Weekend in Madison

Finally a couple minutes to post about last weekend. We went out to Madison on Friday night to camp at Lake Kegonsa State Park. Currently all of our Madison friends live places where they can't have dogs so we camp so we can bring the pup. Fortunately, Cassie loves being outside and especially loves swimming. This state park has a nice dog swim beach. It's always fun to get out camping and we had a nice visit from David on Saturday for dinner (brats, beans, and corn all cooked on the fire).

Lake Kegonsa State Park



Nap Time in the Hammock

  On Sunday we woke up early and packed up to get downtown for the start of the Ironman triathlon. It is an impressive sight seeing 2500 athletes start swimming at the same time.


Ironman Wisconsin Swim Start

 This year Diana and I volunteered for the bike to run transition during the triathlon. We caught the athletes as they finished the bike leg and then put their bikes back on the racks as they went out on the run. This is one of the more active and busy volunteer opportunities during the race.

Another reason for volunteering is that volunteers get to sign up for next year's race ahead of the general public and I was planning on signing up. I learned on Monday morning how crazy signing up is for this race. Registration was scheduled to open at 9 am and I was told by others to get there pretty early. I thought 6:45 am for a 9:00 registration would be early enough, but at least 500 people with sleeping bags new better. Fortunately registration opened early around 8:00 and I was registered by 9:00 and made it to work by 11:30. So after taking a half day off of work and spending some $$$ I am now registered for the 2012 Ironman. Let the training begin.

Canning Update

It has been a hectic week in the kitchen for me and Diana trying to processing all of our veggies. So far we have frozen some bags of peppers and green beans. Canning has been quite the experience and we have 5 quarts of tomato sauce, 6 quarts of stewed tomatoes, 4 pints of pickled green beans, and 5 pints of zesty salsa. I found out how hot the hot peppers were for the salsa when I tried to take my contacts out for the night... after flushing out my eyes I did not try to put them in again in the morning.



Canning Room in the Basement

 Tomorrow we are off to Madison to camp at Lake Kegonsa State Park for the weekend and to volunteer and watch the Ironman triathlon on Sunday.

Labor Day Weekend

Labor day weekend started off with our friends Joe and Nikki coming to visit from Madison. Joe and I ran a 20-mile training run along the lake Saturday morning. I am training for the Milwaukee lakefront marathon and Joe the Chicago marathon. The run went well and the rain from the early morning storms held off.

Showered, rested, and nourished we headed out to the Lakefront Brewery Tour and to meet up with our friends Meg and Kyle who drove up from Chicago. The tour is always a good time. This was our 5th... no 10th... no 15th? who knows, we've been on the tour a lot. It's what people do in Milwaukee.

Done with the tour and the rain and moved in again limiting our outdoor grilling and using our newly completed bags game. This was a fun project for me and Diana that didn't involve working on the house. The logos took some time to complete, but Diana the perfectionist did a great job. The rain didn't bother us too much and we set the bags up in the basement.

Wisconsin & Marquette

We took advantage of the fall-like weather and stocked up on pick your own vegetables at a local farm. Now we are trying to figure out how to use our bushel of tomatoes and sweet peppers and quarter bushel of green beans and mixed hot peppers. Any suggestions??? We spent our afternoon learning how to can tomato sauce and pickled green beans. The kitchen looks like a war zone.
 

Pick Your Own Veggies



Our Massive Haul  

After an eventful weekend we head back to work tomorrow. Summer may be over, but we are looking forward to a busy fall!

Let's Try This

So we had this idea to start a blog to help us stay in touch with family and friends. I asked Diana what you write in a blog? she said it's like a journal. Okay... so what goes in a journal? We will share snapshots of our life: Me, Diana, and the Cassie Pup.

To get everyone up to speed, we got engaged during our road trip out west while hiking over the Paintbrush Divide in the Grand Tetons National Park, WY in August 2009.

We spent the next year finishing graduate school, planning our wedding, starting new jobs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and then got married in Upstate NY on August 21, 2010

After our amazing wedding with family and friends, we set off for our Honeymoon adventure to the Big Island of Hawaii

Settling down after the wedding we decided we needed another thing to stress about... a puppy

3 weeks old with the whole litter

troublemaker

Cassie loves the water

we still have work to do on perfecting canoeing

And just one more big thing to stress about... being homeowners

It's Official

Home Sweet Home
Wauwatosa, WI

So those are the big landmarks of the past 2 years of our life together. We hope you enjoyed reading this post, and look forward to many more to come!

Andrew and Diana