For many people, myself included, the weekend is the best part of your week. There were a few things I was looking forward to this weekend. The first of which was the newest, and probably last major addition for a while, to my camera setup. If you recall in my original camera post, I was limited to zooming to 55mm. That is no longer the case. On Friday, I received my new lens, the Nikon 55-200mm VR!
My total zoom is now from 18-200mm, all with VR. For you point-and-shooters, that equates to an 11.1x zoom. I am quite excited for this addition. While my original lens will continue to be my primary lens, I’m glad I now have the option to go further.
The second big thing that happened on Friday, which wasn’t entirely expected, was that Bethany got her acceptance letter for grad school! That’s right, she is now officially a PhD student at the University of Minnesota! She will be going for a PhD in nursing which will allow her to eventually teach nursing on the college level. We are both really excited to begin this new journey.
On Saturday, I went over to the Bleess house for Austin’s graduation party. He is now a master, a Master of Public Administration that is. It was good to see him and his wonderful wife at the party. I took a couple pictures at the party for your viewing pleasure:
Today was a pretty lazy day for me. I spent most of the day listening to podcasts and uploading pictures. As you can see here, it was a pretty lazy day for Copland as well:
September is one of those transition months that we hit each year. It is the month where students transition from the summer break back to school. It is when the weather in Minnesota starts to change from warm and sunny to cool and windy. It is also the month when the biggest transition of all is made – from no football to many weekly games! Now that the end of the month is here, all three of these transitions are well under way.
This year, just like last, I am partaking in three separate fantasy football leagues. This year, however, I moved from playing in my work league to joining another league put on by another friend from Bethel. After the first three weeks of the season, my overall record is 4-5. It’s not too bad of a start. I’m at least competitive in each of my leagues. With bye weeks starting this week, now is when the season really starts to get interesting.
The other large transition that Bethany and I have been working through is the addition of our little puppy, Copland. We have had him for just about a month now which puts him at just over 12 weeks old. And let me tell you, that guy has grown a lot in the last couple of weeks! When we first got him, I was able to pick him up with one hand and flip him around at will. Now, he is big enough to fight being thrown around. He is getting to be a tank. That little guy really likes to eat. We have also started him in puppy kindergarten. So far, we’ve gone to two weeks of the six week class. His favorite part of the class is when he gets to go off of his leash and run around with all the other puppies. For him, it is more like run around and tackle all the little puppies. That might change in the next week because he might get bumped up to being with the bigger dogs – currently he’s with the little puppies. Then we’ll see how he does taking on a Great Dane! Otherwise, Copland is doing pretty well so far with his sitting and staying. He can’t stay for a very long time yet, but he’s getting there. He is also learning to climb the stairs. This is quite a process when your legs are only 5 inches long. But, he’s able to manage it:
I also just posted a bunch of Copland pictures that’s I’ve been neglecting to post for a while now. You can check them out on my pictures page or just click here.
Third, I finally finished up the revamp of Gerdinauto.com! The upgrade was quite significant and it looks MUCH better than I had ever hoped to make it when I began. Last weekend was the wrap up weekend for the site. I spent a good amount of time finishing up various pages, cleaning up many links, and transitioning the old site out and putting the new one up in its place. Check it out and tell me what you think. Over time, I plan to update some of the various pictures and add some new features, but functionally, it is good to go.
Lastly, I have been working on becoming a Crown Money Map Coach. This desire had been culminating for a few months now. Last summer, Bethany and I were in a Crown small group with a number of people from church. We were able to get all our finances agreed upon and used it as a great launch into marriage. Throughout the year, I’ve been listening to the daily podcast they produce and learned about this coaching service. This really interested me. So I ordered the books, signed up for the class, and away I go. Once I have completed everything in the next couple weeks, I will be certified and a part of Crown’s coaching network, which will allow me to be able to help others who are having any number of financial problems. I am really excited to complete the training and get started.
I’ll leave you with one more Copland picture. Aren’t they cute?
I am writing to you on Labor Day 2009. Despite summer winding down for the year, the weather has been terrific recently. Today it has been sunny and in the mid-seventies, and it looks to be more of the same nice weather coming up this week. These last few days have really felt summery, which has been fantastic. But alas, we find ourselves quickly approaching fall. Put away your white clothes and get ready for the weather to start changing.
