The Big 30!

This is definitely late since Jaren's birthday was on the 17th! But I wanted to make sure I got this on the blog. My sweetheart is officially 30 years old! We have realized the older you get the less cool your birthday is. Kid birthday's are always the most fun. For this reason I decided to throw Jaren a "kid's" birthday party and invited three families in our branch over for the event. We started with a barbecue then played games (okay, so really the games were for the kids but we thoroughly enjoyed watching them). We played musical chairs...



And we had a very ugly piñata which was the least cheesy looking one we could find. We had him sitting in our living room for about a week before the party. Every time you walked down the hall to the living room he was staring at you. It made you want to punch him in the face. Really, it did!



I'm sure all the parents were ecstatic that their kids were going home sugared up on cake and candy! ☺



Jaren insisted on a cake eating contest. The half eaten white cake in the background (below) is the cake we used for the contest. The kids enjoyed it and us adults enjoyed watching them but a couple of kids were trying to be goofy and just face planted right into the frosting. One even ended up with it in his eye. What a mess to clean up!

The chocolate cake was his yummy birthday cake. It was a simple Duncan Hines boxed cake mix and very yummy chocolate truffle frosting! I was NOT about to light 30 candles. There was enough wind that these wouldn't even stay lit.



We all had a good time and Jaren really enjoyed his birthday. The kids even went away saying they wanted to have a birthday party just like this one! This was good preparation for the future. There were some good lessons learned. It was a good idea to do everything outside. A great idea for next time is to pay someone to clean up and wash all the dishes.



Happy (belated) birthday sweetie! I love you!

Kristina's Visit

My sister Kristina came to visit last week. She flew in to the Minneapolis airport where I picked her up and we promptly headed to the Mall of America. We mostly did a lot of walking (all 3 miles) but stopped at a few stores and also took a ride on one of the roller coasters.



The Mall of America has lots of restaurants in it and the Rainforest Cafe is the coolest one. It has rocks and trees and animals (all fake of course) all throughout the restaurant. They have a fun gift shop with some interesting things. Every so often you hear thunder and it will mist for about 10 seconds. Jaren and I have eaten there once. The food was okay but it's the fun atmosphere we liked. Kristina and I had to snap a picture!



Sparta claims itself as the "Bicycle Capital of America" because of all the bike trails around the area. We have one famous bike trail that is around 32 miles from Sparta to Elroy. It is an old railroad track that they turned into a bike trail and even has a few tunnels. The longest tunnel is about 3/4 of a mile long. You can drive to the tunnel and walk through it. This is where you enter.



About 20 feet into the tunnel we found a few bat clusters. Gross.



We spent one day out in Wisconsin Dells which is a big tourist area about an hour away from us. They have a huge outlet mall there so we went to do a bit of shopping and looking around. We ate lunch at this huge resort with an arcade and restaurant amongst other things called Buffalo Phil's. They have this funny advertisement car so we took a picture of it.





Kristina also wanted to get a picture with Sparta's very own "Ben Bikin".



We also decided to get an up close shot from the front. Doesn't Ben look so happy?



We also treated ourselves to pedicures. We even got the deluxe pedicure where they rub your feet and legs with 2 different scrubs, green mud after which they let them sit in warm moist towels then rub them with oil. Aside from the burning sensation with the mud, it felt great!



It was a lot of fun and I was very glad to have Kristina visit. Especially since Jaren was in Missouri for 4 days while she was here. Hopefully it won't be too long until she can come visit again!

Ashley's Visit

While Ashley was here I definitely didn't feel the pressure to have something fun to do constantly or to be entertaining her at all times. I don't think she quite got used to the 2 hour time difference because she would go to bed around 2:00 am...or 3:00 or 4:00. Then she would sleep in until around noon, give or take an hour. Maybe that's just her being a teenager with no parent to tell her to go to bed. :) I'm pretty sure she enjoyed the freedom to do what she wanted while she was here. We didn't go out and do or see a lot of things because she was content to sleep, listen to music, text, or chat online. We did do a few fun things though. Here are some pictures!

Disclaimer: Some pictures aren't that great. These first pictures I was taking from the car because it was all windy and rainy.



We drove out to a cheese store about 20 minutes from my house. They give samples and Ashley bought several kinds of cheese to bring back for her teachers to try. There were some fun cheeses that we found such as Chocolate Fudge cheese (tastes like fudge), Chicken Soup cheese, Italian Juusto cheese (taste like pizza), Buffalo Wing Jack cheese, smoked string cheese and an aged White cheddar with cranberries. Those all tasted very good! They sure get creative with their cheese out here!



There was also a small town called Westby we drove to so we could see another cheese store. We found this on the main road just as you drive into town. It is the tourist center and has all kinds of maps and brochures for the surrounding area. Ashley thought it was a funny looking little building so I took a picture of her in front of it. I looked up what "Stabbur" means and that is the name for the building. It is Scandinavian and was generally built on stilts one to two feet off the ground to keep mice and rats out. The bottom sections was used for storage of food such as grain and the top was used for storage as well for fruits and veggies or furniture or it was used for smoking meat or an extra living quarters. In Norway these are commonly turned into living quarters for tourists and other visitors.



