More Wedding Updates

These will end eventually. I promise.

Anyway, we met with La Sure's yesterday about the cake. These pictures were taken with Adam's cellphone so they're not of A+ quality, but you can get the idea.

This is the design on the cake. It's like little stars with dots between them. You can see it best around the edges there.


This is how the cake will actually be arranged. Rather than have it in layers, we decided to separate them and have them go up in kind of a circular staircase manner. We also plan to put votive candles in the center of each layer.


This is the (blurry version of the) topper we chose.


All three of these are in the photobucket album in their bigger versions.

Next Thursday we have a meeting with a photographer. We're not sure he's the one we will go with, but his prices are reasonable (even has a discount for being on a Friday) and he comes highly recommended. After that is flowers and then the dress. Argh.

Mother Goose & Grimm Comic 6/25

This comic struck me as hilarious:



Bwahahahahaha!

Camping, Etc.

We’ve got our second camping trip arranged and reservations for a site made. We’ll be heading clear across the state to Merrick State Park July 14-16. This particular park is about 15 minutes from Winona, MN, so we’ll be meeting up with my friend Justin at some point during the weekend. It looks as though this park is relatively small and I’m not really sure what there is to do in that area. Our reserved site is very close to the bathrooms and showers so that should be nice. Adam is still undecided about whether we’ll be bringing a boat this time. I leave that completely up to him. I’m at his mercy to whether or not I get to hover in a boat by a dock, hanging on for dear life or not. :) Hee hee. It wasn’t that bad. Once we get the boat in the water and get out there it’s pretty fun. It’s the getting in and out that suck.

Our last two trips are as yet unplanned. We’re hoping Catherine and Tony can join us for one of them. That trip will probably be down to Mirror Lake (or another park in the area) again. Adam would like to go up near Chippewa Falls once but we’re not sure that long drive is worth it. We’ll see how things turn out. All we hope is that the weather is decent for at least one of the weekends. Otherwise we might lose our will to camp entirely.

This weekend will be pretty low key. Adam works tonight and we’re planning on perhaps going out a little after he gets home. Tomorrow we have to go over to The Meadows in the afternoon to sign the contract. Yeah, the lady completely forgot to have us sign the contract when we were there on Wednesday. I’m not sure if this is a bad sign or not… I think she was just in a hurry to get us out of there. It looked like her daughter was there and she probably wanted to get home. Anyway, so we have to do that and then Adam work a few hours in the evening. He also works most of the day Sunday. I’m not sure what I’m going to do during all that time alone. Maybe torture the critters a little, catch up on some reading. Depending on the weather I might do some cooking/baking. We’ll see how things shape up. There’s no real pressing matters to attend to so I could realistically watch tv all weekend. But I won’t. Hopefully.

A Random Update Post

Been slacking off on the whole blogging thing lately. There are a couple of things to update everyone about.

Wedding-related (of course you can check out the website for info, but I figured I’d elaborate here):

*We had our meeting with the woman from the reception hall last night and we paid our deposit to hold the site. It’s pretty much perfect. It should be a good time. They were set up for a 240 person reception when we were there and since ours will be less than half that large, we should have plenty of room to spread out and mingle. We’ll be talking color selection and menu nitty-gritty sometime next year. It should be nice. The people there are very flexible and seem to want to make things work the way we want.

*We bought our rings this past weekend. Pictures are posted on the photobucket wedding site. They’re pretty basic, although perhaps not exactly traditional.

*The wedding party is all confirmed. My side includes Catherine W. (friend from college) as my maid of honor and Catherine D. (sister) as my bridesmaid. Adam’s side has Dave (his cousin) as his best man and Tony (his friend) as his groomsman. It’s small, but important. I hope to get pictures of everyone up on the website sometime soon.

*We meet with Father Mike this evening. We have no idea what to expect from this meeting. I’m hoping to avoid a third-degree type conversation and I’m also hoping to avoid an “I’m not converting no matter what you say” type conversation. Heh. I’m not too worried about it though. He seems like a nice guy.

