Here you go, Honey Bear.

I had nice chuckle over Boo Mama's post today about coffee, coffee shops, and specialty drinks of choice. It brought back many memories during my college and early-twenties days as a Caribou Coffee shop barista. To me, it was like working at the Cheers bar, only there we served coffee. I knew so many of our customers because we had so many regulars that actually came and hung out at the Caribou because they liked the atmosphere and they liked us.

We knew our customers more by the drink they ordered than by their names sometimes. Like, the middle-aged couple who always drove separately to the coffee shop but arrived at the same time because they were going in opposite directions to work. They always ordered an XL skim latte with half-shot decaf/regular coffee, so we always called them the "XL skim latte couple" and their drinks were already made and waiting for them at the counter when they arrived.

Some of my fondest days were the few years that I opened the shop at 5am with Cheryl. Oh. my. goodness....we had a blast. We got some curious smiles as to why we were so friendly at 6am in the morning. There was always something to laugh about.

Like the time Cheryl called one of the regular 6am guys "Honey Bear"...to his face. I don't even remember his name, but he would come in at 6am with a box of doughnuts for us and always bought a cup of coffee, plus honey from the "honey bear" bottles. He was an older gentleman, so it wasn't like he was hitting on us or anything....(unless we were really that naive?). One morning, Cheryl got eager with his cup of coffee ready at the counter for him when he came in. The gentleman had paid for his coffee and at the same time, Cheryl realized she forgot to provide the honey bear to him. She grabbed the honey bear and proceeded to hand it to him, saying, "Here you go....honey bear"...as in "here is the honey bear". Only, it really came out of her mouth as, "Here you go, Honey Bear". There was a slight moment of embarrassment when I just started bursting out laughing, then Cheryl laughed and then the gentleman laughed. That was when we started calling this gentleman "Honey Bear", but only BEFORE he got into the coffee shop.

Then, there was the time when I smoked up our coffee shop of burnt popcorn. There still hasn't been a drink created out of that experience.....

What I've Been Up To

I've been growing a baby boy!

Here I am at 20 weeks along (on 7/27/09). It's now over a month later and holy hannah, do I look different at 26 weeks! So much has changed and happened in 6 weeks with the little mister:

* Midwife, Katherine, declared him to be a very active boy and "Get your running shoes on because he's going to give you a run for your money!". Ha! I just laugh, because I know the joke is on me.

* Little mister typically rests (or maybe he just twiddles his thumbs) for about an hour and a half. Then, he juggles, twists, does cheerleading kicks (soccer kicks as Jason adamently insists), or does somersaults for about 10 minutes.

* I can press on my tummy and occasionally feel his body. Wonder of wonders!!

* Jason and I have narrowed on a name for this little guy, but it's a secret until his red carpet revealing around December 9th.

* Jason can talk to his boy (or my belly) now, which naturally begs one to ask, "why couldn't he before?". Long post for later...complete with pictures.

I really enjoy being pregnant and thank you, Lord, for blessing me with an easy pregnancy because He knew I needed to be on top of my game this summer with all that Jason went through.

Show Us Your Life - Wedding Party

Oh - I've been looking forward to this all week! Jason and I got married on August 18, 2006, at the EFC church that I've been going to for 10 years and that Jason switched to when we were dating. Okay - it wasn't the frozen tundra, but it was a nice balmy 80 degrees here in Minnesota that August day.

Our church pastor, Dan, married us and we had lots of music in our ceremony. After our pastor greeted everyone, our friends, Jon and Christa, led a small worship band in two worship songs. This really took our nerves away as the focus was taken momentarily off us and onto the music. My bridesmaid, Talia, sang this BEAUTIFUL song by Sara Groves called "He is Faithful", which is a mix between 'Great is Thy Faithfulness' and some other lyrics. Oh, my - I still cry when I hear that song!

Jason and I had a private first moment together before we began taking pictures before our ceremony. He was facing the front of the sanctuary and I walked down the aisle. This picture is when Jason turned around to see me for the first time. Jason had a Bible with him and he read out loud the last chapter of Psalms. During our engagement, we read one chapter in Psalm each night to each other on the phone. Our plan was to read the last chapter on our wedding day when we saw each other for the first time.



You'll also see that I LOVE hydrangeas and as my father-in-law put it, "You brought the garden inside", because our ceremony is laden with flowers. My wonderful cousin-in-law and friend, Becky, did all of our flowers for our reception and ceremony. She is amazingly talented and !!!

Bridesmaid Jenny's husband, Dave, designed our invitations, programs, reception seating cards, and thank you cards. This is our program. We had everything printed at our friend, Brian's, print company.


This is our neighbor's Chevy Impala that Jason and I sped off in after our ceremony as we drove ourselves to the reception. I'm really glad that it was just the two of us driving together in the car, because we just needed that "breather" moment apart from being surrounded by 200 people!


