7 Years of Wedded Bliss

July 28, 2001 was a hot, muggy, Chicago day. I slept approximately 3 hours the night before with my girlfriend Erin on the floor of my tiny bedroom in Worth. We had to wake up at 5:30am to be at the salon by 6:00am, so I relied heavily upon the makeup artist to do wonders on my face. Tim slept just fine and woke up refreshed from a night with his buddies. I never did ask how much they drank that night.

He and his two bros hopped in a borrowed black Corvette and succeeded in being pulled over 2 blocks from the church. All my girls and I got dressed at the church while singing "Going to the Chapel" over and over and over again. I guess that calmed my nerves. We had it on tape, but I accidentally recorded the 2006 Oscars over it, so that's that.

(Right before Mr. Officer pulled them over).

I don't have any shots of the two of us on the big day, but you get the idea.

My parents both walked me down the aisle, Nancy weeping as we went. Tim displayed his cute little smirk...probably because he saw me with my hair up for the first time (maybe second). I have a paranoia about my ears sticking out ever since Grandma K told my parents to get surgery to have those things pinned back. My dad and brother Ky sang, we recited our vows, Grandpa V made the audience chuckle with his unintended wit, charm and wrinkled tan suite and our pastor talked a lot about "leaving and cleaving." Tim's buddies got a real kick out of that, which proved that they were actually paying attention. We were officially married. Husband and wife.


That day sealed a deal that I knew would happen on our first date. Despite my frumpy purple sweater and my determination to NOT be someone Tim would want to date, I knew that this guy was it. He was, he is and he always will be. What I did to deserve and be blessed with my Tim I don't know, but I thank God for a marriage that will stand the test of time. Tim is my best friend, my eye candy, my strength, my calm and the person I look up to most in this world. Happy Anniversary hot stuff! Can't wait to see what's on the horizon for the next 7 years.

Sun, Fun and Livin' on the Run

Rather than writing an 18 paragraph novel about our 8 day trip to Chicago and Holland, I decided that a bullet point highlight summary would be more appreciated by my blog stalkers. Our annual summer trip to the Midwest was fantastic. Dude did great and had a blast spending time with a melting pot of folks near and dear to us. Below are some highlights....

*Dude discovering the joy of dirty puddles with cousin Dylan and strollering back to Uncle R & Aunt K's house naked.

*The best home made meal we've had in ages, courtesy of Ross and Kira. Ribs, mashed potatoes, broccoli salad, wine....ummmmm good.

*Mile High Dad and I spending a quality Chicago morning on Nick's boat with Nick, Caylei, Uncle Bob & Lukester. There's nothing like a calm morning on Lake Michigan with that huge city as a backdrop.

*Drinking wine and catching up with Mom V out on the porch of the cottage.

*Celebrating 29 years for my best friend and hubby.

*Watching Dude fall madly in love with splashing in the waves of Lake Michigan and then detesting the sand. Can't ask for it all I guess.

*Anne, Isaac and Clara proving how lovable they are.

*Jumping off the lighthouse pier with my main squeeze. He brings the daredevil in me...what can I say?

*Scrabble by citronella candle with the fam out on the porch (plus quite a bit of wine and snacks of course...and a big win for the mile high vogel team).

*A reunion of my mom's family at the country's largest park in Hudsonville...cousins I haven't seen in years showed up. Pretty cool way to spend a Tuesday night.

*A lovely dining experience on Lake Mac with Bret and Megan (expecting a baby soon)...despite the thunderous storm that forced us to move indoors mid-way through dinner.

*Pool time with my girls (Er & Missy) and their kiddos.

*Layin' around at Mom and Dad's house with the Dude...just hangin out and laughing at his antics.

*An excellent Mexican feast with the "pregnant with twin boy Riegers."

*Catching up with my childhood best friend, Kate and her beautiful, charming children. She's the one who started me on big earings, cute little skirts and 16 year old boyfriends named Bob.

*Maxin' and relaxin' with Mom and Dad at a Millennium Park concert, downtown Chicago. One of our favoritest things to do in Chicago.

*Partying it up and celebrating the nuptials of friends Tom and Kelly. All Mile High Dad's college buds were together, which is fun for me now since they've attached themselves with some pretty fabulous women!

*Meeting our newest babe, Bjorn! Melis, Chris and Em are now a family of four! Dude and his girlfriend Em had quite a remarkable time playing outside in the rain.

*Getting word that friends Adam and Caryn welcomed babies Eden and Sebastian into the world. Babies babies everywhere!

