Oktoberfest!

Brianne's birthday was on on the 14th of this month. As part of her present we decided to celebrate her German heritage by going to Oktoberfest the following weekend. For those of you who don't know—and most of you probably don't since our blog followers are predominately mormon—the Mount Angel Oktoberfest is kind of a big deal. Especially if you like beer.

According to Wikipedia "Mt. Angel is well-known locally for its annual Oktoberfest. The Mt. Angel Oktoberfest is one of the largest of its kind in the U.S. The festival can attract upwards of 350,000 people and includes beer and wine gardens, softball tournaments at Ebner Ball Park, a local football game and volleyball invitational tournament, carnival rides, crafts, a wide assortment of German food, and a two-day car show."

No, we didn't go drinking and dancing on the tables as I've heard some people end up doing. We went for the food. We got sausages (which were made by my company) and apple cake with butter sauce (which are delicious). The biggest attraction, and possibly the most disappointing, was the wiener dog races. Not that it wasn't entertaining, but they ran so fast it only lasted about two seconds. I barely managed to take one picture. We only saw the third and final race so we didn't get to see a whole lot of it.Sausages loaded with sauerkraut

Mmm...apple cake.Weiner dog races

We also went to the Catholic Church and listened to a men's choir concert for a little bit. We watch the glockenspiel at 4 o'clock, but we decided it was kind of creepy. While we walked around and looked at the different booths Brianne had to pull me away from the one that sold cork guns. It reminded me of the cork gun I had so long ago that we bought at Wallowa Lake. She saw the look in my eyes that told her I had reverted back to when I was about eight years old; and that's never a good sign.

Inside the Catholic churchThe Glokenspiel

One thing we bought Brianne was a bar of homemade Pearberry soap. There were several different scents in giant slabs that they would cut into chunks. I liked the smell of the Sandalwood soap, but that was definitely a masculine smell so she didn't get it.

Throughout the day I kept up with the scores of the football games on my phone. I was surprised to see that Washington beat USC, disappointed to see that BYU lost, delighted that Oregon beat Utah, and distraught that that Cincinnati beat OSU.

We left Oktoberfest as many people were arriving. We figured that it would be best to go in the early afternoon and leave around dinner time to avoid all the drunkenness. The food was good, but we took prilosec before we went just to be prepared. Everyone should take part in Oktoberfest at some point in their lives. It's quite an experience and was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon.


~Josh

Cats, Cakes, And Concussions

Well, it's 2:00 in the morning and I'm awake. Unfortunately, this happens to me a lot. Like, every night. I was actually thinking about starting my own blog dedicated to insomnia and the inner workings of my mind that so often keep me up at night. But I don't know; it could be scary. What do you think?

This week hasn't been particularly eventful, but I thought I would share some stories with you for your entertainment.

Story #1:
Ernie likes to watch me when I'm in the shower. I don't really know why. He will sit on the counter and stare at me from the time I turn on the water to the time I get out. Sometimes he falls asleep, but most of the time he just stares at me with his eyes bugging out of his head. I think it's because his only experiences with the shower look like this:
He probably wonders why I would subject myself to that kind of torment on a daily basis. Ok, that was the prologue, now here is the story. Ernie was staring at me the other day, as usual. But this time when I got got out, he was sitting in the sink. I thought it was pretty cute.
(I actually had to put him back in there in order to take the picture. I scared him when I came bursting out of the shower to grab the camera)

Story #2:
I have a new favorite website. It's called Cake Wrecks and it is pretty much the most hilarious thing I've ever seen. The author of the blog posts pictures of professional cakes that have gone, and I quote, "horribly, hilariously wrong". Readers can also submit pictures of cake wrecks that they have witnessed. My latest project is to go to the bakery section every time we go to the grocery store and take pictures of scary cakes with Josh's Blackberry. The pictures aren't the greatest, but here are a few samples of what I saw in the Wal-Mart bakery this week:This cake isn't hideous, but if you notice the detailing, you will see that the cake says "Go Beavs" in orange, but the little plastic football players are wearing green jerseys (for those of you from out of town, the arch enemies of the OSU Beavers are the Oregon Ducks, who happen to wear green jerseys).This, I think, is supposed to be a lumpy purple monkey with its arms growing out of its head. You can't see from this angle, but this cake is actually made of a bunch of cupcakes, hence the lumpiness. I'm sorry for being graphic here, but my main concern about this cake is what color my bowel movements would be after eating this.

This one also concerns me. It says on the label that it is a "Cupcake Critter: Alligator" so one can only assume that there are cupcakes somewhere in there. Again, my main concern lies in the color of my bowel movements. But I would still totally eat it. It's an alligator MADE OF FROSTING.

Story #3:
This story doesn't involve cute pictures of kitties or pictures of strange cake creations. This story doesn't have any pictures at all because I haven't been keeping up with my physical appearance for the last couple of days.

