Post Christmas

Once again Christmas has come and gone. The hustle and bustle has settled down. Things are back to normal....including my living room. This year I was determined to leave our tree up at least through the New Year. Well....that's not the story.....I was frustrated the Saturday after Christmas so I turned up the music and de-decorated our place....then I did a deep clean....I mean I actually dusted our shelves! You should have seen the dust on the shelves.....YUCK! Now things are clean, the rooms look bigger, and I actually have room to move. I love Christmas...but I swear I accumulate more decorations and never get rid of any. Oh well....our house someday will be well decorated.

Christmas this year was a blast.....despite the snow storm (yes, I wanted the snow....just not that much to throw off Christmas plans). We got together with my family on Christmas Eve day. We had so much food and we definitely didn't leave hungry. We had every snack imaginable. I think one of the best gifts that was given was to my dad. We discovered the Duck Hunter. It was so much fun to play with!I recommend this to anyone. It is a bird that charges up and then flies around while you shoot at it. It is hilarious to watch and play. We took it outside and played with it in the snow. I almost got it stuck on the roof.

I'm going to start off by saying that David is the BESTEST husband in the world!! We got me exactly what I wanted for Christmas.

This is my new camera. It is so nice. I can take nice pictures finally!! Plus I can take HD videos with it as well. It is so much fun. My parents got me a tripod and digital scrapbooking software as well and they didn't know that he had gotten this for me. So I am all set now! I can start a new hobby.

Since David is the best husband, I would like to think that I am the best wife....or one that doesn't want to get lost snowmobiling again. I got him a trail GPS.

It is similar to this one. We downloaded snowmobile maps to it so no more getting lost. Plus we can use it to go geocaching this summer.....something that I am really looking forward to doing! So if anyone wants to join in on the treasure hunt....just let us know!

Hope everyone else had a GREAT Christmas!! Happy New Year!

Christmas Baking

When you think of Christmas, everyone always thinks of all of the goodies that comes at this time of year. We have done so much baking in the past few weeks. Some of it was for gifts, other was just out of boredom and because we can. Here are some of our creations.

A lot of sugar right?! I'm sure glad this time of year only comes a year...Good thing New Year's resolutions are coming to make up for all the sugar comsumption!

We wish every one a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS and a SAFE and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

It is official......we are done with college! YAY! It is such a weight off the shoulders to be done with school. It was a great journey though! I'm so grateful that David and I were able to do this big accomplishment together!

Now the search is on. David is now searching for the new career in the computer field.

Next task on the list of things to do......become A+ certified. We will hopefully be able to get this done before the year is over...That is the goal anyway.

After that, I know I will be taking some time off from school. I do see myself going back to school to learn computer programming. But that won't be for at least a year or so. I need a break. As for David, I'm not sure if he will be going back or not....I don't think he knows yet. Right now we are just enjoying the freedom from homework!

Exploring The Door

For Labor Day Weekend we decided to go to Door County Wisconsin. It was so pretty there. I really wish we could live there. There are rolling hills all over, cherry orchards (not sure if they are really called orchards), apple orchards, and grape orchards too. This picture was taken at the Marina just a couple of miles up the road from where we stayed.



We also brought our bikes with us so we could take advantage of some of the bike trails around the area. This is one of the bike trails. They are nice and wide. We saw so many people on these trails. We decided to go for our bike ride in the morning because it was a little cooler out. Well the bike path was 9.6 miles long. Needless to say we did all 9.6 miles of it. It was worth it....even the sore bum!! If only they could make a trail that was all down hill. Next time I will be wearing shorts though!

After we did our bike ride, we decided to tour the county a little. We ended up finding this really cute little place to eat lunch. It was a sandwich and ice cream parlor. They make the ice cream right there...yum!! I had Door County Cherry ice cream and David had Oreo ice cream. It was so good! I could have ate there every meal.

This was our room that we stayed in. It was so nice. They have an indoor and outdoor pool, ping pong tables, and an arcade. The nice thing about this place is that it is like a little apartment. Every room has a living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedrooms all seperate from each other.

This was the kitchen. It had a refrigerator, stove, dish washer, popcorn maker, and all of the pots, pans, and dishes you need.

This was the sunset one of the nights. It was so pretty. It was fun to see all of the boats in the marina with the sun setting on them. There was even para-sailers out on the water. Now that would be the way to see the sunset!

This is my onion!! They had all kinds of little vegetables made out of wood at this really cute shop that we stopped at. They had everything cherry you can think of. Here is their website.

These are some of the many cherry trees! All you had to do was drive a mile or two and you would see cherry trees, apple trees, or grape vines. It's a fruity county!

I got a kick out of this. I thought it was pretty cute. Someone decided to make a tractor out of hay bails. Pretty creative!

There is one thing that I wasn't able to get a picture of that we did a lot there. That is mini golfing. We both love to mini golf. There were 3 places all within 5 minutes of us. We played several games in a day. Plus we saw one on our way back home and stopped and played the tie breaking game!

So that was our trip to Door County. I know that we will be going back again next year. We have decided to go back the end of September next year so we can be there during apple season and see all of the pretty fall colors.

The BIG Day!

Ok, I know it has been almost a month since the wedding now and I am just now getting around to posting pictures. I could say that I just got the pictures back but unfortunately I have had them since 2 days after the wedding. We had Emma (my cousin) take the pictures for us. They turned out AMAZING!!! We can't choose just one picture that we like when there are so many good ones. So here are a few of my favorites! Enjoy!

The Wedding

My Family

David, His Dad, & Grandpa

My ring

This has to be in my top 2 favorite pictures.

