Best Marketing Ploy Ever!!!

Rebecca and I ran across this marketing scheme on our drive from Muncie to Chicago.  We thought better of acting on their pitch but if you would like to eat there and see, feel, hear, smell, etc the results drive across Highway 28 in central Indiana.  Everyone is friendly in the midwest and I'm sure the service is terrific but we decided to stop at Starbucks instead.  

Take a close look at the display sign for the gas.  It looks burned out.  Gas fire?  Gas explosion? 

Carter took me to Vera Mae's last night to celebrate someone getting old. It was pretty fancy! However, I got a kick out of the fact that they brought out kid's scissors to help me eat the French Onion Soup. Very fun! The food was REALLY good. I had never had French Onion Soup and I really liked it. However, I think I'll like it more in the middle of winter :) I told Carter the flavor of the soup was "really intense." He refrained from telling me, "No, Rebecca, the soup in in a bowl, not in a tent." Thank you, I'll be here all day. 

        

Cardinal Cake

One of the advantages of Carter making our wedding cake is that we now have the capability to make fancy cakes whenever we'd like! Last night Carter made a cake with the Ball State Cardinal on it. He used a stencil to make the black outline, and then used freehand to complete the red filler.

 

mmmmmm... ice cream

Here is a picture of the ice cream we made with Natalie. It's french vanilla and it drank like a shake... Carter and I are going to practice so next time we have a guest we will be able to scoop it into bowls :) Oh I miss this ice cream.... SO YUMMY!

Our First Guest!

One of the blessings about living in Indiana is that my sister in law, Natalie, works in Indianapolis every other week! Therefore, last Thursday, we had our first guest come and stay with us! We had a lot of fun eating dinner and HOMEMADE ice cream. We've since realized that our freezer wasn't cold enough to freeze the ice cream bowl cold enough, and because of that we had shakes instead :) It was SOOOOOOO yummy! :)

Ice cream pictures will come in a day or two!

It's in the jeans, I mean "genes"!

Carter and I have been blessed with a lot of furniture "donated" to us after our marriage (thank you everyone!) We decided to paint the small chest of drawers after I stripped it of it's old paint. The bookcase I've had for a while but it didn't come with anything on it. Therefore, I figured it was time to stain it... Since painting runs in the Shaw family, I let Carter use his technical expertise! We are enjoying having a garage where we can work on these projects and are sure there are more to come :)

a bunch of hot air....

The other night Carter and I were working in the garage when two cars pulling trailers pulled onto the baseball field across the street. The next thing we knew two hot air balloons were being rolled out. So cool! We have since learned that this is a regular Sunday occurrence when the weather is nice! 

WE'RE back

I know it's been a while, but Carter and I decided to bring the blog back! We decided we needed to post pictures so you all know where we are and what we are up to. We are married and now are living in INDIANA!  :) Here is a picture of our new grill we got on our 2 month anniversary! We love cooking together! We decided to break the grill in correctly with some good tri-tip!

 

P.S. We know we need to change the name of the blog.... any ideas?

AMAZING Quilt :)

The church I grew up in, Bethany Chapel, threw me a bridal shower last night. It was so much fun to see a lot of people that were such a big part of me growing up!



My sister in law Natalie, is an amazing quilter and she often makes quilts for wedding presents. She brought the quilt she is making Carter and me and it's amazing! I love the design and the color so much. And, she even personalized it (see the below picture) with my future last name! I am so excited about it! You can see more of her quilts if you click the link on her name!

cake!

Carter made a test run of a possible wedding cake... YUMMMY!

It had a strawberry filling between the layers and he held up the second cake with straws... This is his first attempt at decorating, and I think he has done a fantastic job!

I am so impressed with his talents in the kitchen! :)

Decor

Yesterday Carter and I went to CostCo and bought our first piece of decor together... Hurricane Lamps! We got the Sea Glass and Candles at Cost Plus World Market today. You can't tell from the picture, but the Sea Glass has some green pieces in it and has a little bit of a green tinge. yay for green! :)

My sister sent me this video and it just cracked me up! And no, this kid is not related to me!