I think that's all. I don't know that the above bullet point list was any better than an 18 paragraph blog posting, but whatever. We had a great trip. Thanks to everyone who found time to fit us in!

Happy Red White and Blue Day

A friendly local realtor leaves flags in everyone's front yard on the 4th, so we had to take a comparison shot of the dude. It's amazing how fast time goes by. As of today, he's "all over the place" (just like everyone told us he would be). Just yesterday he was content sitting on a blanket all day playing with toys. What's up with that?

Another 4th was spent at the Bosch/Jansen cabin, which always provides for a great day of eating, hiking, game playing, wiffle ball, boccie ball, etc. There were about 35 people there this year, including 10 children running or crawling around. We're so grateful that we're included in the cabin festivities year after year! Tonight the "fun cul-de-sac" in our neighborhood invited us for a BBQ. Again, about 10 small children, but a great group of neighbors to hang out with. It's sure nice to be able to speak to them in English...our surrounding neighbors don't know a lick of anything but Russian. Just a random side note for ya.

Anyway, hope you had a great 4th weekend!

Our Adoption Story Documented

I went to an auction a while back - one of the items up for bid was a videographer coming to document your family story. No one had bid, so I won it for $50. Not a bad deal considering they charge $800 normally....I don't think the company was overjoyed with the end result, but they were stand up guys and came out to shoot our story anyway. The link below is the end result. We're extremely pleased with the quality of their work and think this will be pretty cool for the dude to have later in life. The kicker is...if another kiddo comes along, we technically have to drop $800 and have a video made for him or her too:)

http://lifecairn.com/clientaccess/vogelzang.htm

A 31 Year-Old Beauty

Isn't she lovely? She's cursing at me as she reads this, but it was our dear friend Cara's birthday this past weekend and we celebrated in Jansen style....great food, Barbie running around accommodating to everyone's last need, knock out margaritas, boccie ball, ice cream cake and 50 conversations happening at one time. We love this group of people!

The kiddos at the birthday bash

Dude is now walking about 40% of the time. We're hoping that by the end of next week when we head to Chi-town that he'll be more secure in his new mode of transportation. He hasn't figured out how to stand up without using us or furniture as his support, so we anticipate great things once that happens.

What else is new and exciting in our world...Mile High Dad's commute is now costing us approximately a trillion dollars in gas per day, so naturally we're getting the itch to move closer to the city. After all, it's been about 2 years since we moved into our house, so we have to stay true to Vogel "we move every 2 years" style. That's not a very viable solution right now, but we still find ourselves on realtor.com quite often. I'm working 4 days per week as it wasn't possible to work from home with the dude anymore. We'll see how I feel in a few months about that much time away from our angel, who will be introduced to a day care center come September. Stay tuned to find out if he keeps his angel status after that introduction!

A Walking Prodigy

What we're learning...when you child does something that he's naturally supposed to do through the cycle of maturation, it seems supernatural to first time parents. As if taking first steps is the equivalent to flying. About a week ago Dude figured out how to put one foot in front of the other and is now walking from furniture to other objects he desires to visit with. Today he started getting up on one foot and one knee in the middle of the room and would get SO frustrated when he couldn't make his way to a standing position. He wants more than anything to just stand up and go. That's progress!

We still giggle like school girls every time he walks toward us. "Isn't he so smart and athletic!" we say to one another. He giggles right along with us and has to stand for a while when he's laughing too hard to balance adequately. We also laugh when he bails, so today he started falling as hard as he could and looking at us with glee, waiting for our chuckles. We had to force a non reaction to avoid the game of falling overtaking the actual walking. What a joy the dude is. Enjoy the flick..

Dude's Life is Now One Big Yawn

The dude is in with drawl. His Nana & Papa were here for almost 2 weeks and changed his reality a bit. He was spoiled both in material items and in full blown attention. He became the center of the universe and thought it was the best thing since sliced bread (literally...he loves sliced bread). We also thoroughly enjoyed having them here. It's pretty cool that they got to spend every waking minute with the dude. That's a lot of quality time. They did a lot of babysitting, which was awesome. Free babysitting round these parts doesn't typically occur. We ate well, played a lot of Settlers, hung out with the Jansen clan and completed a lot of projects around the house that we never would have gotten around to on our own (the laundry room no longer has a cute clothes line border and powder blue walls, the patio chairs no longer sink your behind to the ground when you sit down and our dead pine tree landscape theme in the back corner is now a beautiful perennial garden). THANK YOU my dear parents!

Dude sat in this box for an hour just talking to himself and the birds.

