off, actually). We slept in, and then spent the morning doing yard work. We took a bike ride to a local park for a picnic lunch. Our picnic spot was under a couple of willow trees on the edge of the river. Very romantic :)

We took a nap in the afternoon and went for a nice, relaxing walk after dinner. It was a very enjoyable day!

Oh, yeah, can't forget the cake. It was actually pretty good! The outside was a little dry, but the inside was moist and delicious. Nummy!

Another highlight of the day was the adorable card Ray made for me. He spent a couple of hours on Monday taking pictures of the cats (the cats were less than thrilled!), photo-shopping them, and working on the poem. Don't I have the most amazing husband?!

Backpacking Isle Royale

Life's been pretty busy, so I'm not going to even try to provide a synopsis of the backpacking trip. Besides, Angela already did an awesome job of it! Here's a photo of the gang:

Yardwork

The old pine tree in our backyard is gone! We had it taken down today. I'm wishing now that I had taken a picture of it before it got taken down. I don't have a "before" picture, but here's an "after" one:


The tree-looking pole in the background is a telephone pole. I plan on planting some lilac bushes in that area. I love lilacs!


I also thought it would be fun to post a picture of the red maple we planted last fall in the front yard. When it was planted, it was just a stick, but now our stick has leaves! Yeah :)



Someday, we'll look at that picture and (hopefully) have a hard time believing that the maple was once this small. Life is fun!

Arizona Trip: Saturday and Sunday

I'm finally getting around to posting about the rest of our Arizona trip! Life's been very busy :)

Ray and I got up pretty early on Saturday morning (we never did adjust to Arizona time). We randomly chose to do a hike up Schuerman Mountain. I picked out a geocache that was on the hike, so I was able to add Arizona to my geocaching map! The trail was nice and had excellent views of the red rocks.

After our hike, we stopped for milkshakes at a crazy little diner called The Red Planet Diner. I call it a crazy diner because it's all about aliens and alien sitings. I guess it goes with the area since there are supposed to be lots of "vortexes" in Sedona. (insert eye roll here!)

We made a quick stop by the Chapel of the Holy Cross. This church is so beautiful. You can see the cross from a really long way away. Just awesome! (Blogger's giving me problems with loading pictures right now, so I'm afraid you'll have to click on the link to see the chapel.)

The wedding was at 3pm. It was very nice and low-key... and even shorter than Ray's and my ceremony! After dinner and mingling, Ray and I almost walked into a couple of boars! They were on the sidewalk in the middle of town. Very strange! I have no idea if that is normal or not, but we kept our distance.

Sunday was another early morning and another long flight (this time delayed). We were glad to be home!

Arizona Trip: Day 1

The Arizona trip hasn't been quite as exciting as our DC trip, but we are having fun! The first thing I have to say is that getting up at 3:45 in the morning is NOT fun. Secondly, did you know that AirTran is a very prompt airline? Luckily, we were on time, so it was ok!

The flight to Phoenix was really long, but the plane wasn't full, so Ray and I got to stretch out. It was a pretty decent experience, all things considered. When we arrived in Phoenix, we ran into Aaron Schlicht! We've now run into three friends in airports during our last two trips. Craziness!

Arizona is probably the weirdest place I've visited as far as the landscape is concerned. There's no grass anywhere and really tall cacti all over the place. I would consider Arizona to be more different from Wisconsin than even Jamaica (landscape-wise)!

We did manage to go on a hike this afternoon. There was a nice breeze in Sedona that kept it from getting too hot. I'm a little worried I might have gotten a little sunburned, though. I'll eventually post a picture from our hike.

We hiked around Courthouse Butte and Bell Rock. To be honest, neither Ray nor I thought that Bell Rock looked like a bell. Kinda funny! We did lose the trail for awhile and I was getting nervous. We eventually found the trail again, though, so I'm alive and well at the hotel right now!

Soooo tired. Must sleep....

Orthodontic Update May 2008

Yesterday was my orthodontist appointment. As I said last month, Dr. Olsen was going to decide whether I needed to continue cranking the Hyrax. He said I was all done cranking! He put a wire in the Hyrax so it doesn't accidentally crank on it's own. The Hyrax will still stay in for another four months, though. :(

I was then informed that at my next appointment in June, I will be getting braces on my lower teeth! Wow! I had no idea that would be happening so soon. He will try to get my lower teeth to "tuck" under my upper teeth. Dr. Olsen said I'm still "on the fence" as far as surgery goes. There's still a chance I might be able to avoid it. It all depends on what my lower teeth do.

So, in a month I will have braces! On the one hand, I'm not looking forward to it at all, but on the other hand, this means things get done and over with that much sooner.

