Sunday, November 27, 2011
Whirlwind
Life has been a roller coaster for us the past few weeks. It started with a very last minute trip to California to interview for my job at CareCredit. It was then followed up with 5 days in Mexico with Tom's family to celebrate the wedding of Jay and Toni. Then it was back home to gear up for hosting our very first thanksgiving and do laundry before we jetted off again to Florida. I am now sitting in Key West, watching my little Dude sleep and reflecting on our ever-crazy life.
Don't get me wrong, I am not at all complaining. These are all wonderful "problems" to have. I have been given a wonderful job opportunity in a horrible economy, a great newly-expanded family who shared in the joys of cooking our first turkey, and the ultimate gift of relaxation with my own immediate family. Life is pretty good.
I am entering this vacation with a range of emotions though. As soon as we return, I start work. I am nervous and excited and terrfied and thrilled just thinking about it all. In one week, I will be packing up a bag of things that will be going to Michael's new daycare- a place that we only had 4 days to find. I know in my heart that he will be fine and that his exposure to new people and more kids will be wonderful for him. But, I am also saddened by the fact that he will be spending more time with someone other than me. The last year of my life has been dedicated to getting him safely into this world and now safely through it, and letting go of those reigns is hard to do. This is the first of many situations in his life where my heart shatters, and it is a hard pill to swallow. What a difference a year makes.
I will post again with pictures of all of our adventures when we get home (hopefully before I go back to California for training). I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving surrounded by your loved ones.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Drum Roll Please....
I am going back to work!! No, not at Land's End- I don't count that. I have accepted an offer with CareCredit and start on December 5. That leaves me exactly 3 days to find daycare for Michael (because we will be gone in FL after Thanksgiving). Yikes...
I promise that we will write more after our lives calm down a bit. But for now, I am off to get some things ready for hosting our very first Thanksgiving dinner.
I promise that we will write more after our lives calm down a bit. But for now, I am off to get some things ready for hosting our very first Thanksgiving dinner.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Backyard Explorations…or is it Twin Cities Cities?
**This post was written by Tom**
On Saturday (Oct 29) Alison and I started the first of our trips to nearby cities. The rules are simple, any free time over the weekend we have we are going to start exploring cities within a certain distance (around 30 min) of our house. Some cities we haven’t spent enough (or any) time in, others we’re just curious about. We figured long distance travel isn’t exactly in the budget so why not explore where we are? We have been tossing around names for our adventures and haven’t really settled on one. Feedback is welcome. Options are as follows:
· Backyard Explorations
· Twin Cities Cities (Cities Squared)
· Immediate Exploring’s
· “Cities we haven’t been to but want to get to know and see if they’re cool”
The first city on the list was Prescott, WI. We didn’t really have any rhyme or reason as to how we picked Prescott, but we did. Deal with it. For those of you that don’t know, Prescott is where the St. Croix and the Mighty Mississippi converge. Alison and I took to calling the convergence point Ms. Croix. Prescott is also home to a disproportionate number of biker bars to really anything else as we later found out. The sun was shining and it was a perfect fall day.
First thing we did was load Mikey in the stroller (I should note that as this is my first contribution you will notice that I call Michael, ‘Mikey’ and Alison sticks with, well, Michael). We strolled along the St. Croix first. We had completed this leg in about 3 minutes. Note to Prescott: more sidewalks. Feeling like we had just warmed up, we decided to stroll through the classic river town downtown that lines the main drag in Prescott. The buildings had markers expressing the ages and putting this part of town right in the middle of the steamboat era (early-middle part of 1800’s). The other distinctive feature of note was that this section had A LOT of bars. We were in Wisconsin, but this was overkill. We decided based on what we know of Prescott, and what we were able to deduce from our 3 minute stroll, that Prescott must be insanely busy over the summer months. Anywhere a boat could dock, had a dock!
We then followed Prescott’s lack of sidewalks to the Mississippi side of town and proceeded down the path less taken. If you’re into bridges (like me) then Prescott is for you. We watched the old school railroad bridge lift for a passing houseboat (BTW this was more like a boatmansion…friggin HUGE). They also have a draw bridge that’s probably cool when it opens up, but we didn’t get a chance to see that. We also walked past what appeared to be some fancy Condo’s overlooking the Ms. Croix (upon closer inspection they were VERY fancy). This got Alison and me talking about our future and where we would like to end up in our life together. It turned into a great conversation as we sat on a bench, fed Mikey, and soaked up the sun. It was perfect.
After a couple of hours we decided that we had seen all there was to see in Prescott. I wish that I could say there was some hidden gem on our way out that would make this story better, but there wasn’t. Life isn’t like the movies.
Overall, Prescott was a lot of fun. I think the town deserves a second trip during the summer. We had a great day with perfect weather and I don’t think it would have mattered where we were that day.
On Saturday (Oct 29) Alison and I started the first of our trips to nearby cities. The rules are simple, any free time over the weekend we have we are going to start exploring cities within a certain distance (around 30 min) of our house. Some cities we haven’t spent enough (or any) time in, others we’re just curious about. We figured long distance travel isn’t exactly in the budget so why not explore where we are? We have been tossing around names for our adventures and haven’t really settled on one. Feedback is welcome. Options are as follows:
· Backyard Explorations
· Twin Cities Cities (Cities Squared)
· Immediate Exploring’s
· “Cities we haven’t been to but want to get to know and see if they’re cool”
The first city on the list was Prescott, WI. We didn’t really have any rhyme or reason as to how we picked Prescott, but we did. Deal with it. For those of you that don’t know, Prescott is where the St. Croix and the Mighty Mississippi converge. Alison and I took to calling the convergence point Ms. Croix. Prescott is also home to a disproportionate number of biker bars to really anything else as we later found out. The sun was shining and it was a perfect fall day.
First thing we did was load Mikey in the stroller (I should note that as this is my first contribution you will notice that I call Michael, ‘Mikey’ and Alison sticks with, well, Michael). We strolled along the St. Croix first. We had completed this leg in about 3 minutes. Note to Prescott: more sidewalks. Feeling like we had just warmed up, we decided to stroll through the classic river town downtown that lines the main drag in Prescott. The buildings had markers expressing the ages and putting this part of town right in the middle of the steamboat era (early-middle part of 1800’s). The other distinctive feature of note was that this section had A LOT of bars. We were in Wisconsin, but this was overkill. We decided based on what we know of Prescott, and what we were able to deduce from our 3 minute stroll, that Prescott must be insanely busy over the summer months. Anywhere a boat could dock, had a dock!
We then followed Prescott’s lack of sidewalks to the Mississippi side of town and proceeded down the path less taken. If you’re into bridges (like me) then Prescott is for you. We watched the old school railroad bridge lift for a passing houseboat (BTW this was more like a boatmansion…friggin HUGE). They also have a draw bridge that’s probably cool when it opens up, but we didn’t get a chance to see that. We also walked past what appeared to be some fancy Condo’s overlooking the Ms. Croix (upon closer inspection they were VERY fancy). This got Alison and me talking about our future and where we would like to end up in our life together. It turned into a great conversation as we sat on a bench, fed Mikey, and soaked up the sun. It was perfect.
After a couple of hours we decided that we had seen all there was to see in Prescott. I wish that I could say there was some hidden gem on our way out that would make this story better, but there wasn’t. Life isn’t like the movies.
Overall, Prescott was a lot of fun. I think the town deserves a second trip during the summer. We had a great day with perfect weather and I don’t think it would have mattered where we were that day.
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