They also taught the dude a few key life lessons. He now knows how to go down stairs. "Knees first!" He backs up to all stairs now, often way to early, but that's humorous to watch.
Since crawling is hard on his knees on the cement, our new method for walking looks a bit like an ape. See the video for evidence. Just recently, the pool has become dude's most favorite place to be. Getting thrown around and splashing provides endless entertainment. Right when we thought the dude wouldn't ever say anything other than "ball," he started randomly repeating words. That's fun stuff. The night Nana & Papa left he also took 4 steps, which was exhilarating for us as the parents of a 15 month old kid who can't yet walk. No pressure Dude.

We miss Nana & Papa already, but our week in Chi-town will be here before we know it! Thanks for the visit guys...it was 2 weeks of heaven for us all.

Soon after this shot, our buddy Brady jumped in the pool and found himself at the bottom. Luckily his mom is a quick responder:)

Using Our George W Money

After finding out that we would be gifted with a check from our fearless leader (I called it Bush money), we decided that we deserved a luxury vaca. Once we lined up my parents to come out and stay with the Dude, we explored many options...Seattle, Boston, Maine, Wine Country in California...the possibilities thrilled us. The plan was to travel with friends from Chicago but when they got prego with twins, those plans changed. Unfortunately the Bush Money wasn't going to pay for a trip to Wine Country for just the two of us footing the bill.

Never fear...we always have backup plans in place. Our friends Cara and Wes were on board to join us instead, but only had 3 days available rather than a week, so we choose the next best thing. A decision that I think many of you would have made. We went to Nebraska.

Most of you probably aren't aware that there's a large body of water in Nebraska...the one attraction that causes folks like us to get in the car, drive through a whole lot of nothing with bathing suites, towels and a lot of alcohol filling the trunk. When you finally see the 14 mile stretch they call Lake Maconahay, the heavens open and you're filled with a sense of relief that there truly is a reason you just drove to this land of a whole lot of very white people who use words like "aint" and "shit no."

We resided in the unit on the far left and had views of the lake from our balcony.

Lucky for us, a lovely couple just recently built a set of charming little townhouses for rent. The trailer park rentals were the other option and it might have been enough to cause our little Volvo to turn around without looking back. We rented a power boat, minus the power...not enough to get myself or Wes up on skis, but who's to say that was the boat's fault. Tubing was the highlight, along with the rare occasion where we saw another boat on the lake.

My better half looking oh so athletic.

This is the vehicle that dumped our boat into the water. They have their own ways of doing things in Nebraska.

You see, most people figure it's nuts to participate in water sports when the water temp is 45-50 degrees. We were there to party, so we had to buck up and deal. My chicken self even took the plunge and jumped in oh so elegantly. I've never been coined a swan for good reason. The first day was a blast. We all fried and enjoyed the great outdoors...even when we stopped to remind ourselves that we were in Nebraska on vacation. We grilled, played games, slept in and when we woke up on day #2, it was 50 degrees and rainy. Naturally we went home. There was literally nothing else to do. The town of Ogalalla doesn't even offer a movie theatre, let alone a Walmart. Bummer, but all in all a good time was had by all.

Proof that it was a bit chilly.

No one said we were an elegant bunch.

If you're considering spending your Bush Money on a unique and not often thought of as vaca, please don't hesitate to call us. We'll put you on Highway 80 and guide you right where the farm land meets the most random massive body of water Nebraska has to offer.

Grub, Booze & a Pair of Red Shoes

It's not often you get to sit in your backyard, drink Smirnof Ice, eat PB&J squares, mingle with a random mix of fine folk and listen to an hour of live music worth talkin' about. We were fortunate enough to get that opportunity last night. If it weren't for the 8 houses within arms reach (okay, 2 arms reach) of our patio, you would have thought you were in a private outdoor arena under the stars.

A college friend of ours is touring the country doing “Living Room Concerts.” Essentially, he drives from state to state and performs original music for folks, both strangers and friends. He started this concept about a year ago and has only rested his head on his own pillow for 2 weeks since. The concept has taken off. We offered to host him at what we called our “Grub, Booze & a Pair of Red Shoes" party. And we're glad we did! This dutchman has talent and he was able to share his amazing songwriting, vocal and instrumental talent with a handful of Denverites.

His name is Jon Troast and he wears signature red shoes at every performance. Check him out at www.jontroast.com . You won't regret it! Samples of his music can be found on his website and can also be purchased on iTunes. If you want to host him in your living room (or back patio), just contact him and set it up. It's what he does and it's pretty darn cool. Thanks for including our abode in your nationwide tour Jon. The pleasure was ours.