I'll let you know how the braces installation goes. :)

Washington DC Trip: Heading Home

Monday dawned, and it was time to leave our dear friend Tom and his east coast fun. Before dropping us off at the airport, we stopped by a local park to look for a geocache and some basketball courts. We couldn't find the geocache, but Ray and Tom found the basketball courts! They played some rousing one on one and had a blast!

The trip home was pretty uneventful. I highly recommend Washington DC to anyone. It's a great place with tons of educational, architectural, and entertaining things to do. It's even better when you have a tour guide named Tom Hanks. ;) Thanks for the good times, Tom!

Washington DC Trip: Sunday

Our last day in DC :(

It was cloudy and a bit chilly on Sunday morning. We found an awesome parking spot right in the middle of the three things we wanted to see! First, we walked back to the White House. Lots of success this time; we had a beautiful view. We meandered around and saw the front of the White House as well. It wasn't quite as grand, but we were much closer. We imagined the president sitting in there somewhere reading the paper in his underwear (we didn't "picture" it, just imagined the general idea of it!).

We then walked over to the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum. That place was a zoo! Kids everywhere! We still managed to see some neat meteors, gems, jewelry, animal skulls, and the like. We also saw the Hope Diamond. I actually wasn't that impressed. It was big, but I thought some of the other jewelry there was prettier. We also went through a gallery of nature photographs. They were amazing, stunning, whimsical, sad, endearing, everything you can imagine. It was probably my favorite part of the museum.

We ate lunch at the Nancy Hanks building. There is a tower there with bells at the top. The bells were donated to the US by Westminster Abbey. We were hoping to tour the bell tower, but couldn't because the bells were being rung for six hours for some special occasion.

We then left DC and went south to Mount Vernon, home of our first president, George Washington. Mount Vernon was definitely a highlight of the trip. The grounds are meticulously maintained with fantastic landscaping (I'm running out of adjectives to describe how great everything was!). The mansion is in excellent shape and we got to see the room and very bed that President Washington died in.

One cool thing I learned is that Martha was 4'11" - about the same height as me! One of her gowns was on display in the museum, and it looked like it would fit me! George, by the way, was taller than Ray at 6'2". That's quite a height difference!

Exhausted, we started our drive back to Raleigh. It rained almost the whole way, with major downpours during much of the drive. After much discussion (Tom), indecision (me), and irritation (Ray), we ate dinner at a Cracker Barrel on our way back. Tom almost left Ray at a gas station while the two argued over who was going to pay for gas! Lol! A very fun day.

Washington DC Trip: Saturday

Saturday morning saw Tom, Ray, and I getting up early, as usual! We rushed into DC to get in line for tickets to tour the Capitol building. It's free to tour, but you need to get there early to get tickets. Our tour time ended up being 11:40am, so we walked over to the Library of Congress to blow some time. The Library of Congress is a beautiful building (they all are in DC!), with elaborate quotes on the walls and carvings in the marble staircases. We got to peek into the main reading room, which is stuffed full of books. It was a very interesting place, I wish we had had more time to spend there.


We got back just in time to ask some fellow Wisconsinites to take our picture and head in for our Capitol tour. They are just about finished with their Visitor Center, so things were a little chaotic and we lost our group! We almost got escorted out by a security guard, but Tom sweet-talked him into trying to find our group. We never did find our group, but we snuck in with another group and learned some cool facts.

Next up was a drive out of DC and over to the Smithsonian's other Air and Space Museum. By this time, my feet were killing me from two days of walking on pavement went I'm not used to it. I let Ray and Tom wander around while I sat for a bit. I did get to see a Concorde airplane, a Blackbird, and the space shuttle Enterprise. Monsterous machines, all of them!

Saturday night was our relaxing night. We ordered some really good pizza to the hotel. The guys then watched some NBA finals while I worked on this blog and caught up on some reading. A very fun day!

Washington DC Trip: The White House Adventure

Ok, here is the promised “White House Adventure” story.

Ray, Tom, and I decided to walk past the White House on Friday evening. Upon arriving on the south side (which is actually the back of the White House), we saw that the road was blocked off. Getting closer, it became clear that we were not going to be allowed to walk past the White House. We hung around, wondering how long the sidewalk was going to be closed.

Finally, we decided to talk to a Capitol police officer who was obviously there to make sure nobody tried getting to where they weren't allowed. He was very nice and told us that a helicopter was going to be landing on the White House lawn and that was why the area was blocked off. He wasn't sure how long it was going to be, but didn't think it would be long.

We chatted with the police officer for awhile longer and decided to hang around and hopefully see the helicopter landing. There were a lot of people around, and some seemed to not notice that the area was blocked off (one spot in the road was left without barriers for vehicles leaving the secured area). Every couple of minutes, someone would try walking down that road instead of staying on the sidewalk, where they would have seen that it was blocked. They wouldn't get very far before a secret service officer would loudly blow his whistle and tell the person to get back.

