Tall Corn Driving Dangers

... that was one of the top stories on the local news station in Lincoln. Haha! Slow news day I guess. Yikes. Slow news day here at home too.

I finished my comprehensive exams today. I'm very happy to have them over with. I'm hoping I passed. It has been a stressful time. I'm sure Erik is happy they are over too. :) We had horseback riding lessons tonight. It went well and I rode Missy afterward and it was so nice. She was collecting nicely and she cantered beautifully. It made me very relaxed.

This weekend we went to the Celebrate Lincoln Ethnic Festival. There was a lot of very good food. Saturday we hung out and the Filmore's came over for the night. I did some studying and Sunday I had a softball game. It was super hot and sticky out. Monday was full of more studying and softball practice. Sometimes people forget that at 6 and 7 years old, first graders aren't going to do everything super well - they are learning, that is what they are suppose to do, not execute plays, maybe just throw with the right form, if they catch it that is great, if not that is okay... that was the lesson for Monday night.

Muffins I made this weekend for our guests.

I added some fish this weekend to my tank. Although it is hard to take pictures of aquariums, I managed to get two decent pictures. The black one is a dalmatian molly. The silver one is the mean blue gouramis. And I have two red wagtail platys. I also have a herd of guppies and a pleco.

1 Month, 6 Days

...until our honeymoon trip to Washington! Yay! We finalized all of our travel arrangements. We are staying at some cool hotels/cabins and doing some camping in some really cool places. We are going fishing and kayaking and seeing cool places! I'm very excited!

This week has been a hot and busy week. Monday I had softball practice with the first graders. I brought ice cream popsicles - wow did they enjoy those. It was my Dad's Father's Day present: a picture of our team, the Met's, with ice cream all over their faces... well I got the picture but not the ice cream all over their faces. It was fun and they don't do team pictures so it will be nice to share the pictures with the whole team.

Wednesday I worked from home and got some laundry and cleaning done too. It was nice to get some of that done. Wednesday was a hot one and we had horseback riding lessons for Windsong. I went through a liter and a half of water while I was out their and still was suffering from a headache from dehydration when I got home. But Erik and I made pizza and that helped. :)

Tonight it is extremely sticky and hot too. (eek, I wonder how we'll survive July and August.) We decided to go out for dinner. We went to OSO Burrito, a local restaurant. It is similar to Chipolte but much better.

School is going well... I take my written comprehensive exams next Tuesday and Wednesday. I'm a little nervous, but I'm looking over things and spending the next couple of days studying.

Tomorrow night we are going to the Celebrate Lincoln Ethnic Festival downtown. The festival is to celebrate the different cultures of Lincoln. We went last year and it was fun. There is good ethnic foods and music.

We have some guests coming this weekend too. Trevor, a friend of Erik's, who played at our wedding, is coming to Lincoln with his punk rock band The Filmore's. I don't know much about it, just that they are coming to visit and play somewhere Saturday night.

FAN-tastic!

Thursday night Erik took me out to eat at the Blue Orchid for my birthday. I had Thai Basil and Erik had Pad Thai. It was very good. We went to the Blue Orchid for my birthday last year too. Afterwards we went to the Ten Thousand Villages store in the Haymarket. I really like that store. It has so many unique items.

Thank you everyone who sent me birthday wishes and celebrated my birthday with me!

Friday, my friends, Kimpy and Jen, threw a birthday party for me. We had a pot luck. It was fun. I made spicy shrimp burgers and Erik made cucumber salad. It was fun to see and try what other people made - it was all so good! I had fun running around with Simon, who is almost 3, catching fireflies, which are out in full force. They are so cool. Nebraska has so many fireflies - I've never seen so many at once.


Saturday, Erik and I sold our grill and bought a Weber Go-Anywhere grill. It is very nice. We also bought a tower fan... a Hawaiian Breeze on sale at Target. It has already been a wonderful purchase. It stayed nice and cool in our apartment today (without the air conditioning) even though it was quite hot outside.

Saturday night we went over to Chris' apartment and grilled out with a group of friends at the pool. It was a good time. It was a good day to be in the pool.

Today, we relaxed and I had a softball game. Erik cooked up some walleye. It was terrific!

Grill Woes

The weekend was an eventful one. Saturday morning Erik worked and I watch the movie Catch and Release. It was cute. It was predictable, but fun to watch for a lazy Saturday morning.
Later in the day I went to a graduation party for a Windsong rider. That was exciting. She was very happy. Then Erik and I finished up the day by watching Night at the Museum. That was a funny movie.

Sunday morning was pretty laid back, until we got a call from a friend, Chris. He had hit a deer Saturday night and needed a ride. Thankfully only the car was hurt and he was fine. He told me he was in Omaha, about an hour drive, but he was really in Missouri Valley, IA. Not a big deal, but it took us a little longer and I'm glad Erik went with me. We were happy to help out. We made it back just in time for the first grade softball game. That was fun. Our team did a great job at batting, but struggled in the field. It was fun and I think the girls had fun which is the most important part. And when I got back, Erik bought me lilies.