Just to appease my audience...

Ok, it's been a while since I've updated... ok, almost five months. So I'll give you a brief synopsis of my life since then...

My sister Jamie visited here for a while in September

I taught my first class

I surprised my brother Dan by flying out to see him coach his first NCAA playoff game

I sold a house and moved into a new place two blocks away

I visited Carter's family in Salt Lake and then we went to visit with my family for Christmas eve and Christmas day

I announced some basketball games at Westmont

I made homemade pasta with Carter and Kirsten

I made homemade ravioli with Carter, Rob, Sarah and Kirsten

Oh wait, I got engaged too! :) haha, Don't worry, I didn't forget. I just wanted to save the best for last! Here is the story I sent to my team after the event...

Carter was recruiting in Hawaii and was supposed to be there through Sunday morning (my roommate got married on Sunday, so he was getting back in time for the wedding). He called me on Friday and midway through the conversation he asked if I would do him a big favor, if I could pick him up a day early from his recruiting trip. I was all excited that he was getting back a day early (he had been recruiting a lot in the past 4-5 weeks). I picked him up Saturday morning and then he went to his basketball practice. He picked me up after practice (around 3 pm) and was really tired from his red eye flight the night before. He said, "When we get back to my place, I need to sleep for a little bit." I brought a coaching magazine with me and told him he could sleep as long as he needed. He told me to wake him up in 15 minutes. I thought that was crazy. I told him to sleep longer than that, but he kept insisting that he ONLY wanted to sleep 15 minutes. We had a function for my roommates wedding at 8:00, so I figured he had plenty of time to sleep. Anyhow, we went back and forth and finally agreed on 20 minutes, although in my head I knew I was going to let him
sleep at least 30!

After about 25 minutes he came strolling out of his room... I gave him a sheepish grin and said, "I really was going to wake you up in five minutes!" Anyhow, he got cleaned up and made a comment about wanting coffee. I wanted food, real food. I was REALLY hungry. But he insisted that he needed to get some coffee before he ate (as a fellow coffee addict, I understood the need and agreed!) We stopped at SB roasting company by the beach and then drove to the beach. We walked out onto the sand and just stood there looking out at the sun setting. I was really pretty because a lot of the boats had Christmas lights and the clouds were pink and salmon colored in the background.

After about 20 minutes of talking on the beach I looked at Carter and said, "oh my goodness, what day is today?" he answered (the 15th) and I looked at him and said, "today is our sixth month anniversary from our first date!" he smiled and said, "oh really? that is awesome!" and we continued to talk about how it seems like we've been dating so long but those six months have gone so quickly at the same time. About ten minutes later he looked at me and said, "Rebecca, I actually have a confession to make... I knew that today is the day we've been dating for six months. I knew after our first date that I wanted to marry you...." and he continued on and then got on his knee and asked me to marry him! I was so cool and very exciting at the same time!

The above picture is the day after we got engaged at my old roommates (Jen) Wedding. Below are some homemade pasta making pictures

Crowded House

Although we are going to have quite a few visitors for April and Brent's wedding this week, the title is not referring to our house! Last night Carter and I went to the Santa Barbara Bowl to see Crowded House, a group that Dan, Rob and I have been pretty big fans of. We sat in the third row and it was AMAZING! I had a great time with Carter and enjoyed how much fun the band seemed to have up on stage... they were goof balls! :-) I had never sat so close in a concert and it was fun to be able to see the bands expressions so clearly... definitely worth the little bit of extra dinero to be so close!


Carter and me during the opening act, Liam Finn... Pete Yorn also opened for them.

The video here looks further away than our view really was... we were about 10 yards away.



This more accurately portrays our view!








