Whirlwind Week

Patrick and I are back from another week spent in Michigan, and I must say, it went way too fast. We were busy pretty much every ounce of the time- we should have made it a 2 week trip!

On top of getting to see friends and family (the week was spent mostly at my own house this time), Patrick and I tried to make wedding-oriented appointments while we were in town. We opened a new joint checking account for saving and spending wedding money, got some brochures from a travel agent, tasted some delicious dishes from our caterer, met with the decorator/florist, and I even bought my wedding dress and veil! I'd say we were fairly productive, wouldn't you?

I didn't plan on buying my dress so early, but it was 10% off the price that day, and it was a sample dress (meaning it was only being tested and might not be continued later) with only a few sizes available out on the floor. In any case, it's one thing down, I can start looking for matching jewelry, and they can always alter it for me later if need be!

Also exciting was that I got to spend more time with my best friend's adorable month-old daughter (Matilyn, if you recall from a previous blog), I was able to hang out with my friend Lucas (visiting from Brazil) for the first time in 6 years, and mine and Patrick's parents had a surprise dinner party for him as an early birthday celebration (September 21!). And of course, seeing my family was great too. (Miss you all already!) :)

Congrats!

So I guess there are some congratulations to go around to some folks out there...

Mr. A seems to have passed the State of Michigan LPN licensing exam! He does not know officially yet but apparently is listed on the State website as having a license number. Way to go Mr. A! We didn't doubt it for a second.

To Brad on being a quarter century old today... don't worry, I'm told those aches and pains are normal...

Some more congrats to Megan, a long time friend from my church camp days. Megan got married last December out in Seattle and has so far been pretty happy being married. The good news is that she's pregnant! We are really excited for them and can't wait to hear more about how it's going!

I'm sure there's more out there to be congratulating people on but I can't think of anything else. If you can think of something, let us know!

P.S. Megan- is your email still the same (at Gmail)?

More Intermediate Lake

Calum racing around on a tricycle at the orchard

Atalie and Isaac pointing at and imitating the goats at the orchard

The Scotland clan

At the KT Tunstall concert

Intermediate Lake

Atalie and Matilyn

C's first fish!

Grandpa and Isaac swinging at the cottages

Private swimming lessons for C.

A week and a half ago, Atalie and I made the long trip up to Michigan to spend some time relaxing. We stopped in Okemos Thursday night so I could go to a doctors appointment Friday morning and then got picked up by Atalie's Dad and taken up to GR in the afternoon. We had a nice evening with Atalie's parents and a great visit with Cassandra and her newborn Matilyn Marie (very cute!). We are the unofficial Godparents, so it was pretty exciting for us.

Jackie picked us up on the way up to Bellaire, MI on Saturday morning to spend the week with my family at a cottage. We learned of the cottages from our friend Kat (whose G-ma owns them) and scheduled to rent the week for the whole family, Scotland crew included. We spent most of our time lounging around, playing with the nephews, and eating. I mention eating because we went to some different orchards around the area and picked up some pretty good fruits and vegetables. Yum! To top it off, our last night there we went to see a KT Tunstall concert in Interlochen. It was a lot of fun!

What's been going on, plus some more pictures

Hey everybody! We've kind of gone back to a traditional, not as exciting lifestyle these past two weeks, but I'll let you know what we've been up to, all the same:

• First of all, my bites/poison ivy/whatever they were, are mostly all gone. There's still a bit of an outline to it and they still itch occasionally, but the medicines seemed to have worked.
  
• We saw Dark Knight last Saturday, and it was AWESOME. Heath Ledger is a scene stealer for sure, and a total creep! :) Patrick and I spent several hours with Kat on the Friday before we saw it, looking for Batman Begins (we hadn't seen it yet, but were determined to before we saw Dark Knight). It was all rented out or there were only $30 special edition sets to buy, but we finally found the rare movie for all of $5!!! Probably the only one in the city!
  
