County Fair

Last night two of my good friends, Sara and Laura, accompanied me to the Mills County Fair. We wandered through the livestock pens, enjoyed root beer floats, and - of course - watched the annual tractor pull!!!

It was a lot of fun... but once the tractors were done, the trucks started -
and their suped-up engines were crazy loud!

It was quite the event. As you can see...

A New Addition to the Family!!!

After three years of marriage, we've finally gone and done it!

We've joined the club that so many of our friends and family members are already a part of.














We got a dog!!!

Her name is Annie, short for "Annie Get Your Guns".
Which fits perfectly with our previous pet naming theme - our two cats, Emmett and Charlie, were named after characters from our favorite Westerns, "Silverado" and "3:10 to Yuma".

She's a three-year-old purebred black lab and is the best dog ever!
She can sit, stay, come, heel, fetch, and lots of other things!
She's completely adorable and makes a wonderful pet.

So far, she's getting along with the cats pretty well.
They aren't big fans of her... but we're hoping that they'll continue to warm up.
Fingers crossed!

A New Adventure

My last post was about my favorite person in the whole wide world...

...whom I get to see every single day. :-)



THIS post is about my next two favorite people in the whole wide world...

...who live a collective 3,500 miles away from me. :-(

These are my sisters, Emily (in the middle) and Sara (on the right).
And since we can't see or talk to each other every day while we're living so far apart,
we came up with a fabulous idea to start a blog together as a new way to keep in touch.

We've been at it since the beginning of May,
and now we've decided to share our secret sister place with the world.
So stop by and check us out at Sisters Away
and see how we are navigating the world of long distance sisterhood.

Also be sure to stop by Sara's blog, Mommy Honesty, to enter her giveaway for an adorable scrabble tile necklace from Studio Kin.

no words

Have I ever told you about my husband, Seth?

He grew up in Denison, Iowa (the home of Donna Reed - you know, "It's a Wonderful Life"? It's a classic) as the oldest of five siblings. He's the son of a pastor and a teacher and grew up on a farm. He went to Concordia University Nebraska (a.k.a. Concordia Seward) and was a director of Christian education for five years before going to the seminary to become a pastor.

He is many things.
He is the man who always knows how to make me smile and laugh, whether with one of his silly puns or his famous sarcasm.

He is always supportive of whatever is important to me at any given moment.
He's my biggest cheerleader and my biggest fan.
He encourages me when I get down on myself and rejoices with me in my triumphs.

He taught me how to fish, stack wood, spackle drywall, and run a trolling motor.

He is just as big of a dork as I am... maybe bigger.
And I love him for it.

He taught me to love the Lions, the Tigers, and the Pistons.

He is an incredible example of faithful service to God and His people.
His passion for ministry and his love for the people of our congregation constantly blows me away.
He is a wonderful vicar and will soon be a wonderful pastor.

He is my best friend, the love of my life, and the guardian of my heart.
On this, our third anniversary, I am filled with gratitude to God for choosing and preparing such a wonderful man to be my husband.
Seth is the greatest gift next to salvation that He has given me,
and there are no words adequate enough to express how much I love him.

Happy Anniversary, Bubs.
Here's to a lifetime left of love and blessings.

Love, your wife

Seven Years' What???

One of the projects we've taken on in our new house is decorating/renovating the guest bathroom. We were lucky (?) enough to have a completely blank canvas to work with (a.k.a. bo-ring). White walls, white cabinet, white counter top, white tub, white toilet, and the most plain, boring, and cheap fixtures you can imagine. It was so plain and boring that when I went through the house taking pictures before we moved in, I didn't take a single bathroom shot. Therefore, I don't have many "before" pictures to show you. Sorry! Lesson learned. :-)

We started with buying a new faucet, towel bar, and toilet paper holder, all in the most beautiful "oiled antique bronze" (black with coppery edges). Seth successfully installed those items and today we graduated to more decorative items. It will still be a little while until we're finished with it.

Tonight we started the enormously unpleasant task of trying to remove the large rectangular beveled-edged mirror that was glued to the wall. As I sit here typing, he is across the hall with the door closed (to at least attempt to contain the mess) banging away at said mirror and pulling/prying it off in chunks. It sounds pretty horrible. I have only had to bring him a band-aid twice so far...