I thought this was such a funny looking guy! He was just to the side of the Stabbur and I couldn't leave him out!



This is the cheese store in Westby. Exciting, I know...but this was better picture of Ashley than the other one.

We also went out to see the "farm" of one of the families in our ward. Ashley had the chance to feed their cows some bread slices and thought that was pretty fun. I kept trying to get a picture just as the cow stuck it's tongue out to get the bread but it never worked. My small camera just wasn't fast enough.









While at the farm, Ashley walked up the hill with the two daughters (both in YW) to see the neighbors horses. She was dying to ride a horse while here but I didn't know where to take her to do that. Oh well. She got her pictures of them.

She also enjoyed going to our famous "Culver's" out here which has the best burgers and frozen custard. She said she had fun and didn't want to go back home when it came time. I don't think that's necessarily because she LOVED Wisconsin. She probably doesn't want to go back to boring school. However, she did say she wants to move out here....not so sure about that. I was glad to have her visit and had fun with her around. I even got all lonely after taking her to the airport because I came home to an empty house (Jaren was working until midnight).

Anyone who would like to take a trip out to the country, come on out to Sparta, Wisconsin and visit us! We would love to have you!

Overly Worried

I LOVE my husband. Words just can't describe how much I love that sweet man of mine.

Sometimes when I'm alone and pondering life, my minds starts asking the "what if" questions. These are often "what if one of us were to become paralyzed?" or "what if one of use became blind or deaf?" and I think of how we would handle such situations. The most often asked question though is "what if Jaren were to die?". Every time I ponder this question, tears inevitably start to flow.

I don't think these questions often but I was thinking them yesterday. Jaren has been working the noon to midnight shift for the last 5 days or so and a couple of times I've waited up for him. Friday night he got home at 12:25 am, the exact amount of time it takes to get to our house from Fort McCoy. However, last night at 12:30 a.m. he was not home yet. At 12:45 I called him just to see if he was on his way home. No answer. "It's okay" I thought to myself, "he's probably just a little late."

This is about the time that all of my worries and "what ifs" started in full force. I couldn't help myself. I thought he might have fallen asleep or hit a deer while driving home and I was going to be getting a phone call from the hospital. Would I end up calling his family tonight to tell them he was dead? What an awful thing to have happen on an early Easter morning. Easter would become a reminder every year for the rest of my life of this tragedy. Of course, tears were flowing and my eyes had become all red and swollen. I kept thinking, "Get a hold of yourself! You are being ridiculous! He'll probably be pulling up any time now."

At almost 2:00 am, with about a full hour's worth of worry, I hear the garage door start to open. I immediately started fanning my eyes attempting to make them look a little normal. I tried acting nonchalantly so as to hide my spastic worrying when Jaren walked in about 30 seconds later looking all happy. I'm guessing the red and swollen eyes were pretty noticeable because his smile dropped immediately when he looked at me. Then he asked what was wrong. Maybe he was thinking somebody had died and I was about to give him the bad news. All I could do was walk over, put my arms around him and start crying all over again...but out of relief this time. He put his arms around me and held me.

Jaren: "Are you okay?"
Me: Nodding
Jaren: "Were you worried about me?"
Me: Nodding again.
Jaren: "Thank you for loving me so much. I'm sorry I didn't call. I thought you would have gone to bed."

Of course he thought that. I knew he would have been thinking I had gotten tired and gone to sleep. He also wouldn't have wanted to wake me by calling. "Come on" he said. "Let's go to bed."

As we were getting ready for bed Jaren tried joking with me by asking if I thought he was off with some other girl or something. I wasn't joking though when I told him "No. Of course not. I thought you were dead!" I was too traumatized to fall asleep. Tears started streaming down my cheeks about three more times while I held Jaren in a death grip. It took a while to calm down but I finally fell asleep.

What a spastic wife I am! I know I worry too much but this was over the top. Tell me I'm not the only person who gets overly worried about things like this. He didn't answer his phone when I called and he was an hour and a half late...in the middle of the night! Who wouldn't be worried? I'm just glad all of my worries ended up meaning nothing. The times that I do worry about Jaren remind me that life is short and you should never take your loved ones for granted. If I'm ever irritated when Jaren is going off to work I still make sure I calm down, tell him I love him and give him a hug and a kiss. I always think, "You never know when the last one will be."

In the end, the reason Jaren didn't answer my call and was so late was because he was on the phone with a soldier in Iraq. He was getting information to give a briefing to his commander today.

My advice for the week:
Always tell your spouse (or loved ones) that you love them. You may think they know it but it is always nice to hear it. It's okay to tell them 10 times a day. It never gets old! Spend time with them while you have them. It doesn't matter if others think it is silly how many activities or events you decline to attend so you can spend that time with your spouse or family. In my opinion, there's never enough time.