Canoe Trip

Mara and I heard of a deal where Thousand Hills State Park was giving half priced canoe rentals if you were there before Noon. We figured we'd fight the Sunday crowds and try it out. Turns out, since we live in the heart of the bible belt, no one goes on the lake before mid-afternoon.

We pretty much had the 573 acre lake to ourselves!

I took a 360º panorama of "Lake Syring". If you click on it you can check out the full resolution photo. We were only allowed to upload 1/2 of the actual picture size (it's a full 360º!). You'll be hard pressed to find another boat/swimmer/kayak in the picture, and you can see 90% of it in the full photo. It was eerie...



We canoed for about 2.5 hours, and it cost us about $10 with sodas! 2 poor students can't ask for much more than that! We didn't take the dogs out because we were not sure of their boats, but there would be PLENTY of room for them! Can't wait to maybe try it out again this weekend, it's supposed to be mid-80's and lots of sunshine.

Oh, and we went off the beaten path (go figure) and I found some poison oak/ivy/sumac. I am pretty much immune to the poison leaves in IA & WI, but apparently not MO. So on top of my tick bites, I have some nice, itchy hives. Looks like more anti-histamines and calamine lotion for me! Woo-Hoo!

One week down...

I survived the first week, relatively unscathed. The one casuality is my cell phone...while it is still functional, I no longer have a screen. Which wouldn't really matter if I actually remembered numbers and didn't rely on my trusty address book (in the phone, of course!) and I can no longer text, although I figured out how to forward my text messages to Mike without seeing the screen. Other than a crappy phone, I had a great week!
Classes are, as expected, crammed with a ton of information, some I'm vaguely familiar with, some I'm not. I have 6 classes this quarter, with labs for all of them. Generally I will be at school from 7am-5pm with an hour for lunch, the hours are pretty much what I'm used to but definitely more brain power required! My first exam is already next Wednesday, September 5, in Biochemistry. So far, I have been studying at home, inside and outside (even in the hammock,with my coffee!)for at least a few hours everyday. Hopefully I'll stay on top of things!

Don't get me wrong, studying does take up a lot of my time, but we've found some time for fun as well, but that is for another post!

Linus' Crack Run

Our friend Pete first coined the phrase "crack run" to refer to his dog, Fala's frantic running for apparently no reason. Linus has done these quite a bit in the past, but since he has not been familiar with the layout of our house in Kirksville, he's been hesitent.
So we decided to set up to "encourage" him to freak out (now you know why Linus is the way he is...). With Mara in the living room & Me running the camera in the bedroom, we got a good perspecive of his first real crack run in Kirksville.

Grandpa Genes

Mara and I both have carpentry in our blood. Grandpa Bacon whittled and made awesome carvings and a bookshelf we still use. Grandpa Hansen made amazing cabinets,and he's made a rocking chair for each great-grandchild . Grandpa Syring made about 1000 letter holders and gave them to about everyone he knew.
Now Mara and I don't have the practice, nor the patience, that our Grandfathers had. Nor do we have the tools they had. We probably don't have the design skills they possess. And our workbench has been downgraded to a fold out card table. Pretty crappy, I know.
I was looking through a magazine and saw a picture of a neat butcher block. The idea was pretty much a box with enough bamboo sticks to support knives




Now we don't have $125 to spend on a "European pine" and bamboo block of wood, so we decided to put our genes to the test....















We went to Home Depot and found a REALLY cool scrap piece of poplar wood for about $3. We then bought enough L brackets to frame a house, and a small can of polyurethane.
The brackets we got were a little shorter than we needed, so Mara came up with an AWESOME design that really looks slick. By overlapping the wood on one end we could use the brackets and still have a solid perimeter:








The outside of the block with Mara's design of joining the wood with alternating colors.



















This block could survive a nuke...











Next we needed enough skewers to fill the damn thing. The dollar store yielded nothing but a 6' dog leash for Linus, and a trip to Wal-Mart gave us 200 sticks; about enough to fill 1/5 of the block. Hy-Vee yielded the rest of the roughly 1000 bamboo skewers it took to fill the block enough to support our heavy knives.
Here is our final product...

This was the test knife. A 7" Santoku knife that is about the heaviest we own.

And then we added the rest of our knives...

We were REALLY happy with the way it turned out. I knew we had those genes for a reason!

My fingers are a little sore from breaking all of those bamboo skewers. I sliced myself pretty good with one.

So 1 trip to Home Depot's scrap yard, 12 L brackets, 1000 bamboo skewers, and 1 band-aid later, we have a new home for our favorite kitchen utensils!

Tick Watch Update

Well we got the dogs into the vet and they gave them Frontline, which is an oil that you put on their shoulder blades and it causes ticks that bite them to die, and they should fall off within the next 24-28 hours. In the meantime the puppies will be sleeping in the garage to avoid a tick infested bed.

