Random Picture Tag

I was tagged by Whitany! I was to go to my Picture Folder, pick the 6th folder, the 6th sub-folder, and the 6th picture and then blog about it and tag 6 more people! (wow 6 people that is like all the friends I have)

So this one turned out to be a good one I probably would not have posted ever on my blog. This is Nate (I will not say his last name in case someone looking at this may know him). This is from one of those times when you have been working in the lab for so long with the same 10 people trying to build a concrete canoe that people start to do some crazy things. Lets just say that we kept the plastic gloves away from Nate after that night.

I choose to tag: Robyn, Karen, Sara, Lora Leigh, Jessica and Meghan

Living like the Wauwatosaites

So when you move somewhere new you know that there are going to be some new cultural things that you will have to learn to fit in. Our lasted Wauwatosa custom is how to dispose of all the leaves in your yard. So first we learned when we got here that the streets are all lined with city owned trees, so the tree in our front yard is owned by the city and we are supposed to take care of it. So if you saw in my picture before the leaves are turning pretty fall colors around here, but with that they also begin to fall off the tree. So since there are so many trees that also involves lots and lots of leaves around on the ground. Then last week I noticed that there were all these piles of leaves in the gutter all along the street. I though that is nice that the city sweeps all the leaves in the street...then someone was talking about how they though it was weird that their neighbor was sweeping all his leaves from his lawn into the gutter and just left it there. So from asking around I found out that if you rake your leaves into the gutter the city will come and pick up all the piles of leaves in the gutter. So on the day before trash day you drive around and see the street lined with large piles of leaves. Above is a picture of the leaves from our yard. I am also posting pictures to show the table runner I made.

Aztalan.

This weekend we took a journey back in time to visit the native peoples of Wisconsin. There is a State Park here preserving the village of the Aztalan people that were apart of the Mississippian Native Americans. The people who settled Aztalan built large, flat-topped pyramidal mounds and a stockade around their village. They hunted, fished, and farmed on the floodplain of the Crawfish River. You can see portions of the stockade and the mounds that have been reconstructed in the park. It was a beautiful day to visit the old village, the leaves were beautiful fall colors and the weather was perfect. One the way home we stopped to pick up some real Wisconsin made cheese, another essential to a day trip in America's Dairy Land.

The ceremonial building mound.

The river that they build their village next to.

We are on top of one of the mounds with a typical Wisconsin farm in the background.

The posts that mark the outside walls of the village.

Chuck, Shay, and Brad looking at the wall.

You can see the colors of the trees surrounding the wall.

Us on top of the ceremonial mound.

This was our stop for real Wisconsin Cheese.

FALL

So as I was on an adventure today with my friend Robyn to JoAnns fabric store I noticed that the trees were really turning vibrant colors of yellows and reds. I think that I had not realized this was happening because the trees on our street are still green. They may not have mountains here, but they do have trees and they line the streets in our neighborhood and look picturesque. So I decided to take some pictures before all the leaves fall off and the snow comes.

This is our street, see it is still green green green.

Oatmeal Anyone?

So when the boys went to Priesthood session of conference we girls got together to have a pamper yourself girls night. First this started off with frozen custard from Kopps. (For all you outside of Wisconsin it is all about the frozen custard here). I had to go with the classic chocolate to satisfy my chocolate craving for the day, but I only ordered one scoop because last time I could barely finish the two scoop cone. After filling ourselves on sweets we went back to Necia's house and made our own spa experience; this included painting nails, oatmeal facials and even the relaxing ocean breeze soundtrack in the background. The even better than a spa is that we all sat and chatted the whole time about you know girly things. Here are some pics of us having fun. I don't know if the oatmeal actually did anything for my skin like it said on the websites that I got the recipe from, but it sure did smell good like oatmeal banana bread, yum!

This is Jessica putting the oatmeal masque on Necia.

I know it looks like I am a burn victim and my skin is falling off, cute huh?

This is our superstar look!