Wedding Wednesday :)

This past weekend Matt & I went to a wedding for his cousin and this is how our night started:

And this is how our night ended...

haha so much fun was had :)

Back to the Basics

So for the past few months I've felt as though "something needs to be done" about Hank's behaviors. Walks with him have become frustrating and embarrassing by the excess amount of pulling and general "bad behaviors". Well where we live in combination with my non-traditional work schedule (I work M-Th until 8pm...but it's about 45min from home) didn't leave many options for training classes.

But I also wasn't confident that group classes would be the best thing for us as Hank goes bazerk when he's around new dogs. He doesn't "attack" them by any means, but rather gets soooo excited that he can't stop from barreling into them and forcing them to play with him...(insert eye roll here). Well lets just say not every dog appreciates his enthusiasm for them.

Well after a week of Internet searching I found a trainer in our area and after discussing our situation it was decided that individual training sessions would be the best place to start in order to assess where we should go with training.

So although some people might not think it's necessary...hubs and I do and that's all that matters. I am really excited to see what happens in these coming weeks :)

Here are some recent pics of my happy puppy that I just couldn't resist posting:

Quote of the Day

Recently sold all our wedding centerpieces, feeling a little nostalgic...

Baby Sis is Growing Up

Happy Happy Birthday to my baby sister! She is the only sibling I have and I can not express how much I love her. For the past few birthdays she had been living in Cali so this year was very fun to help her celebrate and what better way to celebrate than with a mariachi band and cake!

The Great Minnesota Get Together

That's right hubs and I made our way to the greatest summer event in the state of MN. To say that we "like" or "enjoy" the fair is a major understatement! We go fully prepared to see sights you don't see elsewhere and eat treats you don't eat elsewhere! And this year was no exception...except that I brought my new photog skills :)

It might be weird but our first food was this tray of ah-mazing garlic fries. Although hubs and I are big garlic fans even we had to stop at this point. And when I laughed about something later...hubs said my breath still stunk :(

 New to the fair this year was the Giant Sing Along which was pretty cool.

A Fair favorite this year was deep fried peanut butter cups, all I can say is O-M-G! We split these and that was the perfect amount.

And of course the day wouldn't be complete without checking out the animals. Below is one of my favorite pics of the whole day. There is just nothing sweeter than these little piggies that were only 6 days old!

One of my FAVORITE places the check out is the pet barn! I just love seeing everything that is dog related and trying to catch any demonstrations. I was able to get some fun shots of the trainer that was showing off his spaniel:

And then there was this guy! I LOVE Great Danes! And this one was no exception, look at that face!

Hubs and I walked and walked all day long and overall had a great day together. It wasn't until we were almost to the truck that I remembered we didn't get a pic of us yet. So, please excuse that the background is a parking lot and we look a little tired and full.

I Heart Photography

So over the past few months I have really taken a liking to photography. I have always loved great photographs but had never thought that I could produce anything that I would be proud to show off.

It all started with a couple classes at my local National Camera Exchange store. I had some tickets to classes there and thought, hey why not. So me and my shiny, new Nikon D3000 headed off to learn what all those confusing buttons do ;)

After a few classes I have to say, I am hooked! Seriously hooked! I am so in love with trying to get better and better that I look for any opportunity to try out my skills. Earlier this summer I attended (not hosted) a bridal shower for Matt's cousin and it turned out that none of the aunts had remembered a camera so....I oh so humbly offered to take some pics. By the end of the afternoon I had 210+ new pictures to edit and play with! Well I won't bog this down with ALL of those so I will just share some of my favs. These are of the church where the shower was held. During the shower a horrible thunder storm occured (the tornado sirens went off), but afterwards b-e-a-utiful sun rays came poking thru perfectly placed, white, fluffy clouds and fresh, shiny, raindrops sparkled! Heaven! Enjoy!

I'm Baaaaack

"I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday" 

~Eleanor Roosevelt

Well to say I've taken a little vacation would be an understatement. It has been almost 4 months since my last post with many reasons for this: boredom with the blog, busy-ness in life, summer sun...you get the point. To say that this blog took a back seat to everything else would also be an understatement. I spent a while wondering if I should just go ahead and delete it. Seriously, that was a thought.

But I decided to try to get back to it. Not quit it.

Today I spent time revamping the layout, which is something I said I was going to try to learn about waaay back when. But, today I decided to just do it. Mainly because I really want to post some of the pretty cool photos I've been creating and the little 1" x 2" pictures that I could get to fit were just NOT cutting it for me.

So I buckled down and forced myself to figure it out...with this guy's help. So if anyone out there is also struggling...I highly recommend this article :)

So although I am about 99.999% confident that no one has read this blog, I am going to keep going and figure out where it takes me, but I do know that my photo-taking skills have improved vastly since this thing started. So for your viewing pleasure, whoever you are, one of my favorite pictures from this summer. Hubs and I took a dinner, boat cruise on the St. Croix with his family.