For me it's been a different story. Yesterday my legs felt like they were on FIRE! Turns out I had quite a few tick bites. It's been a nightly dose of benadryl and calamine lotion for me to avoid cratching my legs like a crack addict. Here is a snapshot of the tiny welts on my feet:







You may have to click on the picture to see the bites, they are REALLY small, but there are hundreds of them!






It's pretty much like that all the way up my calf as well. Mara was "lucky" and only has about 10-20 bites on each leg. I think my freaking out about it made the ticks bite me more...:)

Welcome...to Hell...

We didn't want to trump Mara's white coat ceremony post below (if you haven't seen it check it out first, this story takes a while to tell), but we found a reason to hate it here...ticks. We've had ticks in the past, in Milwaukee's parks, and we've had literally hundreds of them when we backpacked at Copper Falls State Park, but this trumps them all.

We went on a nice hike on a drizzly day here, but we wanted to be outside, and also to check out the trails at Thousand Hills State Park. We found a trail that is seldom used (evident by the dozens of LARGE spider webs we walked through). After about 3 miles the trail came to one of the "fingers" of Forest Lake. We through a stick for Lucy, and really enjoyed the view below:

We noticed some spots on our legs that we thought were seeds, pollen, or whatever. Upon further inspection Mara said "They're moving". At this point I started to freak out. We were about 3 miles from the car, and our legs & shoes were absolutely covered with these things. It reminded me of my sister Jen's experience with the red ants in North Carolina. Her feet were white with bites and swollen. We were not in any pain, but the thought of the things were making our legs itch like crazy! We made the trip back to the car in about a 1/3 of the time it took us to get to the lake. I took my shoes off, which was a mistake, and saw that there were even more than I imagined, all clumped up around my sock line...I started to mini-hyperventilate. We briefly thought of the part in Tommy Boy when Chris Farley is running around, hitting his head, yelling "BEES! THEY'RE EVERYWHERE! SAVE YOURSELF! YOUR WEAPONS ARE USELESS AGAINST THEM!"

We luckily made it back home quickly and both took showers with our dog's flea & tick shampoo. It seems to kill most of them. We found a couple of dead adult bugs, and confirmed that, yep, they were ticks.

We then gave the dogs a bath with it, and then we took another shower, still picking little ticks off (most of them were dead). We thought we were out of the woods. We were wrong. We went and ran some errands. When we came back we decided to cut the burrs out Linus' hair. This is what we found:

Literally, there are probably thousands of them on Linus alone. Luckily we found a vet that would see us at 4:30 on a Sunday. They are going to give them a flea "dip", and hopefully it will take care of them within 24-48 hours.

We feel SO BAD for our dogs! We talked to Chris & Shell about it, and we looked up websites that state "August 6, 2007; Missourians Urged to Protect Against Tick Bites as Tick-borne Disease Cases Increase". That is great.

We really don't hate it here now, but we will have to be extra-vigilant about checking our dogs (and our selves) for ticks. Oh yeah, we saw a HUGE spider on our walk too...

We'll let you know how our dogs fair after this mini-crisis we are in the midst of...

White Coat Ceremony

I have officially begun the road to becoming a physician!
I received my short (student) white coat that I will wear for the next 4 years. Upon graduation I will receive a long white coat to signify my status as a Doctor. All 172 people in my class stated their name, college, and majors and we were then "coated" (I'm not sure if there is an official way to state that). Basically we shook hands with the Associate Dean, then the Dean, and finally the Clinical Affairs Associate Dean.

After the ceremony, Mike, Holly, Dan, Josh & I went to a reception and then out to dinner. It was really nice to have my parents, brother, and of course Mike there for the occasion.

I am very excited to start, what I'm sure will be a fun and challenging 1367 more days (check out the new counter on the sidebar). The following video is my part of the white coat ceremony.

T-N-A Come To Visit

This last weekend Tim, Allison & Nate came to visit us from the great state of Nebraska!

It gave us a chance to hit the nightlife in the 'ville. With the college students not quite filling up the bars, we found some ways to pass the time


Mara & Allison gave their version of "The Gun Show", Allison & I played a rockin' game of "Bags", and Nate showed us all how he can drive a Harley while drinking...



On Sunday we (Nate, Mara and I) got up early and decided it was nice enough (95F) to put up a hammock!

When Tim & Allison woke up (around 10am) they graced us with their presence...


After getting the hammock in position the first time, Nate got dripped on by tree sap and we had to find another place to hang it! Luckily we had another tree nearby. After several adjustments we had a nice hammock for us to relax in!