*We plan to look at flowers in August since that’s the time of year of our wedding and I’d prefer to get things that are in season. We have an inside connection with a florist in the area since Adam’s aunt works there.

*Most of the other elements (dresses, music, lodging, gift registries) can wait until later. I’m trying to get the big stuff out of the way so I can forget about it for awhile. I don’t want to be one of the obsessed people who can think and talk about nothing but their wedding. (Don’t look at the blog recently as a supporting point for me doing that right now. I promise, I’ll shut up about it soon.)


Not Wedding-Related:

*I am so far behind on my book challenge right now it isn’t even funny. I don’t think I’ve read a page in about 2 weeks. Argh! Hopefully I’ll get back on track soon. The year is half over already. Gotta pick up the pace!

*I recently purchased my third Rachael Ray cookbook and have begun cooking my way through the pages. I’ve posted a couple new dishes on the cooking blog in the past few days. I’m trying to branch out a little so I’m going to try a few fish recipes (salmon and cod) in the near future.

*The office move across town was successful. I’m pretty much acclimated to my new surroundings. Well, that is, I was until they told me they were moving me to the Banner accounting team. I’ve spent the last week preparing to transfer my New London responsibilities to the plant accountant at CSF and this afternoon is a meeting about what I’ll be taking over for the Banner people. It looks as though it will be mostly inventory valuation and job costing. Not sure if I’ll like it yet, but we shall see.

*Country USA started yesterday and although it hasn’t been too bad yet, I have the feeling that by tomorrow I’ll be cursing country music fans. It’s ironic that we moved across town so we’ll avoid the EAA mess, but we moved early enough to get stuck with the Country USA traffic right down the street instead.

New Wedding Website

Ok, so that weddings.com website just wasn't doing it for me. Everytime I went back to update something everything had disappeared. It was so annoying. So we took the plunge (heh) and bought a domain of our own. Take a look at our new website: marthaandadam.com

It's kinda stupid-looking but I'm working on it.

Yet Another One

Seriously, we've got problems. Yesterday we went to PetSmart to get some more bedding for the hamsters. I asked Adam if he thought Mo was lonely since he didn't seem to do much besides sitting there, staring into space. He said maybe and then decided to buy another guinea pig to keep him company. Apparently they like cagemates. So we picked out a cute tan one and brought him home. They haven't killed each other yet so that's a good sign.

This new one is named Larry. So they're Larry and Mo. Like the Three Stooges... Get it? Ha ha. I kill myself...

Sears Grand (!)

On the way home from camping this past weekend we decided to stop at the new Sears Grand store in Oshkosh and see how it looked. Remember, this is the old Kmart store. It has definitely changed. It looks as though they gutted the entire interior and started over. They moved major parts of the store and created a much brighter, cleaner atmosphere. They even re-did the bathrooms so they’re not totally scary anymore. We browsed through their selection of merchandise and even checked out the appliance section. I must say they cleaned the store up pretty well. Then I saw a few of the people I worked with when I was there and it was the same old stuff all over again. Apparently a lot of people were bumped out with the transition. Who’s to say I would have survived it either? I’m just still glad to no longer be working there.

That said, I keep going back and forth as to whether I want to get a second job to make some extra money (weddings aren’t cheap) and occupy some of my free time. Every time I get to thinking it would be a good idea I think about how I’d lose all that down time and the freedom to do stuff on weekends. I really don’t know what I want to do. Maybe I’ll work during the holidays or something.

Wedding Update

There's not a lot of updating to do, but I figured I'd post what I have.

We have two meetings next week: one with the place we want to have the reception - The Meadows, and one with Father Mike - the one who will be marrying us.

The Meadows is "holding" our date for right now which is something they apparently don't do but Adam had some connections or something. Unless there's something completely surprising or uncool, that's probably where the reception will be. We were there last September for a Cisco event so we know how it's set up and what the food is like. It's basically just event-specific stuff I want to talk to them about.

