Christmas part 1: McKenny Side

 I'm still not completely done with Christmas knitting (don't ask) but I got all the matching colour scheme knitting done and couldnt resist the photo-op. That's a shawl for mom, a shawl for momm, a sweater for Dad McKenny, and hats for Timm's brother, sister-in-law, sister, and future brother-in-law. I also knitted a hat for Timm's neice but that wasn't done yet when this pic was taken.

 

Here's a picture of me with Timm's neice, Cami on Christmas Eve.

 

Here's some of the knitted gifts being appreciated.

An all the McKenny "kids" on Christmas morning.

Go Big Red!

After going to Target at midnight solely for Timm's x-mas gift, we grabbed some (not enough) sleep and headed to Lincoln. I'm sure if you want to hear about going 10 mph half the way there Timm ranted about it on his blog. But we made it in time for kick-off without extra time sitting in the cold so I didn't mind. Actually it wasn't that cold today.

Notice all the people and seats behind us? That's because this is how close we were to the field. It was awesome. We could read the names on the player's jerseys! I even somewhat knew what was going on for most of the game.

Nebraska has a tradition of releasing a balloon when we score our first points. They sure looked cool under the grey clouds.

After the game we were both starving (especially me because I did not partake in disgusting hot dogs at the game) so we headed south to Macaroni Grill. We ate a Macaroni Grill in Portland last spring and it was awesome, but there's not one in Omaha so it only seemed right to hit it up while we were in Lincoln. I got the combo of Mushroom soup and Carmela's Chicken. It was pretty good, but definitely not as good as our experience in Portland and the service today sucked!

After we got back to Omaha we picked up Timm's suits, which apparently feel like butter on his skin (again probably explained better on his blog). And then went to the Muppet Movie!!! It was so good and reminded me of the good ole days as a CHUMP (College Hill United Methodist Puppeteer). Now I think it's time for bed before I have to face working at the mall tomorrow.

Oops!

Well I guess I failed at NaBloPoMo, but I think that the activities that occurred in place of blogging were well worth it. On Tuesday, I drove to Iowa to spend Thanksgiving with Timm's family. After dinner Timm and I were exhusted so we passed out and completely forgot about blogging. Then we woke up Wednesday and Timm pointed out that we had failed to blog so I decided I would do it while I stayed home with Timm's mom that day and worked on homework. That plan was ruined when this munchkin showed up. 

This is Timm's adorable niece that I got to play with on Wednesday afternoon. We had a lot of fun passing the electronics back and forth, finding out that the answering machine talks and other things that 16 month olds are interested in. Needless to say, I also didn't get as much homework done as I should have.

Then after Timm, his dad, his sister and future brother-in-law made their way home we had a delicious dinner.

Not to upstage today's Thanksgiving feast, of course.

After lunch, Timm, his brother and I headed out to show Jon the 46. But they got distracted by guns. They even convinced me to shoot (proof is on Timm's blog).

Before heading home we had Timm's mom make sure to get a picture of us looking good.

Now I'm gonna mix up a Cranberry Buckle for the morning (before we go see the Huskers (hopefully) kick some Iowa ass) and then hit up Target's black Friday sales (eek!) Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

productivity

I surprised myself with how productive I was tonight. I could have gotten one more thing done to be really impressed, but I still did way better than the last few days. I still failed at taking pictures today, but hopefully tomorrow while Kristin is here I can find something picture worthy. The biggest news of the day is that I don't have to redo my cardio practical. My meeting with Dr. Norman went well. He gave me good feedback about my exam going smoothly and he felt like I was professional and interacted well with my patient. He said he heard the 5 min warning and knew I didn't have very much left and thought I was home free so he was shocked when I didn't finish in time to close. He understood why I double checked what I did and said that with my findings he felt like I would have struggled to close with the patient anyhow. Basically he said he wasn't planning on having me come back unless I wanted to. Considering that last night I figured out we only have 16 days of school left and in the time frame we have 2 group projects, 2 assignments, a quiz, a musculo practical and 6 tests, I think I'll pass on redoing my cardio practical.

