Post Grad Plans

Just a short little entry because it's a busy week.

Drod starts his last semester of grad school this week! He is spending the week in Madison at UW before jetting off to China for work for three weeks. We really never do anything halfway, do we?

It's been a long three years, but I'm so ridiculously proud of him! He's worked really hard at it, and we're both looking forward to neither of us being in school starting in January. Since we've been married, one or the other of us has been in school for the most part. It will be so weird to do things during the school year!

Except...the original plan was for me to finish up my Bachelor's once he was done with school--not right away, but maybe next year. Suddenly though, that just doesn't seem like it's something I want to do. D has been super supportive and is truly fine with whatever I want to do. What I need to figure out is...am I just being lazy and should still go or do I really just not want it? We would definitely appreciate prayers for guidance for that. It definitely keeps me up at night.

FYI, graduation weekend at UW Madison is May 15-17. Hopefully, I will get the details from the powers that be about hotels, arrangements, etc. in an appropriate amount of time! I don't care if people don't really do parties for grad school graduations, we are having one!

Family Vacation

Show of hands: how many of you take a family vacation every year? By family vacation, I mean extended family, not just the people who live in your house.

Originally, we were going to go to Wisconsin with my side of the family but unfortunately that fell through. Instead, we ended up going to Canada again with D's family. We say Canada like it's a small place; what I really mean is Minaki, Ontario.

If you've never been to Canada, it's beautiful.

 

 

 

See?

 

 

Plus, it's just so peaceful.

 



 

Seriously amazing, right? You really feel like the clouds are close enough to touch. It's definitely one of those places you have no choice but to acknowledge a Creator.

 

In light of all of this, one thing we struggle with is do we continue to go every year? It's okay for now and we are definitely all for tradition, but when we start a family of our own a budget can only accommodate so much of a vacation. D has been here almost every year of his life (which is 28 years)! The last thing we want to do is offend anyone, but this is definitely a sticky subject for us. Obviously, we don't have to worry about it now, right?

 

However, if anyone has any suggestions and/or compromises, let us know!

We've Been Busy

And by we, I do mean the royal we. Derek did most of the work.

Since we bought this house, we have wanted to put a deck in our pitiful yard.

Finally, we can say we did it!

If I knew what I was doing, I would put these in a little photo video spiel with inspirational "we can build it" music. Maybe next time, because I'm sorry--I can't do that for you.

Groundbreaking

We started the first week of April once we recovered from our California trip! Believe it or not, there was still snow on the ground in places although not in this photo.

This is how I help.

The above two photos were taken Easter Sunday. That was also the first time we "dined" out on the deck. We ordered McAllisters, and they were closed...because it was Easter Sunday, as previously mentioned. So, we settled for Steak n' Shake.

Odd how one remembers weird things like that.

Pretty much done at this point. Just waiting on furniture!

Casey's pool fits!

Where you can find me most nights

Most of our furniture is in, and hopefully at some point I will remember to take a full on photo of how nice it all looks! D did an awesome job, and we are out here almost every night!

Happy Memorial Day everyone! Enjoy the nice weather.