The meeting with the priest is pretty much to get things rolling on the church side of things. I don't think we'll start the marriage prep stuff until early next year, but I'm sure there's more to talk about than just that.

I've been doing research on photographers, flowers, cakes, and all kinds of other wedding-y things. At some point I'm going to have to sit Adam down and make some decisions before anything can really come of any of that research.

Being the absolute food network junkie that I am, I had an epsiode of "Unwrapped" on the other day and they were having a "Wedding Weekend" or something so it was all about wedding related foods. A customized fortune cookie wedding favor caught Adam's attention so we're thinking we might try and do that. I had originally thought personalized Hershey bars, but maybe we can do both. :)

We bought invitations a few weeks ago. From Wal-mart. On clearance. They're totally cute though, white and silver with an embossed bride and groom in the corner. Adam's mom will be printing them for us at the church office.

We're still looking around at all the options for rings. It would make the most sense to buy the matching ring from the jeweler he bought my other ring from but we weren't the happiest with their service and the sale they were running has since ended. We have plenty of time to comparison shop, of course, but it's still out there on the to-do list.

I'll be looking into lodging in the area soon. The wedding itself is in downtown Appleton but The Meadows is in Neenah/Menasha so it will be everyone's choice where they'd want to stay. There are plenty of hotels (La Quinta, Holiday Inn, etc) right off the highway in Appleton and there's a DaysInn in Neenah. I guess I'll need to sound people out as to where they might want to stay and then see if I can get a special rate code to give out. I'll keep everyone posted on that.

Ugh, I get tired just thinking about all the stuff I have to do.

In any case, things are progressing slowly. If anyone has suggestions or anything, feel free to leave comments.

Camping Trip #1

So this past weekend was the first of four planned camping weekends. We reserved a campsite down at Mirror Lake in Baraboo. Things started off kind of rough when we realized right outside of Fond du Lac that we had forgotten something kind of important (hint: rhymes with "girth patrol mills") so we had to turn around and go back home to get them.

On the road again, we made it generally unscathed down to Baraboo. The state park was easy to find and we got checked in around 4:00. We headed to the campsite and set up the tent. It was much easier this time since the pole arrangements had been kept intact from last summer. After camp was set up we hopped back in the car and went to take a spin in the boat. It was raining as we dropped the boat in and continued to sprinkle throughout most of the boat trip.

After we hauled the boat back out of the water we decided that since it was only 6:00 or so we would head to HoChunk Casino just down the road. We both lost our $20 and ate at their Stand Rock Buffet. They had a big Friday fish fry special which Adam loved. After eating too much we went to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things: bait, ice, an umbrella... We also got to see the world's biggest Menards. Trust me, it's big. By the time we got back to our campsite it had begun to rain again so we vetoed the campfire idea and decided to call it a night a little early. We got the best sleep of the night between about 9pm and midnight.

It rained all night, varying intensity and direction. We got up twice during the night to walk to the bathrooms and each time it seemed to starting pouring the second we opened the tent. It appeared the tent had a leak but perhaps it was just condensation because of the temperature difference. It was cold. Very cold. The air mattress was pretty much completely deflated by about 2am. *sigh* It was a long night.

The alarm went off at 5:30, but we had been up for an hour or so at that time. We had planned to go for an early-morning fishing trip but since it was still pouring we nixed that and headed to the showers. They totally sucked. No water pressure, hot hot water. Ugh. So that made me increasingly crabby. I mean when I went back to the car I dropped a dirty sock on the ground and that made me swear up a storm. Not a pretty sight. After calming down a bit we headed to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Adam had been so psyched when he saw that there was a CB right off the highway next to our campground.

After consuming mass amounts of greasy food we drove into downtown Wisconsin Dells to see if there was anything we wanted to do. We decided to take a tour on the Original Ducks. I know I had been on one years ago but Adam had never been. After waiting in a full duck for about half an hour, our tour guide, Topher, finally boarded and we were on our way, barreling through the woods and diving into lakes. It was a fun time. It left us slightly damp and very cold, so for our next activity we decided to do an indoor one - Tommy Bartlett's Exploratory. Good, clean, educational fun.

