broken celly telly

I've discovered cars and cell phones don't mix. The other day when I was getting into my car, my cell slipped out of my coat pocket. Wouldn't you know, it landed right behind my front tire. Not knowing it was missing, I ran it over when I backed up. Honestly, what are the odds that it would land in the EXACT spot necessary for me to run it over? I can still receive and make phone calls, but the LCD screen is broken and all sorts of pretty colors. Guess I'll be buying a new cell phone.

Lesson learned: phone insurance is well worth it!

good luck

This will be the last one... mainly because I'm getting tired of posting. It was over cast and sprinkling on our wedding day, which meant no horse drawn carriage ride. :-( But I hear rain on your wedding day means good luck...

the newlyweds

This is one of my favorite wedding pictures. It was taken at the auditorium at Backbone State Park, which is where my parents got married and my older sister got married.

the wedding party

And this is everyone! I was really impressed with the four kids. Pictures took a long time and they held out really well. Not quite perfect, but they did a great job.

the girls

per request

I had a request to post more wedding pictures. Jenny Lerch of Dreamcatcher Photography in Arlington did our professionals. She did a fabulous job! I would highly recommend her to anyone!!

moving

Ryan accepted a job as a fire specialist coordinator with the DNR. He will be organizing the wildland fire training for the state. He will be working out of Ames. It is good pay and he'll finally have health insurance for the first time in nearly three years. His first day is Feb. 6. It is a full-time permanent position with funding for two years. Chances are very good they will allocated more funding and he will be extended, however IF they don't find more funding, Ryan has his foot in the door and it will be much easier for him to move within the DNR. He's been waiting for something like this for a long time.

We have started looking for places to live. Apartments are no longer an option now that we have Gus, so we're looking to rent a house somewhere between Ames and the big city for awhile. Once we get down there we might look into buying. For those of you who are down that way, let us know if you find any houses for rent!

I have started the job hunt, which so far has provided a few opportunites that I'm pursuing. We'll see. It's going to be really hard to leave a job I love so much and enter the world of the unknown again. But the move brings us much closer to family and friends. I may be able to stay on with the DCN if I haven't found a job by the time Ryan starts his new job, but it's pretty iffy.

Hopefully we find a decent house and I find a job.... I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Aunt Loretta's chicken

Printed in the DCN Dec. 7

I have a lot of trinkets. Little glass statues of all shapes and sizes, ceramic bowls and vases. Most were gifts from friends and family. Every time I see them, I am reminded of the circumstances in which I received them.
There is the little angel my best friend gave me in fifth grade, the heart shaped ceramic trinket box my brother and his wife gave me for reading at their wedding and the glass votive a friend engraved the Iowa State cyclone into.
I recently added another trinket, and another memory to my collection.
It sat on her kitchen counter, next to her canisters. The milky white glass chicken was perched on its nest. Whenever we visited great Aunt Loretta's house, we asked if the chicken had laid anything for us. With a snap of her gum, she would tell us to go check.
As we lifted the little chicken off its milk glass nest, a trove of treasures was revealed. Sometimes there was hard candy, taffy or tootsie rolls. Never once did that little chicken fail to lay something sweet for her great-nieces and nephews. We always left with pudgy cheeks full of sugary goodness.
Growing up, I was fortunate to live within two miles of my great aunt and uncle. We rode our bikes along the dusty gravel roads to play at their house. We stopped on our way home from town and if we didn't stop we honked - the same pattern every time.
We took haven at their house when we slid through the T-intersection on our way to Christmas Eve mass. Uncle Bob was the first one I called when one of our young horses got into more trouble than I could rescue her from.
Aunt Loretta was a seamstress and made little bridesmaid dresses for my sister and I when our oldest sister got married. I hoped one day she would make my wedding dress.
Every once in a while I am reminded of them. The smell of the nicotine gum Aunt Loretta chewed or the striped bib-overalls Uncle Bob always wore. I was reminded of them again this weekend.
We spent hours wandering through the three story antique mall. I'm not much for antiques so I didn't have any idea what half of the stuff was.
I walked passed a table with vases and statues made of that familiar milky white glass. I paused long enough to spot Aunt Loretta's chicken among the other pieces.
The little white chicken now sits on our counter with sweets for any visitors that come to our home.
While I know it isn't really Aunt Loretta's chicken, it will always remind me of her and my uncle.
After all, those are the best kind of trinkets.

