Category Archives: married life

valentine’s day

  By Kevin | February 14, 2012 - 9:42 pm | family, love, married life
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I have to admit that I believe that Valentine’s day is a holiday more for men that are courting than for people in a relationship. I prefer to celebrate other holidays (Christmas, birthdays, etc.) and celebrate our love everyday. So when Meg suggested we exchange small gifts and celebrate at home relatively simply, I agreed wholeheartedly. Meg was gone last weekend and I wanted to re-connect so we exchanged gifts early (ok I couldn’t wait – I thought my gifts for her were too awesome to wait.) We enjoyed a nice dinner at home tonight.

For the record, Meg gave me an awesome kitchen torch and vanilla beans for making creme brulee at home. and I gave her a number of fun pads from Knock, Knock. including the paper tweet.  I think we both hit home runs.

Now, if you’ll indulge me for a minute, let me gush about me wife.  Meg started a new job a few weeks ago.  She now works as the Community Manager for Hennepin County.  It’s been a lot of change (from weeks of waiting to tell people, to working both at the county and for the library, to now getting used to a new job and new coworkers, etc.) but she’s been a great trooper about it.  She always seems on top of it all, including keeping things running well at home.  (If it were me, we’d have run out of toilet paper or something else important by now.)  I’m really proud of her for taking this big step and trying something new.  The county is very excited to have her working there, and based on the large attendance at her going away party (you make a lot of friends in a 10 year tenure) they’re going to miss her tremendously at the library.  I think this is a beginning to a great new chapter in our lives.

paper

  By Kevin | January 21, 2012 - 10:16 pm | married life, wedding
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Tomorrow, Meg and I will have been married for one year.  We started to celebrate today by presenting each other with presents made of paper.

The names of some anniversaries provide guidance for appropriate or traditional gifts for the spouses to give each other; if there is a party these can be brought by the guests or influence the theme or decoration. These gifts vary in different countries, but some years have well-established connections now common to most nations: 5th Wooden, 10th Tin, 15th Crystal, 20th China, 25th Silver, 35thPearl, 40th Ruby, 50th Golden, 60th Diamond. The tradition may have originated in medieval Germany where, if a married couple lived to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their wedding, the wife was presented by her friends and neighbours with a silver wreath to congratulate them for the good fortune that had prolonged the lives of the couple for so many years. On celebration of the 50th, the wife received a wreath of gold. Over time the number of symbols expanded and the German tradition came to assign gifts that had direct connections with each stage of married life. The symbols have changed over time.(via wikipedia)

Meg and I decided to go with the traditional gifts making this year’s gift paper (and we additionally decided that we would create them ourselves) They are shown below.

 

balance

  By Kevin | December 13, 2011 - 2:50 pm | family, home, love, married life
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So I’ll admit, I’ve been having some problems with balance lately.

  • Work – Home Balance
  • Regular Work – Freelance Work Balance
  • Social Time – Contemplative Time Balance
  • Project Time – Relaxation Time Balance

Luckily for me my work schedule is based on an academic calendar so I get some time here in Dec-Jan to reset the scales again and get things back closer to unity.  Look forward to some posts then (including a 2011 wrap-up)  In the meantime watch this video of one of Meg’s Calm Jars.

consumption?

  By Kevin | November 18, 2011 - 9:29 am | home, married life
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Contrary to popular belief, I had a really annoying cold combined with strep throat, not Tuberculosis recently. (I say “had” even though I still have to clear my throat more times and than I can count in a day and cough more than I’d like, I’m getting over it I swear.)  This illness and my incredibly overbooked work and social calendar have caused me to be absent both here and pretty much everywhere else online.  Perhaps I’ll recap in a future post, but for now I can show you the last project finished and the next event planned

Gianni

Gianni Schicchi - Performed by the CSB/SJU Music Department

Packers Tickets

Packers Tickets for Sunday November 20th

I’ll catch up soon. . . Well actually probably in December.   Take care everyone.

Kevin

 

facebook with family

  By Kevin | July 17, 2011 - 7:44 pm | family, married life
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Meg and I have always had different opinions about asking people (we already know) to be connected on Facebook and other social media networking sites. There isn’t any wrong with either of our approaches to this situation but I feel like I’m beginning to move toward her method (which as I understand, consists of asking anyone she knows to be connected on Facebook.)

We attended a lovely party today with all the family and friends (on my side of the family) who came to wish us congratulations and good luck with our new wedded bliss. During one of the many conversations we had today, someone mentioned facebook and “who really wants to know if my son lost a tooth?” Well the truth is I guess we do.  As I introduced Meg to various family and friends she hadn’t met before I sometimes recalled that I hadn’t seen them in years. They have children I haven’t met, and we all regret that we haven’t seen each other more often.  This desire to keep in touch seems more difficult in this age where we all live where the work is and we try to live lives of happy existence, but we start to loose touch with those out of sight.

So I’m going to get over my un-substantiated fear of sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong (or isn’t wanted) and start connecting to more family and friends on Facebook.  However I’m still not promising this will make me more active on Facebook, but one step at a time.

From Des Moines to St. Paul

  By Meg | June 21, 2011 - 8:11 pm | family, married life
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This is the weirdest summer ever! 103 degrees one week, 60 degrees the next. We had beautiful weather for a drive to Grinnell, Iowa to see Chuck, Nicole, and baby Colin. And despite drizzle and some rain, spending time with Emily, Jason, and Andrew in Des Moines. Memorial Day was a good time to get out of town and regroup.