We were really glad to see the three of them! We hadn't seen them since Mexico!!! Hopefully we'll be able to meet up more often since we are only about 5 hours away now, instead of the 9 it was from Milwaukee!

Happy 100 Days Jackson!!!

Mara and I just wanted to wish Jackson a Happy 100th Day on the outside! He's quite a handful still, but then again, so are his parents! :D
Looking forward to the next time we see the little guy!
Since I can't be there to sing his favorite song, I put together a compilation for him. Hope he enjoys it! :)

LOOK OUT! He Is A Spider Pig!

This is from the Simpson's Movie. If you haven't seen it, I HIGHLY recommend it. You don't even have to be fanatical Simpsons fan to find it funny.
If you haven't seen the Spider Pig clips on the preview yet here it is...


In the movie they have an a capella version, which is just hilarious! Check it out below...

1BZ 36Z

Okay, not quite as easy as MCBACON, but we'll adapt.
I FINALLY, got the car licensed in MO. For those who haven't heard me whine about the process...consider yourselves lucky:)

Days to completion: 3.5

Trips to Courthouse: 2

Trips to License Bureau (no, they don't have a DMV/DOT, that would be easy): 4

Trips to get inspected: 2

Trips to get $: 1

Two years registration fee: $60.50

Ability to call ourselves Missourian's: Priceless

Now we just have to get our driver's licenses switched, but since I don't know where all 4 identification papers are and we don't have any mail directly to our new address, that will have to wait for another day and hopefully more patience!

The Big Move!

The day finally came. Mara and I had our last days at work, and we said goodbye (but not forever) to many good friends in Milwaukee. It was bitter sweet to leave. We met in Milwaukee, got our first house (which we still have...), and had a great experience! But on to bigger and better things!
Our move went REALLY smooth! Larry & Deb, and Chris, Shell & Jackson came and helped load the truck in Sussex. We thought they were just picking up the car, but they helped a TON! We were really surprised, and greatful. We picked up PF Changs for our last Milwaukee meal and hit the hay. We slept from 11:30pm to 1:30am and hit the road to miss the traffic and get down to Missouri at a decent time (We got there around 11:00am).
The puppies were SUPER needy, and thought we were going to leave them again everytime we stopped at a gas station. Lucy laid on the bench seat with us, and Linus slept under it. Just like home!

When Larry & Deb and Chris, Shell, & Jackson showed up we had about 1/2 the truck unpacked and they helped us get through the rest. It was getting hard towards the end to keep working so hard. The temp was 99°F, and we had a heat index of 117°F on Tuesday! We got through it pretty good though. Afterwards everyone pretty much crashed...

We were REALLY happy with the move, and our house, which we rented sight unseen, turned out to be a GREAT find by our realtor. It has a nice yard, with PLENY of space in the kitchen, dining, and living rooms, and has 2 large bedrooms that fit all of our crap nicely. We even have a fire place, 2.5 baths, and a 2.5 car garage! Plenty of room for visitors...:)

Thanks again to everyone for helping! We also were VERY thankful for Dan & Holly to take the monsters (Linus & Lucy) for 8 weeks. That was extremely helpful to us!!!

We just got hooked up online, so we promise to catch up on some posts. Be sure to scroll down to catch them all!

Just so you don't think we just worked the whole time...Larry found some time to play with Lucy in our HUGE back yard, and Shell found one of Jackson's toys pretty amusing...ENJOY!

Farmer Austin

Austin and his family had a chance to hang out at the Bacon Farm. He loved the cows, crazy since he can be quite shy! He also loved the "Austin-size tractor" as he called.

I'm really glad my parents were able to meet the Edmonds' since they are such AWESOME people. I will truly miss seeing them weekly, I love that little guy. We will definitely keep in touch with them!

Laurel & Elton very kindly offered to watch our house in Milwaukee and to keep up the lawn for us. We owe them big! It's really nice to know we have someone we can trust keeping an eye on things since we are so far away.

Here are a few pictures from their visit to the farm...

Sammer Reu!

What a cutie!
It was really great to hang out with Sally, Scott, & Sam for a few days. Sally & I got in plenty of sister time and Sam & I got to snuggle quite a bit. Sam was still pretty tiny,not much more than when he was born, it seems he's had a growth spurt from the pictures Sally has posted!

Sally, Sam, Hunter, & I took a few walks through Baldwin (it's even smaller than Kirksville!) and Sam was tolerant enough to get a few fun photos...enjoy!




















I am glad I had the chance to hang out for a few days, especially since we've moved ~7 hours away (it was only 4) and we won't see them again until Thanksgiving. Sam will have changed so much by then. The webcams' are really going to come in handy for keeping in touch.

Moving day!

No new posts until our new internet is up and running, but once it is...we'll have some catch-up posts to write and plenty of pictures.