After partying with robots and whispering sweet nothings to each other in the whispering dishes we decided to try out Moosejaw pizzeria and brewery for lunch. Our server was a very nice Bulgarian named Dimitar. He was definately attentive. Adam had elk while I stuck with chicken. We also had some of their blonde bock and Adam got a half gallon of that to go. More on that later.

After lunch I felt crappy so I wanted to go back to the campsite and take a nap. Adamm was antsy so he went down to the pier and did some fishing while I slept off the booze. When he returned we headed down to Lake Delton to do some more boating and fishing. It was easier to get the boat in the water this time but then the motor wouldn't start. All the cranking and carb fluid and help from a fellow Fox City marina worker wouldn't get it going. Finally Adam rowed us out a bit and dropped his line. He caught various sizes of seaweed before hanging up the towel and heading back in. We had quite the time getting the boat back onto the trailer. I kept drifting (I was in the boat...) and the line kept getting tangled. Grr. After the boat was finally back on land we had a "towel in the river" incident and an "oh crap, there goes the glass bottle of beer rolling out of the trunk" incident. This made for a second trip to Moosejaw where the bartender recognized us. He must thing we're alcoholics.

After a stressful afternoon we had to make the decision to stay at the campsite or head to a hotel. I was in favor of sticking it out at the park but ultimately we decided it would probably be best to head to more civilized conditions. We had originally planned to pack up the site, get a room, and then come back to the site and make s'mores, but we figured the way the day had gone, we'd probably start a forest fire. So we just took down the tent and all its accoutrements and went to the Ramada. The only room they had left was a two-room suite so we got a living room in addition to the bedroom. Heh. We watched some tv and ordered a pizza from Moosejaw (they deliver in this PT Cruiser with a huge moose hanging out on the top of it. It's awesome.)

After a much more restful evening (it appeared to have rained again during the night and was to have been even colder than Friday night. Yay hotels!) we partook of the hotel's waffle breakfast and then packed up and headed home. Adam's mom cooked our chicken and steaks on their (bigger than ours) grill and then we came back to our apartment.

Overall, not such a great camping trip. We wimped out on night two again, but I think it was a good decision. I got a little bit of a cold and Adam isn't feeling 100% either so who knows what could have happened if we'd stayed out Saturday night. We'll probably go back to that area for one of the other weekends. With the Dells being so close, there's an endless variety of things to do.

I didn't take any pictures and Adam took a few on the Ducks tour. I'm not sure I'll be posting any of them though. I don't even know what they were of. Rock formations or something...

Next trip is in mid-July.

Naming the Pets

Whenever we get a new critter, the hardest thing is trying to find an appropriate name. Adam seems to not really have the naming talent. With this newest addition, he wanted to name him Muskateer or something else ridiculous. I have informed him that he will have no say in our childrens' names.

Anyway, we went through a few different name choices, but have decided on Mo (as in Mohawk - this guy has got some crazy hair.)

RIP Pigster

It's not like we didn't see it coming. Last week I noticed he was being weird and over the past week he got progressively worse. His whole rear end was swelling up, he wasn't drinking or eating. It was really just a matter of when, not if. Adam woke me up around 8:30 this morning and told me he thought he might be on his last legs. So I got up and cuddled with him one last time - and he bit me. Not just a half-hearted bite either. He really clamped on. Sometime between then and 11:00, he went to hamster heaven. Adam cleaned out his cage, throwing away most of his things. It's so frustrating because since we didn't know what was wrong, we couldn't help him. He was so obviously in pain for the last few days. I felt horrible even touching him. I guess in a way I'm glad it's over now.

So, this left us with an empty aquarium. I know what you're all thinking - We went out and bought another hamster. But you're wrong. We bought a guinea pig. He is as yet unnamed.