After seeing this happen a couple of times, the three of us started trying to predict which people walking by would try to make it past the tough SS guy. We also tried to figure out how far down the road they would make it before the SS guy blew his whistle at them. We got quite a few laughs out of it and even had some Danes nearby laughing with us. Then, the Capitol police officer caught on to what we were doing, and he was laughing, too! Fun times!

A few people tried getting through the SS guy with White House passes, but he just yelled out, “I don't know what that means” or “That means nothing to me.” This guy was tough! Finally, some other secret service officers walked down the road. First, they showed their White House passes. No go. Then, they showed some other type of pass (we couldn't see what). The SS guy replied, “THAT I understand.” They got through :)

We never did get to walk past the White House that night. We got some awesome pictures on Sunday, though!

Washington DC trip: Friday

For anyone who doesn't know our friend, Tom, he is a "go, go, go" kind of guy. Vacations are no different as far as Tom's concerned. He had us up and showering a little after 6am on Friday. As soon as we were ready and fed, we headed to DC.

It was a 4-hour drive from Raleigh, and we made a pit-stop at Tom's favorite restaurant, McDonald's, for lunch. We parked our car near our hotel and took the metro train the last 20 miles into downtown DC. The timing was perfect! We parked the car, got our tickets, and stepped onto the train right before it left :)

Upon arriving in DC, we headed to the National Air and Space Museum. It was filled with tons of planes, space craft, and information about these things. We all touched a moon rock (photo to right is of Tom touching the moon rock)!

After seeing all of the sights at the Air and Space Museum, we decided to go visit Tom's state representative's office to pick up some tickets he had requested. We walked past the US Capitol Building on our way - it is beautiful!

We all felt a little intimidated inside the building where our representatives' offices are. It's a very quiet building and we had to go through security (just like we had to everywhere in Washington DC). We found the North Carolina office and, like the sign said, just walked in! The front desk guy was very nice, but we didn't get to see Tom's representative or anyone else "important" while we were there ;)

Next up was a completely unplanned trip to the US Botanic Garden. There were plants there from all over the world, from tropical ferns to cacti. There were also plenty of fragrant flowers in bloom (yes!).

By this time, we were all starving! We started heading in the general direction of the Lincoln Memorial, looking for food. We weren't coming up with much, so we finally settled on a place that looked a bit more expensive than we had hoped. The food was good, but the service was mediocre.

After dinner, we continued on. We decided that since we were close, we'd do a quick walk-by of the White House. On the way, we found awesome ice cream and a bunch of restaurants that looked much more like what we had hoped to eat at. Doesn't that figure?!

Ok, where to go from here...the White House adventure really deserves it's own post, so I think I'm going to blog about that separately. You'll have to wait!

After the White House adventure, we stopped by the Washington Memorial. We didn't go in, just saw the outside - very impressive. Our last stop for the evening was the Lincoln Memorial. That was awesome! It has amazing architecture and just looks majestic, especially after dark. The statue of Lincoln is huge! They also had the entire Gettysburg Address on one wall. It was very moving to read.

Exhausted, we found our train and headed to the hotel. I wore my pedometer and we walked over 21,000 steps on Friday! That's a new record for me while wearing the pedometer. It's good exercise walking around Washington DC :)

Washington DC Trip: Thursday

Ray and I left on Thursday afternoon for our trip to, first Raleigh, NC, and then Washington DC. Our flight had been delayed from 2:30pm to 4:30pm, so we had plenty of time Thursday morning to take it easy. It was really nice, it felt like we were retired!

We went for a nice, long, and leisurely walk in the morning. Then, we stopped at REI in Milwaukee on the way to the airport and picked up some pants for our upcoming backpacking trip. Yes!

Once at the airport, we ran into our friend Mustafa and chatted for awhile. Mustafa left for home and we found out that our flight had been delayed because of plane maintenance. While waiting for a new plane, we ran into our friend Jamie! It was pretty crazy.

We finally got to Raleigh at about 9pm (Tom's time). Tom took us out to a very late dinner and we got to see his place and listen to him play the piano.

Stay tuned for day two!

I Love Barbershop Quartets!

On Saturday night, Ray and I went to see the Fox Valley Aires Barbershop Chorus perform at Pathways Church. It was so much fun! They performed a play called "Love...Finally" about a bunch of rough men in a town where the women are scarce. A couple of women from a city where the men are scarce come to town and the men try to win them over by singing. It was really cute.

