Josh and Erin's wedding in NJ

A few weeks ago, we went to Josh and Erin's wedding in Somerset, NJ. Aimee's known Josh since her wild party days in the Greek system at MIT.

Before the big event, though, we flew out a day early into glamorous Newark. Dow has a site five minutes from our hotel, so I spent that Friday meeting with people in the research groups there to talk about doing a potential rotation sometime in the next year. I don't know that I will, but I had a great time learning more about what work goes on there. Aimee got a friend from growing up, Erin (not the bride), to come down from New York and visit us for the day. They pretty much knitted and caught up with each other while I had my meetings, then we all went out for some Indian food. We like to hit up any Indian or Thai places we can find when we go out of town. Erin seems to have liked knitting enough to really take it up quickly, which always gets Aimee excited.

On Saturday, the wedding wasn't until 5, so we had time to meet up with Dan, Jackie, Molly, and baby in Newburgh, NY. It wasn't chosen for any better reason than being roughly halfway for us. We had bagels at a park, walked around the Hudson shore, and had lunch together before we had to go back to Somerset for the wedding. It was short, but great seeing them!

From Josh and Erin's wedding in New Jersey

The wedding was fun and elegant. The ceremony was lovely, the food was fantastic, there was dancing in between courses, and it was all Mardi Gras-themed (Josh is a Louisiana boy), so we got to wear some party masks. The groom's cake was even a King Cake. They had a photo booth set up in the reception, which was a lot of fun for everyone with the masks. They looked so happy together, and we wish them the best!

From Josh and Erin's wedding in New Jersey

From Josh and Erin's wedding in New Jersey

Anniversary

For our third anniversary, Steve and I went north to Oscoda. We stayed two nights at a wonderful bed and breakfast called the Huron House. The room was beautiful and came complete with complimentary champaign and a Jacuzzi!


The bed and breakfast also had a beautiful garden full of flowers and sculptures and overlooking lake Huron.

While we were up north we went to the lumberman's monument. Which had period tools and dwellings and a giant lumberman statue.

We also went on a nice hike in the trees. There were tons of crickets to accompany us and even a few hills!


The Huron House had a local potters work for sale, so as a souvenir of our fun time together we went crazy and bought this lovely vase.


All in all a wonderful celebration of three great years together!

Blueberry!

Steve and I went to Russell's blueberry farm and picked ourselves a bucket of blueberries.


It was a fantastic experience. There were many different varieties of blueberries to choose from, so of course we tried them all. There were also some of the largest blueberries I have seen in my life. And they were SO sweet right off the bush and warmed by the sun. The cost was 1.65 per pound of picked berries, but when you factor in the berries we ate, it really goes down to about 1.25 per pound. I think I ate more berries in that one afternoon than the rest of my life combined! We went home with over 17 pounds of blueberries. That is more than our two cats put together!

From This:

To This:

This is what 17 pounds of blueberries look like when compared to a 9 pound cat. All those berries went into the freezer and so far have been becoming cold smoothies on hot days. If they last until winter they'll hopefully turn into pies, muffins and jam.

Tiny Horses

We went to the miniature horse show at the Midland fair grounds this weekend. We got to walk around and see all the little guys and we stayed for the pleasure driving competition. I would love to take one of those buggies around Midland and watch the jaws drop! Who knew horses could be so cute.

Pleasure Driving
Looks like the people should pull the horses

Art Fair and Pig Gig- Good summertime Michigan fun

We've been pretty busy on the weekends taking advantage of the great weather and the fairs going on around us. Mid-July we went down to Ann Arbor to visit Steph (Steve's friend from Michigan State), which was the same weekend as Art Fair down there, and the opening of Dark Knight. We walked around Art Fair for a few hours and still didn't see everything. We liked the photos from a local artist, Mike Moats, so we bought a couple that we'll hopefully get framed soon. The birch leaf is going in the entryway and the frog will go in the bedroom.

After having fun at the Fair, we saw the new Batman movie and went out for Thai. We have been trying to take advantage of good ethnic food whenever we leave Midland because it's not really this town's forte.

Yesterday, we took a trip to Bay City, one of the three in the "Tri-City" area we live in, for the Pig Gig with some people from work. They had a petting zoo for kids and Steve, a dog agility races demo, various cooking demos, and all sorts of contests like bubble blowing or jalapeno eating. Oh, and there were a ton of bbq joints selling their meat, so we all tried different places. Surprisingly, my favorite was the Australian stand. It was a nice day baking in the sun.

Our new home

For those who didn't know, our apartment here wasn't available until July 11, so we were living in a temporary corporate-rented townhouse our first month. When we finally moved into our longer-term apartment, we had quite a mess. We had the movers take everything out of the boxes so they could take the packing material. We naively thought this would encourage us to get everything put away that weekend. It turns out, we've accumulated a lot more stuff than we realized because in Berkeley, a lot of this was tucked tightly away in our big closets.

It ended up taking us a week or two, but we finally have the place almost completely cleaned, and we love it! It's got a big deck with huge windows, so it's always light in the apartment. The vaulted ceilings make it feel big, and the cats love running around and perching on the walls that wrap around the kitchen. We even have a guest bedroom for anyone wanting to come visit! We have more before and after photos online, along with some updated pictures from other things we've been doing.

4th of July in Canada!

We were super Patriotic this year and went to Canada for the 4th of July. John (best man at our wedding) was in Toronto doing some business at Canada's Wonderland so we drove up to meet him. We had lots of fun hanging out and John even got us into the park which is HUGE. We went on the giant behemoth roller coaster and then headed out to water park to cool off on the hot day.

John and Steve

The mountain and waterfall you see when you first enter the park