I had to show you two pictures of the bells that everyone rang as we dashed out of the church and into our get-away car. The bells were silver, but my cousin, Kim, and her daughter, Holly, spray painted all 250 bells a soft shade of muted gold! Thank you, Kim and Holly!!

Here are the beautiful bridesmaids!

L to R: Holly (friend), Becky (friend), Jamie (cousin), Jenny (friend), Stacey (friend), Talia (friend)

Here are the groomsmen! Check out the handsome man all in black - hee, hee.

L to R: Kyle (friend), Ross (friend), Best Man - Dave (brother), Ryan (friend), Brian (friend), Mike (friend)

Ha, ha - so which of you guys came up with this idea? I have an idea. When each groomsmen walked their bridesmaid up the aisle and came up next to where Jason stood, they each handed him a card with a word that when put together said, "It's too late to back out".

These are our two flower girls, Kristen and Jamie, who are daughters of our good friends, Jer and Angela. The ring bearer is my Caeden, my cousin's son. They were so good! Though I'm not sure what Caeden thought of everything!

This picture was taken in front of the golf club that our reception was at. You can't see it very well, but it's a beautiful club that has a lot of Scottish detailing.

My family L to R: Jayson (bro), my new husband!, Mom Debbie, Dad Harvey, and Kyle (bro)

I love this picture of my dad - he and Jason are always laughing and carrying on like this. He was probably even more giddy here because he was so nervous about walking me down the aisle in a few moments!

I love them all so much! Jason and I like to credit the wave of weddings that we started when we got married in 2006. Soon after our wedding, both of my brothers popped the question to their girlfriends and I got blessed with two AWESOME sister-in-laws....whose names are both Jennifer Marie. Yep - we have two Jenni's and two Jayson/Jason's in our family.

I love this picture of Jason with his mom and dad because I remember that Roger, Jason's pop, could not stop having fun during the photo shoot. I'm sure he's tickling and poking Jason to get him to burst into laughter. That was just the kind of man he was. We lost Roger to a tough, short battle with brain cancer in April 2008. He was a wonderful, godly father and husband.

Here is the whole family, including Jason's brother, Dave, on the far left. We're missing dear Carrie, Dave's wife. They weren't engaged yet, so again, Jason and I like to think we spurred the engagement on. :)

Boy, I could go on and on here. I want to show you this and I want to show you that, but you've got other blogs to look at!

My Wedding Dress

Okay - I love reading Kelly's Korner blog and I'm happy to participate in her "Show Us Your..." each Friday! Today it's the tour of wedding dresses and since Jason and I are approaching our 3rd wedding anniversary, it was so fun for me to look through our wedding pictures. Jason and I were married on Aug. 18, 2006. The candid pictures I'm sharing are pre-wedding preparations taken from my friend who was on duty for taking random pictures of me getting ready and the digital professional pics are on CD, being neglected. Here we go!

I found my dress on the first dress hunt my mom, best friend and I ventured on in Jan. 06. I love the beading and the organza overlay over my dress.















I loved our wedding day - it was the best day of my life because I became Jason's wife and all the celebrations have given me so many wonderful memories of the moment we shared our vows and celebrated with our friends and family. I wanted to look beautiful for Jason and my dress was exactly what I envisioned.

I can't wait to look at everyone else's wedding dresses!

Not Me! Monday

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

Before heading out on a camping trip last Friday, I honestly wondered how I was going to handle three days without being able to play Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook. I am NOT addicted to Bejeweled Blitz and my last three published posts on my FB wall have not been my latest high score. No, not me!

Home Improvements

We've been doing a lot of them! Which has kept me away from blogging for the last month or two. I didn't feel like constantly blogging how much my dining room looks like it got puked on by the contents of our kitchen - pans, dishes, silverware, pots, pans....everywhere! I'll spare you the details. I promise to share pictures.

There is one big home improvement that I'm excited to share soon - it's still kind of in the works, so I don't want to spill anything yet.

It's Friday

....and sunny, with blue skies and the whisper (or should I say trumpet announcement) of 70 degrees. Yay - spring is finally here. Please, please stay.

Tonight, Jason and I are going out to dinner. I may even talk him into a walk around the lakes. Dinner with my handsome husband and a walk afterwards = BLISS. It has been a few weeks since we had a date - the kind where we actually go out and do something. I was starting to feel the itch. Jason must have sensed this because the other night, he asked what we were doing on Friday night and said, "Maybe we should go out to dinner and use that gift card." Yes, please! On Monday when he talked about power-washing and sanding the deck on Friday night....(crickets chirping)....I should have told him at the time how grateful I was that he suggested dinner out.

I'm also kind of bashful because of my new photography hobby. Jason has been very encouraging and (mostly) willing to be a random photo subject. A few weeks ago, he signed me up for an introductory digital photography class, so I went to the class this past Monday. I was so tickled when Jason emailed me during the day and said how excited he was for me that I got to go to the class. When I got home, he wanted me to show me my favorite new tips and tricks. I love that he is so interested in what I'm interested in!

Here's to a fun evening with my rockin' husband!