• Patrick and I resumed some jogging again this week. (Applause for us!) It was hot, muggy, and difficult, but really satisfying too. I'm very proud of us! However, I rewarded us in the not so enjoyable fashion of locking us out when we returned from our exercise one night, and we didn't have any phones either (way to go, me). Patrick knocked on a neighbors door and contacted the landlord, who had to send the maintenance man out to us. After a $25 fee and some mosquito bites from our wait outside, I learned my lesson!
  
• We're going to the fair this weekend! We'll let you know how that goes, but we're anticipating slaw dogs, elephant ears and lemonade!
  
• My best friend Cassandra informed me after this past week's doctor visit, that she is going to have her baby girl any day now! Patrick and I are going to be godparents! :)
  
• I finally can show you some pictures of me rock climbing! I was able to view some of Kat's photos, so here's some copies:

Getting ready for lift off. :)

A really good picture of Patrick, as he waits to climb.

I just got past the most difficult part!

Pausing for a photo op! (And a break- I got too worn out to make it to the top!)

Yup, that's Patrick swinging from the tree. What a goofball! :)

Taking a break on the next wall. Luckily there were some nice ledges!

Yay! I made it to the top of this one!

The birds and the bees....or maybe just spiders!!!

So remember our last blog- American pastimes? All sorts of feel-good stuff....until I got bit by a spider and got an infection!

Here I am- so happy and naive to what would happen later...

Going to bed the night of the BBQ, Patrick saw a tick on himself so I had him check me for one in a spot I had an itch (incidentally, the top of my right butt cheek- not embarrassing at all, I know). He didn't find a tick but said it looked like a spider bite. Not a big deal (yet).

So the next day it was bigger and we decided we better keep an eye on it. One of my coworkers has a son who just last week had a spider bite that swelled up, caused him to break out into rash over his entire body, had red streaks going toward his chest, and was vomitting and had chills. I wanted to avoid that if possible.

Unfortunately, Monday after work I was getting itchy on my arm where red marks had formed, and the diameter of the spider bite was expanding. Patrick went to the store to get me Benadryl and itch cream. But after two nights of taking the medicine and everything only getting worse, we finally went to the clinic yesterday morning. (The itch was getting to be unbearable!!!)

Thank goodness I still am on my mom's insurance (I haven't received my own quite yet), because the visit and medicine would have been a ton of money. As the doctor's assistant put it, it looked like the spider didn't wash out its mouth before it bit me. It didn't look like a venemous bite, but it could be a staff or bacterial infection. And the arm- probably poison ivy. (Go figure, after all my boasting that I didn't get any after all my friends did.)

Yup...shoulda kept my big mouth shut.

After taking massive amounts of the antibiotics and steroids I received yesterday, my arm is definitely showing some improvement and my itching is diminished. Hopefully this ugly bite will soon go away too!

Gross! (and really itchy!)

The American pastimes: Baseball, BBQ, and housework...

This past weekend we were pretty active (imagine that). Friday we went to a Springfield Cardinals baseball game and got in for free thanks to somebody handing Atalie a pair of tickets they weren't going to use. Springfield whooped the Arkansas Naturals 6-0 and the fireworks after the game, as usual, were pretty cool.

Saturday we got a late start on some of our errands. Target and groceries were our goal before going to a BBQ out at one of my coworkers house down near Boaz, MO. There were a bunch of people from my work there and we all chatted away until pretty late. We spent the night out there and woke up for some breakfast before attempting to head off to church. We got a late start and missed church (tsk, tsk) and decided to make some use of the time we had. Derek has allowed me to store my drumset in his basement (under the condition that he gets to play it every now and then- of course!) so we dropped that off, went to Atalie's work to see if a package got delivered (it didn't) then home to cool off (it was 87F and no AC in the car presently). Then we went off to do laundry, get groceries and finish the night off with filing papers! We're one step closer to getting the office (junk/storage space) organized. Busy weekend for us :)

What did you do this weekend?