Even with the crazy weather, we’ve also managed to spend more time outside walking. One warm, sunny day, we took the long stroll down Grand Avenue in St. Paul for Grand Old Days with Jill, Jason, Steve, Alicia, Rachel, and another of my favorite kids:

I love how Nate wears his Packers hat with pride. Someday, our kids will have similar loyalties.

We spent part of last weekend in Lowertown, St. Paul at CoCo MSP for Unsummit. It was an exhausting, exhilarating day. I loved having Kevin at Unsummit a second time. He was a huge help to the conference and even attended my session.

Up next, New Orleans.  Laissez les bons temps rouler!

thank you’s (whew)

  By Kevin | June 19, 2011 - 9:33 pm | married life
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If you remember a few posts ago, I mentioned that Meg and I were working on wedding thank you’s. Technically we’ve been working on them for quite some time. I am happy to announce that as of tomorrow, we will be finished with formal thank you notes for the wedding. We finished writing them last week, but I hadn’t had time to get to the post office until Monday.

We’re both sorry that it has taken us so long to get them all out, but we hope you all know that our tardiness wasn’t caused by a lack of sincerity or thankfulness, but more by a number of life complications beyond our control. We were both truly humbled by all the things we were helped with and/or given around the wedding. It made our wedding that much more special.

ps. just in case your curious why it might have taken this long for us to finish: we wanted to make sure we took our time and wrote personal notes of thanks that conveyed how thankful we really were for each gift, we wanted to make sure they all mailed at the same time so that no one talked to someone who got one while they hadn’t, and then we picked bigger cards and I needed to make sure that we didn’t get them returned due to insufficient postage. (oh and omg, if you don’t get yours, please let us know, we want to make sure we thank everyone properly.)

may updates

  By Meg | May 10, 2011 - 8:09 pm | love, married life
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It was 90 degrees today in Minneapolis. I was so incredulous that I still wore tights with my dress today! Sure enough summer warmth is finally on its way. The season is also special because Kevin and I met in June two years ago. (Even with a new anniversary I still love that one.)  So- here are some summer plans:

  • a weekend in DesMoines, Iowa to visit Emily, Jason, and Andrew
  • a date to see the Minnesota Orchestra perform with Pink Martini
  • a trip to New Orleans, Louisiana to eat beignets, shop for absinthe spoons, and see a voodoo mass
  • house projects- bookcase and porch swing to strip and paint, our slide curtain to finish
  • another party to celebrate our marriage with family and friends in Milwaukee

I hope somewhere in there we’ll slip in some long walks, a drive to the north shore, a swim in Lake Michigan, and a geocache or two. Life is good.

dinner plans

  By Kevin | April 13, 2011 - 8:05 pm | home, married life
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A while ago Meg expressed she had a celebrity crush, Mark Bittman.  We were watching Spain on the Road Again and she explained that not only was he attractive (and apparently vaguely similar to myself) he was smart and knew how to cook.  I didn’t know exactly how to respond.  I’m not going to try and bill myself as the perfect husband here, I have my own celebrity crushes (Adele being one of the current ones.)  In the beginning I tried to resist and comically argue against Bittman’s allure.  As time went on and I have been more exposed to Bittman’s writing and recipes, I have begun to trust him (This started at Cafe Vienna in Barcelona after eating what he described as the perfect sandwich, which while I wouldn’t call it perfect it was incredibly good.)  This development caused me to order his book 

How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food.

After opening the book and seeing some of the recipes, Meg and I decided that we would use the book as our predominent choice for new recipes in the future.  So I got some postit flags and on Sunday we picked two recipes for this weeks meals.  Yesterday Meg made Fried Rice and tonight I made Vegetable Pancakes

After eating tonight’s dinner, I won’t make fun of this crush anymore.

updates and gccp

  By Kevin | April 8, 2011 - 11:47 am | home, love, married life
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Meg and I (Taken by Shea)

 

Meg and I have been trying to catch up on life and work for the past few days after arriving back home from Indiana.  It’s been a seemingly slow week.  Things will be okay for a while and then something will remind us of the sadness of last week and it’s repercussions.  At times like those it’s nice to have some distraction.  Last night we hosted some good friends Joseph and Shea for dinner at our home in Maple Grove.

Joseph and Shea

 

Meg prepared a wonderful sweet potato soup and we made paninis.  We swapped proposal stories and talked about fun times and spent a lot of time smiling and laughing.  Thanks for coming up to visit you two.

Other Updates: -

Slide Curtain (paused due to multiple project syndrome)

Scanning Photos for upcoming memorial service (We just received the chemicals we need to properly clean the photos before scanning, scanning should start [and hopefully end] on Sunday)

Wedding Thank You Notes (Due to perfectionism [me] and diligence [meg] we are further behind in this project than we should be.  We have all of the printed thank you notes in the box they arrived in sitting in our living room.  After we return from Indiana later this month, we will earnestly attack that project and you will all receive your well deserved hand written thank you notes, {we couldn’t believe and were honored by the enormous generosity of all our family and friends} hopefully not too late for everyone’s sensibilities.

Wedding and Honeymoon Photos {and posts} Online (after all of above, I get this taken care of.)

Lastly, an additional Thank You, for everyone who has sent us cards or flowers or notes or emails of sympathy.  I can’t begin to tell you how much it means to Meg (and her mom) and I to get these tokens of love and support.  Thank you.