I haven't been doing the 1 thing you're thankful for every day in November. But after a message from Timm saying "sarah baker, thank you very very very much for not being an over dramatic cunt. it so ridiculously apreciated" I thought I'd sum up a little of the awesomeness that is Timm, that I'm thankful for. So Timm, thank you for being the most honest, trustworthy person I know, that handles my stressed out mode well 99% of the time. Thank you for warming up my hands and my heart. Thanks for appreciating my nerdiness and usually not making fun of it. You balance me out super well and I can't wait to see all the awesome things we're going to do together!

So Tonight wasn't Gonna be a Wedding Post, then I Checked the Mail

We got our first snow of the season in Nebraska today. I didn't appreciate it, but at least it held off longer this year than it has in years past. I would have appreciated it more if today wasn't the day of our Neuro Practical in Lincoln. My group left Omaha at 11:30 in rain and by the time we got to Lincoln at 12:20 it had turned to snow. Our practical went well despite being damp with cold toes while we performed it. Afterward, I sent the rest of my group back to Omaha and went to have coffee with a girl that I knew only on Ravelry. She's a fellow moderator on the engagement/wedding forum and a super cool girl. I'm glad I got to meet her in real life and hang out and I hope we'll get to do it again soon. I intended to take a pic specifically for the blog but forgot.

Then I came home and met back up with my group to do our write up for the practical. Then on to knit night which was a small group tonight.

When I finally came home at 8:30 I was pretty tired and forgot to grab the mail on the way in, but decided it was prolly worth going back outside to check it and I'm sooo glad I did! Timm’s engagement ring came in today!! So the back story is that he told me if I get 2 rings, he wants 2 rings too, which I was fine with. But then we decided that my e-ring was kinda better on its own than with something else and that all FH wanted for a wedding band was a solid yellow gold band (boring ;-)). But then a few weeks ago while I was at the Farmer’s Market I saw the Spoon Jewelry booth and remembered that I’d told Timm in the beginning of the summer (pre-proposal) that he could use a spoon ring for an e-ring because I’ve always like them, so I poked around to see if they had any giant ones and then went on my way. The next week FH was at the Farmer’s Market with me and as we wondered near the booth, I asked what he thought about an engagement spoon ring. He liked the idea so we poked around and he found one he really liked, but it was not in giant size. The people thought that they had the spoon’s twin at home and told me they would make it and send it to me! So without further ado:

See not kidding GIANT ring. A quarter will sit in it but not go quite all the way through.

Timm liked this ring because it had a rose on the outside and a daisy on the inside and after seeing this he promptly said “Like Mmmbop 'Can you tell me if it’s goning to be a daisy or a rose?'" I pointed out to him tonight that there’s an A inscribed on it (for the original spoon owner) and asked him if we were gonna say it stood for my middle name and his response was “I saw it on the other one, I figured it could stand for Always.” Such a dork.

Now I need to go study for my EKG quiz tomorrow. I'll leave you with my favourite pic, which hopefully Clay can take a better version of at some point.

The Return of NaBloPoMo

Since I seem to do well with NaBloPoMo and not at all the rest of the year, I've decided to do it again. Needless to say life has been ridiculously busy with 21 hours of grad classes, wedding planning, and working the occasional shift at Scooter's.
Since the start of the semester:

• I've figured out our centerpieces
• I made my wedding shawl (which I'm not allowed to show pictures of because Timm doesn't want to see it till I walk down the aisle)
• I've also made 3 peoples Christmas gifts (also can't share)
• Timm and I went to Kansas City to see Hanson on Oct. 1 and got to meet Taylor (who complemented Timm's hat and beard)
• Had two sets of engagement pictures taken

Because I don't have many of the pictures at my fingertips right now, I'll leave you with the engagement video that our wonderful photographer (claylomneth.wordpress.com) put together after our second shoot.

Schools out for the summa, and much more

I've been writing this blog in my head since Saturday, as Friday was the last day of classes. But more stuff kept happening and not only was there no time to write the blog, but it was getting longer and longer in my head. So sorry about the long post but I promise you if you read to the end it'll be worth it. (Also sorry about so many pictures.)