A few weeks ago, Bethany’s sister Erika, her husband Eric, and their little daughter Liv came up for a few days. We all went to Spicer, MN for the weekend to meet up with the rest of the Bethany’s family at a small resort. Well, it was advertised as a resort at least. It wasn’t all that much to look at. The small house had three tiny bedrooms with one tiny bathroom and a tiny kitchen, and needed some new furniture and a good cleaning. It was fine for the weekend, though. We spent a lot of time outdoors and on the lake. The kids especially spent a lot of time on the water. They went between the paddle boats, canoe, and kayaks all afternoon. It was pretty comical how much switching they did between the three boats. It seemed like they didn’t spend more than five minutes at a time on a single boat. We were there from Friday evening to just after lunch on Sunday.
Before we left for Spicer on Friday, Eric had an interview for a neurologist position at a clinic in Golden Valley. He said it went really well which it pretty exciting. Bethany and I think it would be really fun to have them move back to Minnesota. After visiting an old friend in the area, they came back to our house for the night. Eric had to leave the next day as he had another interview for a job in Boston. Erika and Liv stayed with us until Thursday. It was great fun having them with us for a few days. Liv has really started to make a lot of fun noises recently. While they were here, I took a short video of Liv in her fun noise making stage. Take a listen and just try not to smile. There’s no way you can do it.
Isn’t that just about the cutest thing you have ever seen? Erika and cute little Liv stayed with us until Thursday. We had a great time with the both of them.
As I mentioned before, we decided to get a dog recently. More specifically, we decided to get a little basset hound puppy. Well, last Thursday, that day arrived. I took a half-day on Thursday so that we could head down to pick up our new little puppy. We got down to Sleepy Eye, MN around 2:00 and met our new little friend. Copland was laying outside by the stairs when we arrived, just taking a nap. We were able to meet his parents and his other little dog friends. He sure had a lot of animal friends there on the farm. After about a half hour, we took him away from all the friends he had known for the first eight weeks of his life and took him in the long car ride back to Oakdale. He didn’t really like the car ride at first. However, after about 15 minutes, he didn’t really care anymore as he had fallen asleep. That does seem to be his favorite activity. Take a look at this good looking guy:
Who knew that I would one day own a dog?
This is his favorite position to be in.
That little guy has a fun future in front of him and we have a lot of excitement to look forward to as well!
The play is now over and I can start moving back to a level of somewhat normal – summer normalcy that is. That, however, isn’t really saying all that much as summer tends to be crazy all the time. Not only are there a ton of things to turn down doing each summer because I’m doing a million other things, but I’ve also ended up on the run so much that I’ve been missing out on the great weather we have had. That doesn’t include the past couple weeks of 60° and rainy weather. Here’s hoping that starts to turn around soon.
The musical I was in the last two weekends ended up really coming together and going quite well. I felt that as the shows went on each weekend, they got better and better. The quality dropped off on the second Thursday performance since we had a break of four days from the show. However, the very next day, we brought it right back and had a solid performance. If you weren’t able to make it, you missed a great show. If you did make it, wasn’t that Biff Baker something?!? Pieface wasn’t too bad either I must say.
The news in our lives is the following: we have decided that at the end of August, we are going to be getting a dog! Not just any dog mind you, but a basset hound puppy! We chose a basset hound particularly because they are pretty lazy, independent, and low maintenance dogs. After a lot of searching and a bit of luck, we were finally able to find a breeder that hadn’t already sold all of their puppies down in Southwest Minnesota. We are both pretty excited. You could probably guess that Bethany is a little more excited than I am if you have been noticing her Facebook updates recently. The ones we found were born on 7/5 so are only a few weeks old right now. They keep them with their mother until they are about eight weeks old which puts us at the end of August. Originally, we were shooting to get a girl, but after we found that two of them were already spoken for and we weren’t all the keen on the third female, we decided to switch our aim at one of the males. Bethany went down to scope them out on Monday and decided on this little guy.
Leading up to the decision on which one to get, we had listed out several name options for the little guy. Ironically enough, we had better consensus on boy names than girl names. This made the switch over to getting a boy a little bit easier. Being the music nerds that we are, the name for this little guy we decided on is Copland. You know, after the tremendous twentieth century American composer? Think Appalachian Spring and Fanfare for the Common Man. We plan to bring this little guy home at the end of August, right around Labor day.
