Do you remember your Prom?

Nick and I took advantage of a gift card and went to eat at Sunsets. Apparently tonight is Prom Night for Woodbury. I spent a lot of time staring at some of the dressed girls were wearing. I don't remember quite that much skin at my prom, but maybe I need to pull out the pics and remember it a bit more accurately.

Anyway, Nick and I talked about our proms. My prom seemed to be a bit different than the way "everyone else" seemed to have it. Did anyone else have a "Grand March" or is that just my school?

The waitress said something like, don't you wish it was your prom again, or something like that. No. I don't wish it was my Prom. I would not like to go back to that time in my life I made it through the first time. That is plenty for me. Don't get me wrong, Prom was fun, but I don't want to go again.

Driving, Family, and the Lil' Red Barn

As some of you may have heard, Nick's paternal grandmother passed away last weekend. The funeral was planned for Wednesday. She lived in Elwood Nebraska. That is where the funeral was. We left early on Tuesday morning and arrived in Elwood around 3:30.

What does one do on a 9 hour road trip to Nebraska? We did listen to some ipod tunes, but we also did some reading. I am not a big fan of books on tape, but I did enjoy reading to Nick. Our small group decided to do some Old Testament studying. So I read the summaries I found for Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. I then continued on and read the entire book of Joshua. It isn't tremendously long, but certainly took a while to read. If you haven't looked at the book of Joshua for a while, I encourage you to do so. Some of the names of people and places are TOUGH! I stumbled through quite a few of them. After I finished reading we chatted about it a bit. Before we knew it, we were in Nebraska.

Our first stop...the Lil' Red Barn. I am guessing some of you may wonder, what is the Lil' Red Barn? It is in Elwood Nebraska, the options are endless. It could be a restaurant, a bar, perhaps a church? It is the local motel. It really is a red barn shaped building. There are 5 rooms. Nick and I were in room #4, which is upstairs. We got a "suite." The accommodations were decent and suited our needs.

We changed clothes and headed to the church for the Wake. The "nice" thing about funerals is getting to see family. In this case, it included meeting family. I had met a few of these relatives for Steph's wedding last June. Many of them I had not met yet. I did find out that some of these relatives are loyal readers of my blog. (Thanks!)

Nick's dad's family isn't THAT big, especially compared to my dad's family, but there were still a lot of people to keep straight. Makes me realize just what an enormous feat it was for him to learn all my relatives. (Nick is awesome!) I do know that Jim and Kathy were fabulous hosts. Kathy is a cousin of Rollie's. They were such generous hosts. Kathy even packed a meal for us to load up and take on the road for our trip back. They were very kind.

We left Elwood around 3pm. I started driving back. To help keep us both awake, Nick read the book of Genesis. I have read the first several chapters. I did not realize how messed up things were way back then. I realized people were pretty bad for God to have wiped out all existence with a flood, but man, crazy things were happening in the book of Genesis. For everyone out there that says people just keep getting worse and worse, read Genesis! I also realized reading the OT through Esther is best done in order. Once we read Genesis I realized there were a lot of the same names of places, as well as how this and that came to be...and then we learned more about it in Joshua.

We got back home around 12:30am (Thursday) and both of us were up to go to work/school. It was a long couple of days, and made for tired people rest of the week, but I am glad we could go.

I will get a picture of the Lil' Red Barn up soon. I know, you are waiting anxiously.

Tithe if you love Jesus

Anyone can honk


Seriously, that is what is on the "create-a-sign" sign out front of a local church. I am not a fan of those signs to start with. That statement is just one of the plethora of reasons why. As a non-member, I find it tacky. As a Christian I think it is tacky. Maybe the person that thought it was funny ran it by a couple of parishioners and they all had a chuckle and decided it would work. I think they missed the mark. People already think church just wants my money. Now the church is admitting it. Maybe I took it wrong initially. Maybe they really are exercising truth in advertising. They want your money.

Even worse (in my opinion) than that statement being posted, is they tend to leave the sign up for weeks. Last year they had an Easter sign. I don't remember what it said, but was worded very strangely. It was up for 6 weeks. Every time I drove by it, I thought how weird it was.

Some might argue this is great, I've thought about their Church everyday. I beg to differ. I thought about "that ridiculous sign church."

For more "inspirational" messages found on church signs...click here.

The long awaited update

I know many of my loyal readers are waiting on the edge of their seats to read what I have been up to over the last two weeks that would keep me away from updating my blog. Well, rather than give a boring account of the 480 hours since I last updated, I will do a photo update. Here we go!

This is at the MSP airport. The add is for my cosmetic dentist that did all my recent work.
Everything IS bigger in Texas! The first 24 hours we spent at my cousin's camel ranch 2 hours outside of Dallas.

Gimme kiss
Camels like carrots. Notice the size difference.


Don't try this at home. Nick is feeding a camel a carrot from his mouth.
They don't USUALLY spit.


Imagine this sight as you drive down the country road...Then we headed back to the "city" to see the in-laws.

mmmm....Green beer on St Patrick's Day....er...St Nathan's Day

Making faces with Uncle "Nit"

Awesome Cajun food at Buzzard Billy's in Waco Texas


Dr Pepper Museum in Waco Texas. We were going to visit the Branch Davidian Complex, but time and directions as they were, we didn't get to. Maybe next time.
The Fort Worth Zoo. It was a BEAUTIFUL day! 75 degrees and obviously sunny.


The 3 Schutz boys checking out the Rhino.
Yup, Texas is Wild!

After the zoo we went to eat at Uncle Julio's. They serve "fine mexican food"

After a busy week of spring breaking, we came home and tried to catch up with MN life. I had a Relay For Life meeting to prepare for. We got hit with about 5 inches of snow on the same day as my meeting. No worries, most people made it.

We also had the pleasure of hanging out with our niece, Micah. She stayed at our house Thursday night until Friday after work. This picture is Thursday night after a busy day of playing with some friends. We were ready for bed.

We also watched our "nephew dog" Buckley. Chester and Buckley spent some time playing.

This is Friday (Today) Morning. Notice I did take the time to comb and style Micah's hair in pig tails. They did not stay that way. This was my first real experience getting a 2 year old ready and out the door in a time frame that will get me to work on time. It was a success in that we got out the door. Not so much on time.

I left work early today so I could watch Micah. What a beautiful MN day to take off early. almost 60 degrees and mostly sunny. It was awesome. I picked up Micah from day care and we went to the park. She climbed up the play set....

and went down the slide all by herself. Over and over a few times. In both pictures she stopped to look at the camera and say cheese. Really, she said cheese.

This is how cool she is when she wears "Sha's" Sunglasses.

In the course of the last few days, Uncle Nicholas (or Uncle Nick) went from being Nit to Nick. I went from "Asha" or something like that to Sha. I guess my name is difficult to say when you are 2 years old.

So, thats about it. There was, of course, the Twins home opener, start of pot hole season and most of the snow has melted now. Good spring things.