October 10, 2008

We are thrilled to announce our engagement!

It started out as many other walks had - Aapl tugging away
at her leash as she walked us around Lake Calhoun. Normally, we would turn back
half way around Calhoun so her teeny feet would not get too tired. But this day was so beautiful - the evening setting in at the perfect temperature, people were running, biking and roller blading around the lake, enjoying the wonderful evening, and one of the last nice days of Autumn. We agreed to keep walking.

We came to the beach on the far end of the lake and turned off the path to get closer to the water. This is the point of no return for me. My plan was coming together. I reached over and pulled Katrina to me and started my unplanned speech. After a few compliments turned into a full few minutes, Katrina asked me why I was saying these weird things. That was my cue. I started digging in my pocket, past my keys and some dog treats, and found what I was looking for (apparently she saw this sly attempt). I grabbed her hand as I knelt down with ring in hand and asked her to marry me! I'm pretty sure she thought I was joking even though she responded with an enthusiastic yes. After some hugs and kisses and a few tears, I reached into the near by bushes and pulled out a previously hidden bag with a bottle of champaign and glasses. We sat and drank that fine bottle of bubbly for well over an hour as we watched the moon come up, and talked about our exciting future together.

We have included several pictures from our weekend celebration. Neither of us had our cameras, so we kept our fingers crossed with the old disposable 35mm. Mike had already been planning a weekend getaway (which hopefully would be a celebratory weekend) with a little cabin on the shore of Lake Superior, north of Two Harbors. The weekend was perfect, and the Autumn colors were at their spectacular peak. We spent the rest of the weekend just to two of us, and of course, little Aapl!

Of mention, is the dinner we enjoyed Saturday night. When you dine in Beaver Bay, MN, a town of 175 people, one can only imagine the experience. After our order was misplaced, we then enjoyed the slowest service west of Wisconsin and a torrential down-pour - and ended up with a car stuck in a foot of sloppy mud that had originally started out as our parking spot.

Fortunately, we met a Minnesota stranger who went out of his way to drive to the Holiday station and in the end, he towed us out. We were able to laugh about it - after all, how could we not laugh at the fact that here we are on the first full day of our engagement, and we are knee deep in mud with a hillbilly yelling 'Oh Yah! You ain't never getten outta that swamp toonight!' We offered him an invite to the wedding, but he decided to give us our first wedding present instead - a finely crafted industrial strength yellow tow strap!

Each of you are so meaningful to us and we look forward to sharing many more moments with each other and with you!

Mike, Katrina & Aapl

aapl discovers the summer fun!

aapl has had such a jolly time meeting her cousins abby and lucy, and visiting the lake with sydney! she sure does love the water. run aapl run!

happy birthday aapl

little aapl is 4 months old today! she has now experienced her first
visit with auntie sydney and her first bath, followed my multiple other
baths. her hair doesn't seem to be getting any prettier though. aapl is
also learning the joy of playing with orange, sitting on other puppy
friends, and chewing on scissors.

merry christmas aapl!

santa left a little puppy in our stocking on christmas eve - 6 pound little aapl has made herself cozy in minneapolis.

aapl enjoys such things as shaking snow off her booty, partying at 3am, looking hip in her sweater and experimenting with that voice she was given...

here are a couple photos of her first days on fremont street!

bye aapl!

coming to america

Home to me is very debatable. I’m from Chicago, I live in San Diego, most of my family lives in Florida, and I’m moving to New York. Never before have I felt that my home is just America, but I do now.

It’s funny how traveling away to foreign lands makes you appreciate the subtleties of home - even though these foreign lands sometimes look like home. Like when you discover that Seven-11’s are more prevalent in Thailand and Japan than McDonalds. They’re everywhere! Or when you realize after you go into an unknown fast-food restaurant in Australia that it actually is a Burger King (The name Burger King was already taken before “Burger King” made it down under). But it isn’t until you look closely or are starving for some Doritos that you realize the Seven-11’s are quite different as is the rest. Instead of normal chips, they have hotdog bisque flavored chips or cheddar and prawns or #>~*). They do have Big Gulps, but don’t understand you when you say “Big Gulps huh? See ya later”. I know I’m supposed to go away to get away, but isn’t just being there enough?

I mean, we scuba’d the Great Barrier Reef! They don’t have that in America. I walked next to the hunky Russell Crow for 5 minutes. How cool is that? I kissed (and licked) Sydney’s opera house! Everyone has seen pictures of it from the Olympics but what they don’t know is that there are 3 foot bats that fly above it every night - or that it is infested with pet rats. I feel so fortunate to be able to take this time in our lives to go get $3 massages everyday (talked down from $4) – to rent scooters for $5 a day and go exploring or to meet awesome people and talk about their views of America.

While traveling abroad I felt like I was either 20 years in the future or 100 years in the past. Everything in Australia and Japan was so new and clean. Australia had problems, but they were problems you’d expect us to have in 50 years or so. For instance, the number one political topic for the upcoming election was where the country is going to get drinking water. Drinking water! Not war or welfare or the economy. Drinking water! Talk about an issue.

Tokyo – You have to go there to have a clue what I’m talking about, but it’s basically like the Las Vegas Strip meets 25 Times Square’s meets what ever image you have of some back alley flea market in Vietnam. It’s crazy. Katrina asked me where they were going to go from here (in terms of growth) and I have no clue. It’s already so built up and so crowded with so many people. Rush hour on the subway is always. These people must work 15 hours a day because we’d be going to a bar at 10:00PM and the subway would be packed with people in suits.

Thailand – Despite it’s natural beauty outside the cities, Thailand is so backwards. The streets are lined with row after row of broken down huts. It seems to me that they have lost their proud tradition and heritage and exploit the temples and religion for tourist dollars. The islands are another thing. They are still very poor and backwards, but are also very peaceful and fun. You might think that riding around on a scooter with no helmets on a street that’s not a street might be unwise, but when in Rome I guess. Despite the poverty, Thailand is a great place. You can find the smartest dogs in the world, a perfectly made banana crepe at 3:00AM and some really nice people.

Which brings me back to America. I’m always going to have a desire to explore this world and the unknown. I’ve always been interested in seeing things first hand and meeting new people, but when I took my seat on this plane to come back home, to come to a place that is familiar and known, I realized that I frickin love America!