So first up, the roomie went out of town on vacation for a couple days and I was on cat entertaining duty. Apparently Dexter didn't think I was entertaining enough and decided to prove he could ride a bicycle lol. It was pretty amusing, although I was a little worried he was gonna knock over the bike and have it land on him in a mess of cat/bike parts, but he got down without injuring himself :-).


As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to participate in project Spectrum, but wasn't knitting anything in the right colour for May. I did manage to complete a green project for June though! This is Sexy Vesty in Cascade 220. I did a crochet border around the neck cuz I was running low on yarn, but I might like it better this way. I was debating whether the vest in combination with the plaid shirt was too That 70's Show. Timm voted yes, but everyone else voted no, so I wore it to my practical for school. Practical #2 to be specific, which I rocked!


The other exciting thing that happened in knitting land lately is my bird socks are FINISHED!!! (You might notice I'm wearing the outfit seen above in this picture lol). I finished them while I was at school after taking my practical. I found the perfect ribbon to go in the top at Mangelsen's, you can't tell well from this picture but it has a little ruffle on it :-). I'm pretty sure this is my biggest knitting accomplishment ever. I'm still in search of clear rainboots, if anyone finds them please send me a link or buy them in a size 9!! Unfortunately I finished them at the wrong time of year and it might be a while before they get some real wear.

Also remember how I promised a reward for reading to the end of this post . . . well these socks are in the middle ;-)


There are a TON of weddings among my classmates this summer. So Steph decided it would be awesome if we had a class bachelorette party for all our brides to be. I'm gonna say she's pretty much a genius. We decided to start out with dinner then continue onto drinking and possibly dancing. This is a picture of 8 of our 9 brides to be. All the brides wore colours and the other 20 of us wore black dresses. We created quite a spectacle in the Old Market. To the point that we had a couple families from Florida (in town for the college world series) stop us and take a picture with their sons (about a dozen middle school aged boys). It was an awesome night!

The weekend after that, Timm and I attended the wedding of our dear friends Audi & Cameron. It was pretty awesome. They had their ceremony at an old historical home. Instead of a traditional ceremony it was a tea party. We were invited to dress up and create a name for ourselves. I was Lady Emma Lindberg. Timm was Lord Buster O'Neil. We had a great time.


Later that evening they had their reception full of dancing, yummy food and a rainbow cake! They had a "photo booth" set up with different facial hairs, glasses, frames, and chalkboards that you could write on and strike a pose. This resulted in my by far favourite picture of Timm and me. I'm really excited to print it and put it in a frame!


The next day there was supposed to be a car show at the zoo, so Timm & I headed over to check it out. The car show ended up being a little disappointing (a few new corvette and some sweet Model A's but that was it), but the zoo itself always has something to put a smile on my face. This time I'm not sure which was better the friendly leopard or crazy Timm!


After that tiring weekend, I had my last week of school. I'm officially done with the first year of Physical Therapy school! I made it I'm now a PT2!! And most importantly I get a month and a half off to relax.

In celebration of the end of school and my new found freedom I went to the zoo with a few of my knitting friends on Friday and their kids (4 kids under the age of 3!!). It was a great time and definitely exhausting. The kids were super cute, but also excellent birth control lol. I adore Bailey's monkey backpack. I think the picture on the right may be the only time all three of them were looking at the same thing, the Tiger.

Then I had another bachelorette party to attend. This one was much smaller than the previous one.
It's one of the same brides with a few classmates and her future sister-in-law. We had a lot of fun. Particularly with a book of "challenges" for Sarah to perform throughout the night, including kissing the first guy with a mustache and asking 3 men how "big" they are. It was pretty hilarious. We also discovered that apparently no one carries around condoms anymore (another challenge).




After an exhausting Friday, I worked Saturday and Sunday. Then headed to Timm's for a few days.
Monday we decided to have some fun. We went over and saw the '39 Ford Tudor that Timm's thinking about buying (I definitely approve) and chatted with the owners (see more on Timm's blog). Then we grabbed some burgers and headed north.