I had planned to just publish my columns from now on, but had a request to post this one.

boys!

Boys do the craziest things! I came home from work yesterday to find Ryan had shaved his head. I don't mean used his clippers on the lowest possible setting - he broke out the Bic. While it was a little... shocking at first, I'm getting used to it. Thankfully, his hair grows fast! I'll see if I can sneak up on him to snap a picture to post.

urban foraging

I saw this on a news show Friday night... It became my column for this week, as printed in the DCN.

Are we wasteful?

Freegan: n. Somebody who abstains from contributing to the economy and salvages society's wasted food and resources rather than purchase more themselves. Often pertains to a 'vegan' (somebody who doesn't eat or wear animal products) who only makes exceptions when dealing with otherwise wasted items.
They have nice jobs, live in a nice home and drive a nice car. And yet just before supper time, they head out to the alleys and back lots of grocery stores, bakeries and markets for a little "urban foraging."
Good old dumpster diving at its best.
They call themselves freegans and refuse to purchase anything from food to toiletries to electronics. Instead they go searching through the garbage for an apple in the roughage, retaliating our society's wasteful nature.
My stomach churned with the images of people picking through dumpsters, pulling out vegetables, bread and other perishable items. The thought of pulling lettuce from a dumpster containing only God knows what else, was deplorable.
While the major grocery and retail stores of our country may be throwing away perfectly good merchandise, the reason is another of society's short comings. This society is not only wasteful, but very quick to spark legal litigation. The only way to protect themselves from a lawsuit is to toss anything that has even the slightest chance of having been damaged or sitting on the shelf too long.
When I was about 12 years old, my dad brought home a case of corn flakes that had been damaged at the warehouse. Because one or two boxes had been perforated with the palate jack, the entire case had to be destroyed.
Dad brought it all home, and corn flakes were a part of every meal for nearly six months. Indeed, all 25 boxes of corn flakes were destroyed, and I refuse to eat corn flakes to this day.
It is a wasteful shame, but what can these companies do when the lawsuit fairy is threatening to wave her magic wand over their business?
I know our society probably throws away more than we actually use, but I prefer health and safety to making a political statement. The news segment said of the freegans they spoke to, none said they had ever gotten sick from their "urban foraging" techniques, although they say it was still very risky.
I've had food poisoning once thanks to a wedding reception meal gone bad - I don't think I'll take that chance.
Happy dumpster diving!

Just a little something to chew on. Tee hee... okay that was bad. My intention is to post my columns each week.

Gus Gus

We got Gus in May as a two-month-old. We named him after watching Lonesome Dove one night. Now he is nine-months-old and full of energy. Ryan's training him to be a bird dog and has been pretty successful so far. He kind of looks like a mistreated caged animal in this picture, but he has a nice warm dog house and we play with him a lot! He was very perplexed by the camera. Normally he sees the camera and runs toward it. Needless to say we have a lot of pictures of his nose!

Our house

For those of you who have yet to see our house (hint, hint!) this is it! It's a quaint little two bedroom. Well, almost two and a half - our front entry is huge! We're renting it from a guy on the Fire Department with Ryan. Ryan says the best part is the dog kennel out back that is now Gus' home. I'll post a pic of the puppy soon enough.

just us

I thought my blog needed a little pizzaz, and I wanted to see if I could figure out how to successfully post a picture. So here we are at the wedding. Hard to believe that was nearly three months ago. Married life is great!

welcome to my blog

While I'm not sure how the whole blog world works, I'm going to give it a whirl. My hope is that it becomes a means to keep family and friends updated on our lives through information and pictures of Ryan and I (Gus too!). So add this site to your 'favorites' and check back every now and then.