So there it is a few pictures of the wedding. And I'm sure you're wondering the same thing that every one else is asking "How is married life?" Well....I still only see David on the weekends since he works second shift. We are both back in school, which takes up about 1/3 of the weekend. Other than that....it's good. It will be better once school is done, which is in September. Then we will have lots of time. Until then....we will just make due with what we have!

I thought all the wedding stuff was going to be done once the Open House was over...I was wrong...why didn't anyone warn me that Thank You's require a lot of work?! Too many hand cramps that I have to stop every 5 minutes or so. I will finish those up this weekend and then I can officially say that I am done with the wedding stuff!!

Well, one event for the summer done....few more to go. We have a Helmbrecht (still weird to write) reunion in August and graduate in September. Gotta love summer!!

Camping

This post got to be a long one...sorry...but it is worth it...trust me!!

Last weekend for Memorial weekend, David and I and 2 friends all went camping for 3 days. It was sooo much fun. David had always wanted to see the Soudan Mine so he picked a state park that was close to that....it was McCarthy Beach State Park. It was a very cool place. The campsite is right between 2 lakes....Sturgeon Lake and Side Lake. It was up in the Iron Range of the state.

This is the view that we had from our campsite. The acutal site for the tent and campfire ring was about 10 stairs above the parking for the site so it overlooked the road and the lake. There was tons to do there. You could rent kayaks or canoes for the day and take them out fishing. There were even people out tubing behind boats...crazy people....the water was still VERY cold!! Oh yeah....both lakes are pure sand....no rocks or nothing. Sturgeon Lake had a big beach for swimming. I guess you can walk out quite a ways with the water only to your hips.

Sure the park was fun, but we also hit up a couple of different attractions in the area beside the Soudan Mine. We went to Iron World in Chisholm, MN. It was a cool museum. There was a lot of hands on activities to do. Plus you learn a lot about all the mining that went on in the state and still continues to go on today. All I have to say is those men were crazy back in the days. There is no way I would go a half mile underground working only using a candle that only lasted about and hour and a half!! Better them than me right?? Anyways, Iron World was very educational...why did we do educational things when we were supposed to be getting away from school?!

This was the figure that greated you at Iron World. He was HUGE!! It said that he is the 3rd tallest statue there is in the U.S.A. I thought Paul Bunyan was big...

Another place that we stopped at was Bear World. When we went to Soudan to check out the underground mine, I threw out the fact that if we were only 15 miles away from Ely, MN we needed to go there. So on our way from Tower to Ely we came across Bear World. Recently been put in since I don't remember seeing it before. It is very similar to the International Wolf Center. They had bears to view and more educational stuff about them as well.

We couldn't have timed it any better. As soon as we got there, this big fella came and greeted us. He was big! I think the guy said he was over 700 pounds. The rest of them were sleeping out in the nice shaded woods.

I'm sure you're thinking we went and saw a lot of things....well that's not all. We came back home through Grand Rapids, MN...it was a little out of the way but we all wanted to go there anyway. We went to some Outdoor store and then we went to the birth place of Judy Garland (Dorothy from Wizard of OZ). That was cool too.

This was the original carriage that was used in the movie when she is about to meet the OZ. Turns out this carriage was originally built for Abraham Lincoln. In fact, it was his for a while and then some how...can't remember....it ended up being used in the movie. Now it is one dispaly at the museum. They even had some of the orginal props and costumes used. They even had her birthplace... the actual home she grew up in for tour. It was pretty cool. But then I found out how she died...kind of disappointing....drug overdose. Why is it that every celebrity dies of a drug overdose?! Just curious. So that finished our long 3 day weekend.

So then we jump a head to this weekend. Thursday I had drove over to my sister's to help her with some stuff. My car had been making some noises. Turns out it was the drive shaft going bad. All I could think about was "what next?" when it came to this car. So Thursday on the way home I was getting paranoid that my car was going to toss in the red flag and call it quits. I started doing some research and now I am the proud owner of my very first Brand spanking new car!!

It is a Kia Spectra SX!! It is sooo nice. I saw this one at the dealer and it had my eye from the first sight! It is a nice little sporty car! It has been a battle over who gets to drive it though....even though I'm paying for it! Oh well....at least we now have a nice car that we can take trips in!! If I don't blog for a while, it's because we are out cruizin' in my new car! : )

Fun Filled Weekend

Long time no blog! With our hectic schedule lately I haven't had time to update. Things are getting really crazy busy with school, work, and planning the wedding. Every weekend we have something that we need to get done. So to update you on our lives.

David was working crazy hours last month. He was putting in an average of 68 hours and that was a minimum! Things have calmed down now though. We were both taking 4 classes at school and this quarter we dropped down to 3. After this quarter David only have 3 classes left and I only have 2!! We can finally see the end in sight. I am really enjoying my new job. It is nice to be able to take what I am learning at school and apply at work. Some days are crazy busy though!! There are always projects that need to be tackled and every day is different. The best part of it though is going to Duluth for training rather than the cities!! I will take that any day. Not that I mind driving in the cities.....but Duluth has Lake Superior that is so pretty!!

So you're probably wondering what the picture is, right? Well if you have guessed Lake Superior you are correct. But that is not only the significance to the picture. This is where we have decided to get married. It is just outside of Two Harbors. You think there is a lot of beach in this picture. Well there is about the same amount of beach on the other side of me that I didn't take a picture of. Plenty of beach to share with others if need be. It is such a relief to have the location done with. Now things should start coming together. So there is progress!!