It was such a pretty day to be driving and we rocked out to some good tunes on our was to Tea, SD. There we went into a few antique stores. We found this awesome Singer sewing machine. I also scored a Smurf's sheet that may be a dress in the near future. We saw a bunch of skulls, awesome furniture, cool dishes, and much more (again more pics on Timm's blog). I also saw a fabric store next to the antique mall that I REALLY wanted to go in, but it was closed because it was Monday (so lame lol). So we continued north.

We went up to Sioux Falls and poked around at the mall (where I scored a cute dress for $5), then headed to the theatre to see Cars 2 in 3D. It's pretty cute/funny and definitely worth the $$. After that we decided we needed some deliciousness. So we headed to the Red Lobster. My grandpa used to love Red Lobster and we would go there when I was really little and I'd get a Shirley Temple as a nice little treat. I always thought it was the coolest thing ever, especially the cherries that come in it, so of course I had to get one! Then I got a pound of crab!! It was so yummy! Timm decided to put his 3D glasses back on during dinner and be a dork (as usual). We skipped dessert because we were both full and hit the road back home.

So Tuesday, Timm had to go to work and I went with him, hoping to hook up with one of my friends that had just moved from Omaha to Sioux City. I watched some of Timm working on a tribal arm piece, then headed to lunch with Stephanie. We had Chick-fil-A, which is so delicious and what I miss about working in the mall in Arkansas. Then we headed back to her place to hang out and knit. We chatted for a while, then I went back to the shop so Timm and I could go home. We watched the sunset on our drive and Timm said he hoped we would make it back into town before the sun went down so we could find a good place to watch it. Unfortunately the sun moved faster than us so we settled for eating the yummy dinner his mom had made. After dinner Timm suggested we go get ice cream. I said sure. We headed out the door and I grabbed Timm's hoodie cuz I thought I'd be cold walking over to the gas station. Then we got outside and Timm was getting in the car. I said we should just walk cuz it's so close. Timm said no we need to take the car. I insisted that I needed to burn some of the calories of the ice cream and Timm said we need to take the car. So I got in and we started driving. Then Timm drove past the gas station and headed north of town. He asked me to put on the Brad Paisley CD because he had a riff stuck in his head and he couldn't figure out which song it was from. Then Timm turned onto a dirt road and pulled over and asked if I would dance with him. I said yes. So he asked me to get out and tell him when the music was loud enough. He turned up the music and changed the track to "I Hope That's Me" and came over and started dancing.
Then on the third verse that says, "Somebody's gonna buy a ring,
Somebody's gonna make you cry,
Somebody's gonna lift that veil,
And get to look into your eyes,
And I hope that's me, I hope that's me."
He got down on one knee and pulled a box out of his pocket. He asked if I would marry him and I said yes. (I also at some point asked him if he was serious and he's giving me shit about it, but I said at least that means I wasn't expecting it haha). I knew from the unique box that it was one of the rings we saw together in Portland.


It's perfect, I couldn't be happier. This is my apology for the near future of this blog being about weddings.

-The future Mrs. McKenny

I might be in a blue rut . . .

Before I get into my knitting antics, last week Timm came down for massage lab and a wedding. While he was here we went for a little walk around the neighborhood to enjoy the lovely flowers.


On Friday we went out to dinner at Pitch, a local coal fire pizza place. We hadn't been there before but I'd heard good things. We got sweet and spicy rosemary wings as an appetizer and a pizza with ricotta cream, prosciutto, arugula, caramelized onions, and mozzarella. I snapped a picture of the wings but forgot to get one of the pizza. Timm was not overly impressed with the pizza he thought it seemed bland. I think this was contributed to by the intense flavour of the wings before the pizza. I thought the pizza was pretty yummy, but it ended up making both of our stomachs angry.


The wedding on Saturday was for Timm's cousin, Mark and his lovely girl, Rachel. They're in Austria on their honeymoon right now, but I'm hoping to grab some Indian food with them when they get back. Timm & I looked pretty snazzy if I do say so myself ;-). He looked especially good when I stuck his nametag/ table marker on his head (that's what he gets for messing with his phone instead of talking to me).