And I forgot to mention that the weather was PERFECT! I was never cold and was only hot when we had to walk up hill to get to the bowl! It was an amazing night all around :)

Dan's Birthday (a few months late)

So Brita and I had promised Dan we would take him out to dinner for his birthday, which was two months ago! So this past Wednesday we took him to Jade on upper State St. It was fun to get together, even if Dan and Brita talked electrical the whole time :) Just kidding, Dan just drew out some wiring pictures for Brita, but it seemed like they talked forever! :) Here are some pics from this fabulous event!

Dan drawing electrical designs for Brita.

His three way switch design matches his shirt! (Don't ask me what the design means!)

At the end of dinner (the chef took our pic!)

The required ice cream at McConnell's after dinner!

MMMMMMMMMMMMMM.... Yummy! :)

Harvest Festival

A few months back my parents came out for a visit and JP, my mom and I excavated some of our cement in the back yard in order to start a veggie garden. Well, JP and I went out for some plants and came back with six tomato plants. Little did we know that the harvest would be SO PLENTIFUL. Therefore, this past weekend we had our first annual "Harvest Festival." It was a great time had by all with three different types of salsa (regular, mango and corn and bean) and a TON of chips! (and let's not forget to mention the great fellowship!) I didn't get any pics of the actual event, but here is one of the salsa makers; Missy (JP's friend from college), JP, Kmac and Molly (Kmac's friend from AIA basketball). Thanks for all of your hard work! It was DELICIOSO!

The Los Angeles Angels (translation: "The The Angel's Angels")

Last Friday night I flew into LA and met up with my Brea friends to celebrate Rob's birthday at an Angel's game. We also went to BJ's afterwords to eat Pizzokie! YUMMY!


Happy Birthday to you! :)


Colleen, Emily and Kristin at BJ's.


Rob's a jerk! Where is that smile?!?!

Katie and Em with those fantastic thumbs! :)

Tim and Rob thinking it's funny every time they DON'T smile.

Kristin and me! :)

Mi Familia

I've spent the last week in Philly here with my entire family (all 18 of us!) and it's been a blast! We've been to the zoo, the park, the creek, the beach, and pretty much have had a really good time together. We also helped jamie and chad move into their new apt, 2 blocks from Dan's house and three blocks from Kristie's house! It's so cute and I even slept there last night. I have a ton of pics, but I'll just put a couple below!

Evie "washing" her shirt in the stream.

Maddie, Eleanor and me!

Ezra, or "E-fra" as Evie would call him!

Josiah at the zoo playground!

T-man running at me!

Da' Bulls (and a cozy saturday night...)

Tonight I was thankful to be watching my roommates Dog, Zak, because he was my only company! We've spent some quality time relaxing and reading :o) However, I just turned the TV on and the end of Bulls second championship (against the Trailblazers) was on ESPN Classic. MJ hit his free throws with 11 seconds left to put them up four. I couldn't believe how excited I got! I knew they won, and I remember that moment, but it must have been the nostalgia of it all that got me so stoked... oh the good old days when the Bulls DOMINATED! I can't believe this was 15 years ago... I shouldn't be able to remember 15 years back! I can't wait for them to come back and be good again :) Guess I'll have to settle for watching (and rooting for) King James... sorry Chad! Go Bulls (and Cavs for now) :)

PS BJ Armstrong just hit a three at the beginning of Game six versus the Suns in 1993. This was a good game too!

On a more serious note...

Two nights ago I got word that my roommate from college, Kristen, had just found out that her mom was diagnosed with kidney cancer. When I met Kristen, she was the oldest of two kids, and her parents had JUST adopted a 5 year old boy. Since then, her parents have adopted 4 more children!!!! Her parents have been an amazing testimony of God's love for me. They have set up a blog to keep friends and family updated so we (as friends and family) know how to pray... I invite you, as my friends, to pray for them as well! Their blog is

http://prayersforkaren.blogspot.com/

please pray!!!