A lot of songs were sung by the entire choir of men, but there were some quartets stuck in for good measure. The quartets are my favorite. They also had a quartet, Main Street Station, perform apart from the musical. These guys are amazing! Definitely check out their Myspace page and listen to Love Potion 9. So cool!

Orthodontic Update April 2008

I wrote a little about my upcoming braces and surgery over at my Family and Finances blog in the past, and I've decided to move that topic over to this, my personal blog, for obvious reasons.

I went to the orthodontist today for a check-up on how the Hyrax is working. Dr. Olsen was very happy with my progress. He wants me to crank the appliance only once a week for the next four weeks. When I go in for my next appointment on April 30th, he'll see if I can stop cranking! I didn't ask how much longer the Hyrax would have to stay on after the cranking stops. He had originally told me six to eleven months, but I've been cranking it every four days instead of weekly up to this point.

I'll post another update next month!

The Gray Old Mare

She's actually a palomino mare, but the title sounded fun! I went out to the folks' house today, and Mom and I brushed my horse, Silky, out. She's shedding A LOT! We joked that we had enough fur on the ground to create a second horse :)

Silky's doing really well for being 21 years old. Horses usually live to about 30, so she's definitely in senior citizen territory now. I guess she's still feeling pretty good, because she kicked my dad in the arm a couple of weeks ago. Horses can get really sassy when they sense spring coming, and we think that's why she kicked Dad. I swear she's not a dangerous horse - she hasn't kicked anyone in years!

At any rate, she seemed to enjoy getting brushed out. Shedding is an itchy undertaking!

Check out all that hair!

Hello, Daffodils!

Here's the promised picture of the daffodils that are coming up in the front yard!

It's Spring! (almost)

Today Ray discovered that our tulips and dafodils are peeking up through the ground! I'm so excited for this first real sign of spring, especially since there's still snow on the ground :(. My hycinth hasn't come through yet, but should be any day now.

Ray and I took a walk tonight and noticed that a lot of trees have buds now, too. Our brand new little red maple has buds, so it looks like it made it through it's first winter!

I'll try to get a decent picture of the tulips or dafodils and post it soon :)

The House on the Rock

Ray and I took a little daytrip down to Spring Green to see The House on the Rock today. I'd been to this attraction before, about nine years ago, but Ray never had. We had a great time :)

The picture above is of the Infinity Room. This room sticks out of the actual house into thin air above some trees. As you can hopefully tell in the picture, the room just gets smaller and smaller as it goes. You can feel it move as you walk when you get out aways, so it's pretty freaky!

In case you've never been to The House on the Rock, the first part of the tour is of a house that was literally built on top of a rock cliff and lived in by it's architect, Alex Jordan. Alex Jordan was influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, and you can definitely tell! The remainder of the tour is of rooms upon rooms of weird and interesting collections. Many of them were Alex Jordan's own collections.

The only thing we were bummed about is that we didn't bring any cash with us. They take credit cards for the admission tickets, but you need cash to buy tokens. You need tokens to get all of the automated orchestras to play for you. We could easily have gone through about $20 worth of tokens. I think we'll actually go back again later this summer just to listen to all of the orchestras!

The House on the Rock is a fascinating place. I totally recommend it. Just make sure you plan to spend a good three hours there!

It's a Girl!

Ray just told me that his sister, Julie, is having a baby girl! I'm going to have a niece!

We've know that Julie was pregnant since right after Christmas, but she just now found out that it's going to be a girl.

I'm just realizing that a new chapter in my life is opening. All of our friends and siblings are getting to be that age, and we'll probably be getting a lot of baby announcements over the coming years. At least babies are more fun (and less expensive for me) than weddings!

Norman's News

I originally titled this blog simply "Ray and Becky". However, when I was thinking of a name for my financial blog, Family and Finances, Ray suggested the name "Norman's News". It didn't seem right for the financial blog, but it's perfect for this one!

I guess I should explain who Norman is. I am Norman. My husband, Ray, loves to give people nicknames, and a couple of months ago my nickname became "Norman". When we were dating, he called my "Beckers" for awhile, but it just didn't fit quite right. After getting married, he settled on "Norman". It's stuck. I call him "Gimpy" from a basketball injury he had awhile back.

So that's us. Ray and Becky. Gimpy and Norman. Welcome to Norman's News!

Introduction

I am a newly married woman and have decided that this is as good a time as any to start a blog about my life with my husband. I hope to post about things going on in my life so that, at the very least, maybe my children will someday want to read about my/their life. My goal is to keep the posts fairly short so that if my currently-non-existent children do want to read it someday, it will be an easy read. I figured a wedding picture would be a good place to start, so here it is!

Ray and I were married on July 1st, 2007 at the Medina Wedding Chapel in Wisconsin.