Love and Pizza in Wisconsin

I love my college friends and it's crazy to think that I have known a lot of these people since I was 18, that's almost ten years! We've shared a lot of experiences together, learned and celebrated together and we've done a lot of growing up.

Recently, a major part of our growing up has been marriage. Sometimes I can't believe I'm married and a lot of the time I look around at our friends and can't believe how many of them are married, or pretty darn close, as well.A few weeks ago the group of us got an email titled "A Top-Secret Proposition," inviting us to join Red and Swan for Pizza Night at A to Z Produce and Bakery in Stockholm, Wisconsin. Swan knew that she and Red were headed to Pizza Night to mark the one year anniversary of their last visit to the farm. What Swan didn't know was that Red was packing heat in the form of an engagement ring and had invited all of us to come for a rusprise and celebration.

It was one of the most wonderful nights I've had all summer. Calhoun and I picked up Cedar who just recently moved to Minnesota, packed up her and her green goddess pasta salad and drove out to Stockholm, WI. We rolled up into beautfiul rolling fields and precariously parked the hatchback on the side of a dirt road and walked to the farm.

I had previously heard and read about the pizza farm and knew that guests were asked to bring their own setup, including blankets, dishes and beverages. What I did not expect was to see that people had packed in complete dinner settings, complete with table, chairs, tableclothes and centerpeices! It was fabulous. The lawn was packed with people and wine and pizza! We looked around and finally laid eyes on the newly-engaged and got to celebrate on the spot!

We added our contributions to the table, poured wine and toured around the pizza farm. The location, atmosphere and community was beautiful. Pizza Night is gets its energy from the farm's beautiful wood fired pizza oven, and on a July night the wait can be longer than an hour and a half. I think it was well worth the wait.

Red had been in contact with the owners and shortly after we arrived wonderful pizzas came out of the brick oven, topped with homemade sausage and bacon, peppers, cheese, olives and a variety of other fresh and wonderful ingredients. I'm not sure what was better, the pizza or the friends and celebration. Either way, both lasted into the night and Cedar's pasta salad was delicious (I'm so happy she's in town so I can eat all the food she writes about on her blog).

Although this amazing night occurred in Wisconsin, we did transplant all of our Minnesota friend there for a great evening so I thought it was fitting for the blog!

It was a beautiful Tuesday night, complete with love and pizza in Wisconsin.

Minnesota Bachelorette Parties

The past two weekends have been filled with bachelorette fun!

Two weekends ago Coral was in town, finishing up some wedding plans for the October nuptials (October is the best month, just in case you didn't know) and she had her mother and grandmother along so we had a day of bridal festivities! Including a bridal shower and a true Minnesota style camping bachelorette party!

As Coral's matron of honor it I got to plan both events! The shower pretty much planned itself but the camping bachelorette took a little more though and preparation. I was a little doubtful when Coral said she wanted to camp, but after picking the camp sight everything else worked out easily and all the girls were so helpful! The weather was beautiful, the camp sight was perfect and the company was wonderful! We blasted through a healthy amount of beer and wine, s'mores and hot dogs over the camp fire. What a great party (if I do say so myself)!

camp sight 55

Then this past weekend was Catalina's bachelorette party, and I just got to go along for the ride on this one which was also awesome. Catalina's ladies rented a pontoon on Lake Minnetonka and we spend the afternoon soaking up the sun, making nice with a bachelor party and enjoying some quality time together.

Blueberry and Baby Things

Nokomis and Eveleth had a BABY! She's beautiful and it means I'm an Aunt for the first time and I'm SO EXCITED!

Blueberry was born two weeks ago and everyone is healthy and happy and doing well. I'm loving it, because it means I get to buy and make baby things!

So, here's the first one. This awesome Minnesota onesie came from Corazon. Corazon is such a fun store, filled with neat, creative, sweet, funny things that you can spend the whole day looking at and laughing at. This is one of the sweet things:

And then, there are my handcrafted baby gifts! I made these baby booties! Look at my knitting skills go! I'm just a little sad that Blueberry is a summer baby and has no need for booties or sweaters or other things knit, but I'm making progress and by fall this kid is going to have more sweaters and booties than she or her parents will know what to do with! Ha! The joys of being an aunt!

Obligatory Valentines Day Post

Like most people, I have mixed feelings about Valentines Day. I like it because gift buying, card buying and festive holiday dressing is very easy. But, I dislike that it is so commercial and seems to be telling everyone that, if you're in love, you have to celebrate it in a very specific way. The Valentines way to celebrate love is to buy flowers, chocolate candies, and go to a fancy dinner.

Like many people rushing to celebrate Valentines Day in the traditional way, I stopped by Target to buy my last minute Valentines Day card this afternoon. The shoppers were jostling their way through the aisles and filling their arms with little brown teddy bears with red bows. When I left, I was feeling very commercially overwhelmed. As I headed back to school, I saw this elderly couple walking through the skyway.

They looked like real love - not like commercial Hallmark love. They looked like the kind of love that is part of your life all the time and walks slowly with you, arm in arm, every day.

Happy Valentines Day!

No Bowls, No Mugs, No Spoons

Somehow, I manage to stay healthy through finals and the holidays, but I catch some horrible sickness just as the semester gets going and there's homework to be done.

The one beautiful thing about being sick in Minnesota is that you're not alone. Granted, it can be a bit alienating when you sit down to a meeting and people back away from you, but it's because they have been battling sickness in their own homes and can't afford to go down for any period of time. On Wednesday I was chatting with my boss at work and he said that he wasn't feeling well and had to go to two different stores to find sudafed!

Calhoun and I have been sick all weekend. I'm not sure if we both caught it somewhere else and brought it home or if we caught if from each other.

I learned a lot of things about Calhoun when we moved in together. We didn't live together before getting married so moving in together, consolidating our stuff and getting sick for the first time were all interesting experiences. And because we always had separate homes, we didn't really spend time with each other when we were sick.

I embrace my sickness right along with healthy amounts of vitamin C, Echinacea tea, chicken noodle soup, sleep, water and cold medicine. I believe in spending the day in bed, sleeping as much as possible and as little time in the cold as possible. On the other hand, Calhoun is a purist. Yes, he eats healthy but he does not take cold medicine, doesn't embrace sleep as much as me and does not cut down on his physical activity. Calhoun still made it out skiing twice this weekend and even managed to take Sogn to the dog park!

One of the nice things about living with someone who is also sick is that we were both interested in eating and drinking the same things this weekend. We've had a lot of soup, tea and coffee (well, maybe not very good for you). We finally had to load the dishwasher tonight because we've run out of bowls, mugs and spoons.

Hopefully we are both feeling well enough to make it through Monday tomorrow and not spread our sickness, or catch any more of it!