Now on to the knitting content ;-)
I was really interested in participating in Project Spectrum, but the colour for May is red and everything I've had on the needles in May is blue (which is the colour for July). Hopefully next month (Green) will go better. For now I will have to admire everyone's red project and become inspired to work on something not blue. If you recall in my last post I was unhappy with the way the Zauberball was knitting up into the Helix scarf. So instead, I decided to use the yarn for Faraway, So Close. I started it last Monday in class. And had it off the needles this Tuesday evening.
Unblocked:

On the blocking board, Voodoo for scale:

Today at lunch:


My friend and classmate, Sarah, was sitting at the table while I was having Meghan take the pictures. Sarah leapt up and tried to stick her head in the picture saying "I want to be on your blog!" I had Meghan finish taking pictures of the shawl and then went over to get a picture of Sarah Squared (sorry, my hair looks like it was attacking you).

Been awhile . . .

So I totally expected to be less busy this semester than last, but I wasn't. Then the further behind I got on blogging the less I wanted to blog and try and play catch up. So I finally decided to not try and catch you up (sorry :-( you can see a bit of what's been going on in my life on Timm's blog) and just start from recently. I've had the last week and a half off of school between spring and summer semesters. I figured now is as good a time as any before I start classes again on Monday. I've been trying to get a lot done so everything is cleaned and organized to last the next 6 weeks of summer semester without going crazy.

Last weekend, I traveled up to Wayne, NE to attend Timm's sister, Mary's, graduation party (I missed the ceremony because of work). I got to see a lot of Timm's family (including his adorable niece) and generally have a good time. We then traveled back to Timm's house. We tried to make dry ice bombs, but they didn't work so instead we put the dry ice in the birdbath with water - Timm and I decided that all birdbaths should look like this.

Then we made pretzels, but not just any pretzels. A few weeks ago, I came up with the idea of pretzel sticks filled with cheese similar to the stuffed crust on pizza. So we experimented! They worked and were delicious!! We also made normal pretzels, which were also good but not as good as cheesiness. I'll have to perfect them a bit then post the recipe on here :-).

Then I came home on Tuesday and was home for a few days, so I continued cleaning and organizing and . . . SEWING MY CURTAINS!! Not only did I manage to finish the first set that I started over Christmas break, but I made the second set AND the flouncy things. My room is now officially a cave, which is not good for getting up in time for class, but is good for afternoon naps and when the summer session is over and I don't have to get up! Before and after shots (I'm not sure if you can see the difference in light that it lets in but it is definitely drastic):


I finished my first bird sock while in Portland for spring break, but I'm still at work on the second one. I'll share this picture even though it's old because it's very exciting ;-). I pretty much had everything other than the second bird sock off the needles so I was looking for a new project. I bought a Crazy Zauberball to make the Helix Scarf, but when I started it I wasn't overly impressed.
I love the yarn!! The colours, the way it feels, that it's a little uneven in spots, all of it. I kept knitting hoping that it would start to take shape and to see what colour would come next. However, the scarf, itself, was not really turning out right. So now, I'm trying a different pattern and so far so good.


But the most exciting thing is that yesterday, I drove down to Manhattan, KS - home of Kansas State University. My best friend since about 8th grade, Kristin, graduated today with her Masters in Architecture which just makes me so proud! We hung out yesterday and explored Aggieville.

We found a donut shop, food carts in town for the TV show and awesome bling!
Today was full of festivities and boring speeches and food and all things that come with graduations. It was nice to see all of Kristin's family again. I lived with her and her parents my senior year of high school so I wouldn't have to move out of state with my parents and had gotten to know most of her extended family in the process, but that was 5! years ago (now I feel old).

There's pics of me and Kristin and one of Kristin with her boyfriend, Josh, he graduated from the same program, now I just ahve to convice them to design my dream house for me ;-).

Well it's late and for not having school all week it's been a long one. Hopefully, I'll start popping back in here more often, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I was you ;-p.