It finally slows down (warning 3 weeks of craziness)

The past few weeks have been non-stop. Traveling every other weekend to weddings and to visit family have been so wonderful, but I'm glad for it to finally slow down!

It all started with Julie's wedding, in Pella, IA. Small dutch town, known for Pella Windows, tulips and windmills. It was a neat reunion with a few Kansas City friends and an excuse for my new husband and I :) to go to our first wedding together! Food was great, bride was beautiful, dancing was fun and 4 hr drive there not bad at all.

Weekend after that I got to my first Minnesota sporting event, we got a free ticket to see the MN Golden Gophers play football and went with a few friends. It was neat to be at a college football game (even it if wasn't the Deacs) and lucky for us they killed Purdue, so aside from being a tad chilly (a nice 40 degrees) it was a fun time! We grilled out with the friends afterwards at our place, so it was really nice to finally have a place bigger than a box so that we could host people for a second week in a row!


The next week flew by and I headed to NC to have the first visit with my family since I had been married! Of course, I left Mark at home :) I got to see my brother's new house, walk and play games with the family, we headed to the Blue Ridge to catch the last bits of fall colors (mainly brown) and visited with my Grandmother. Even though the weekend was short, it was wonderful to get to spend the time with my family. (My dad took some better pictures... I can't find them right now but they were good !)

The next week was one of the craziest weeks of my time here in MN! I got into the MN airport Monday afternoon, took public transportation (light rail + bus) into our little Minneapolis neighborhood and slept the day away because I had woken up at 3:30 to get to the airport! Then Tuesday night I had my first "grad' school class I'm taking with my district. Wednesday was Halloween and we went Trick-or-treating with Max and went to Pizza Nea for a last minute groupon date night! (about to expire of course). Thursday night and Friday morning were parent teacher conferences and Friday afternoon I left for Denver to go to CATHY's wedding!

Wow, it was such a neat time. I enjoyed my wedding of course, but there is something about being in wedding with some of your best friends, not having to worry if everything is going to go right, or about logistics, that is just fun and care-free! Cathy looked beautiful, we went for a hike in Boulder, had snuggle and giggle time on beds, and danced the night away. It was just perfect!

 Andrea and I like to be silly model poses :)


Luckily this week things finally slowed down (aside from the election-which went exactly how I wanted it in MN!). I was able to get back into normal routine, gym, clean house, cook, walk dog, watch silly reality tv, and we enjoyed a pretty relaxing weekend! Last night we went to celebrate a friend's end of being on campaign, but today another day of lazy do nothing but cook and watch football :) It's snowing which I still find exciting, but tomorrow's high is 29, so we'll see how much I like MN winter in a few months :)

neat view from our walk this week of skyline

Suffice it to say, I'm excited to do nothing the rest of the day, and may finish the leftovers from this morning's "Steve Aronson" breakfast for lunch with some homemade soup!

                            black bean and butternut squash soup

bacon, eggs and potatoes