On Thursday night, as is routine, I was awake at around 2:00 in the morning. On this particular night I was picking at my face in front of the bathroom mirror and I accidentally made myself bleed. After cleaning it up I turned to throw the tissue away and as I stood up, I hit my head on the corner of the towel rack. It really hurt. My ears were ringing, my eyes were watering, and there was a lump on my head the size of a silver dollar. Luckily I had some leftover vicodin from my recent trip to the emergency room (ruptured ovarian cyst=not fun) so I took that and went to bed. I didn't wake up until after noon the next day. My head was still killing me and my ears were still ringing. I couldn't stand up for long without losing my balance or just getting really sick. I turned to my oldest and dearest friend, WebMD. I'm kind of a hypochondriac, so this website is like the Bible for me. It said I most likely have a concussion. This was a reasonable diagnosis. Usually, I come to the conclusion that I have some kind of cancer. So I have a concussion. That's really all there is to the story. I'm not enjoying it and I'm honestly surprised that I'm not sleeping now because that's about all I've been doing for the last two days.

That's all folks. I want to try to go back to bed, but Josh is snoring now, so that may be difficult. Hmm...

We're still alive!

Hello all,
Sorry we haven't updated in a while. It's not like we've been too busy to blog (that is far from the case for me), we just haven't thought about it. Since I recently took the time and effort to give our blog a makeover, I thought it would be appropriate to write a little. So here is an update of our life since our last post:

June
In June we got to take our first camping trip as a married couple. We went to the dunes of Winchester Bay (south of Florence on the Oregon coast) to go four-wheeling with my family. We were only able to stay one night, but I didn't have a problem with that. We discovered that sand is not nearly as comfortable to sleep on as we initially thought. We were sleeping right on the dunes. Here is a picture of me fully equipped for our ride:
Shortly after this picture was taken, we took a pretty nasty spill going up a rather large dune (Josh was driving). We were fine though. Sand is soft when you are rolling down a hill made of it. Here is a gorgeous picture Josh took from the top of one of the dunes:
It was pretty fun. June was also Josh's birthday. I made him the salmon dish from the last post with sauteed summer squash and homemade rolls. I went through this cupcake phase for a while so he specifically requested NO cake for his birthday. So I made berry cobbler with homemade ice cream instead. It wasn't cake, but it was still delicious.

OH! June was also our anniversary! That was the weekend we went camping. On Sunday we decided to be bad and go to the Konditorei (our favorite local bakery) to get some cake. It was totally worth breaking the sabbath for it. Seriously. You just have to try it sometime.

July
We went to La Grande for the 4th of July. Sorry, we forgot or camera. We had a delicious southern style barbecue with red velvet cupcakes for dessert (Josh couldn't keep me from cupcakes for long!!!)

Josh's brother Jordan also came to our side of the state for a weekend. We went to the beach and shopping at the outlet mall. July was REALLY hot over here for about a week. I spent three days lying on the floor in front of my homemade air conditioner. Basically, I put a tub of ice water and a wet towel in front of a fan.

August
August started off with Josh's parents spending the weekend with us. They went to the beach for Reed's birthday and then stayed with us Saturday night. I made this German chocolate cheesecake. It was very good. I made it again a few weeks later for my dad's birthday.
I've been doing a lot of baking lately. It's my dream to open up my own bakery some day. I decided a while back to start preparing to make this dream a reality. I'm going to start small, just making cakes and other desserts for baby showers, birthdays and holidays. This way I can practice baking and decorating and get some extra income. Then I'll just go from there.

I'm still planning on finishing school and getting my teaching license. This is obviously going to happen a while down the road, but I'm excited to think my ultimate dream could be a reality!

Besides baking, I've been feeling pretty crafty in general. My step mom has got me into scrapbooking and now I'm a little obsessed. This is one of the first pages I actually have done: I have a lot of partially and nearly finished pages. This book is going to be a chronology of my life with Josh so far. It starts with when we were dating and ends at our first anniversary. This is a picture of us dressed as Wayne and Garth from Wayne's World. I have a page of when he proposed to me, our first Christmas together, our engagement pictures, our wedding and our children (Bert and Ernie). I don't really have anything else to scrapbook until we start having human kids, so I'll have to take a hiatus and get a different hobby for a while.

Now
Speaking of Bert and Ernie, they're doing well.In fact, they are HUGE.

Josh is busy with his new job. Right now he is busy trying to convince the workers in the plant not to unionize. I'm still not really doing anything. This month is exciting for me. My birthday is in a little over a week! And I'm (hopefully) going back to school at the end of the month! I have never been so excited to go back to school! But I haven't been able to get a job here and I missed the deadline to get financial aid for summer classes, so I've been stuck at home. My newest project (besides scrapbooking) is watching entire seasons of television shows on DVD. Right now I am loving Mad Men. But I ran out of episodes. I need season 5 of The Office to come out!!!

That's about it. Sorry it's so long. But if you think about it, this is really like six blogs in one. I hope you enjoyed our fascinating life and I promise we'll update more from now on! Bye y'all!