Once that's finished (and cleaned up after), he will install the new light fixture and then tomorrow we'll start the task of patching the drywall where the glue and mirror were torn from the wall. After that will come painting, then hanging the new shower curtain, artwork, and towels. At that point I will take some lovely "after" photos to share with you, but for now, here's a sneak peek at some of the goodies we snagged today!

I never realized before how weird it is to take pictures of mirrors.

Here is a slightly better shot of the art piece with the towels and shower curtain that match.

The walls are going to be painted one of the gold shades in the painting. I think it will work nicely with the sage green towels and brown shower curtain. You'll have to let me know when it's finished if you think I was right or not ;-)

I never knew I had it in me

I have found that every day I live out here in the country (I'm on day 20, in case you were wondering) I become a little more desensitized to bugs. Now, I have always had an issue with life of the insect variety. Any creature with more than four legs is not welcome anywhere near my personal space, and the size of that personal perimeter is directly correlated with the number of legs said creature possesses. So for me, even though I say I am becoming "desensitized", in terms of Kate's fear of bugs, I'm still a pretty big wuss. I have a long ways to go before I can just crush a large insect without batting an eye.

Yet, today I learned that I am much, much braver than I thought. Get ready.

I pulled into my garage at about 6:20pm, turned off the ignition, and got out of the car. I turned to walk around the back of the vehicle, only to stop dead in my tracks at the sight of a giant wolf spider parked just off the back corner of my car. I stood there for a moment, assessing the situation. Seth was not home. This spider was huge. I had to do something.

Apparently "something" took the form of taking a picture of the terrible beast with my phone.


After taking a photo, I stood over it, staring, and wondering if I had the chutzpa to actually smash the thing. With a body that large I was sure it was going to make a big splattery mess and I just didn't know if I could take it. But alas, I knew the closest weapon was one of my husband's crocs sitting by the interior garage door (thank you, Baby, for having such big feet!). As I turned to start walking towards the crocs, the nasty spider started running BACK INTO THE GARAGE at full speed!!! So at the same moment I broke into a sprint to grab the shoe and then get back to the spider, but by the time I did, it was gone! GONE!!!

Well I wasn't about to walk away knowing that the terrible beast was lurking somewhere in my garage, just waiting for a chance to get into my house and (as all spider-fearing people know such beasts will do) up the stairs and into my bed to eat me alive as I sleep. I decided it was worth the risk to venture as quickly as possible into the house to grab my economy sized can of RAID. I returned to the garage - big yellow can in hand - and began my search for the monster. Thankfully, I didn't have to look far as the beast was hiding at the end of a pile of old trim pieces along the garage wall.

I stood back, aimed my can, and began to spray, but I didn't have the chance to enjoy my victory because no sooner had the first drop of poison touched the spider's back than anywhere from 30 to 50 baby spiders jumped of their mama's back and began to scatter in all directions! I held my breath (to keep from screaming) and just sprayed with all my might. All of the babies were quickly dead, but Mama was still hiding under a piece of trim. I scooted it out of the way with my foot and she started to run. I continued to spray her but she just kept running! That is not supposed to happen. She got at least three more feet down the wall before she finally succumbed to the power of the poison.

I was overcome with a strange combination of pride and terror. Proud that I had conquered the Great Spider Beast and her Brood of Spider Babies, but terrified that creatures of that size are living around my house. (I must confess that I first typed "in and around my house" but had to delete the "in" because it unnerved me out too much to see it in writing. I must hold fast to the belief that there aren't any that big actually inside my house. No way.) I called Seth to tell him of my victory and he congratulated me on my accomplishment... although something in his voice told me that he had somehow taken this experience as evidence that I will henceforth no longer need his spider killing services. Au contraire, my love. Bravery like this only comes around when you are alone without any other option. Just ask my friend Hayley (who can be found over at Simply Nesting) who killed a spider and its babies while in her bathroom, alone, naked, and pregnant! She is my hero.



To show you just how big the terrible beast really was, I took a photo of a penny on the cement right next to where I first saw the thing and then superimposed it onto the original cell phone photo.

It's huge! ...right???

If I had a million dollars...

I would get one of these for my back yard.

Nevermind that I don't live by a beach or have a pool.

I don't care.

A beautiful shady outdoor bed would be perfection anywhere.