Sunday night, Chris came over with his trout that he caught up in Winnipeg. Erik made wildrice with mushrooms and I made broccoli with parmesan cheese. It was a very good meal and picture worthy.


We also went swimming in the pool. It wasn't quite as cold this time. It has had some time to warm up.

Yesterday was a busy day at school and when we came home we found out that we could no longer have our grill... not so much the grill but the standard gas tank to the grill. That sucks. We grill out all the time. We went over to the office and spoke with the property manager about it, with not much resolution, but we did sign a lease to extend our lease another six months. Then I had softball practice and Erik went to go look at options for our grill, maybe to get an adaptor to use smaller gas tanks.

Today we decided our grill is for sale and we are going to get a smaller grill that takes 1 lb tanks instead of 20 lb tanks. Hopefully that will work out and we can still grill.

Windy Week

I no longer have cage-free tomato plants. The wind here has been unbelievable. We have been in a wind advisory for a few days and has taken a toll on thing around here. The plants have suffered, particularly my tomato plants and some of my flowers. At school we lost power and then later internet. There were trees and tree parts all over the bike path. That was fun to bike through, but the toughest part was biking against the wind to get home. At home we lost our cable connection for a while, not that losing cable is much of a big deal.
I have been busy at school trying to be a problem solver by working on some statistics for my project. That has been a bunch of fun. I get sick of it I have to get up and walk around every once in a while. I'm glad I'm not a statistician who does that for a living. Erik has been busy with work and it seems we may be passing in the night for the next week or two.
Wednesday I went out to ride with Christina, lessons were canceled due to the wind. I had a great time. Christina's son came with and he was a lot of fun, but I was tired by the end of the night. He kept calling me 'Aunt Kim', it was cute. Mamasita was fun to ride. Christina had rode her last and it was nice that she work out all the kinks... I just had fun. :)
Last night Erik had a BBQ for work. I finished up Katie's wraps for at camp so she doesn't get her cast/ace bandage all full of paint and campy fun stuff. I just have to get them in the mail later today hopefully.
It seems that everyone I run into had a bit of a rough week and is very thankful for the weekend and I certainly fall into that category as well! TGIF!

Back to Lincoln

Chico munching away

On Friday, I hung out with Katie and checked on all the animals of the place. All the horses, dogs and cats seemed happy and healthy. Later, Mom, Dad, Katie & I went to dinner to McHugh's. I wasn't too impressed my philly cheese steak wrap was extremely oily but everyone else's was good and Katie's was good for lunch. :) Then we all went to Cal's to help Mom pick out flowers. Every year Mom gets flowers to plant in the planters around the pool and in the front of the house for Mother's Day. Katie was insistant on getting yellow flowers.

Later, I met up with Katie and Erin, high school friends of mine. It had been too long since we chatted and I'm sure we could have chatted much longer but Caribou would have kicked us out soon and we all were getting a little tired. It sure was good to see those girls though. It is crazy how time passes so quickly.

Saturday we planted Mom's flowers... That was fun and it was a nice day. The forecast said it was suppose to rain but it was very nice out.

Mom and I planting flowers

Mom and Katie, who is making a weird face.
I think she is getting to use to those shape shifter pictures.

Sunday I was suppose to fly back to Lincoln. I went to the airport, checked my luggage in, walked to the other end of the Minneapolis Airport to wait until it was just about boarding time and find out my flight was canceled. I was frustrated. The flight was canceled because the flight crew didn't show up. Don't you think they should have known a little before we are suppose to board that the crew isn't planning on showing up? So then everyone that was suppose to be on the plane was reassigned new flights. The people early in the line got flights for later that day. I was in the middle of the line and got a flight Monday at 4:45. It worked out though. Mom came and picked me up and I went back to their house for another night. Erik had a nice dinner planned Sunday night, so I spoiled that... or I guess maybe Northwest Airlines spoiled that.

Monday I took Katie out to camp so she could work a half day. That was fun for me too because I got to see some of my campy friends. That was nice! I went to lunch with Erik's Mom at Good Earth in Edina. That was very good and fun. She gave me an early birthday present, so that I could take it on the plane with me. She framed a photograph that I had taken of a ladybug in a stream near Whitewater, Minnesota (same one as in the banner). It is very nice to have it framed!

I made it back to Lincoln last night. I was thankful to be back to my routine today. It was great to see Erik again. I missed him!

Today it was back to school for more work. We had a little slow up due to some materials not getting here on time, but they came today and we'll get back up to speed in no time. I came home and went for a little jog and now I'm relaxing.