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.