Wow, I'm bad at blogging consistently.

Well, here we are nearly a month and a half since my last post. There are reasons why past blogs have gone defunct and you, my likely-non-existent-blog-readers, have just caught a glimpse of one. My complete inability to keep up with writing and posting on a regular basis.

Here are some interesting things that have occurred since my last post, a measely copy-and-paste number, back on September 12th:

Luke and I had our first anniversary. Someone told me that once you've reached one year you are no longer a "newlywed." Yet, I still do not feel wise in the ways of marriage, especially when compared to mine and Luke's parents, married 51 and 32 (? I think 32) years respectively. We celebrated with a lovely dinner at W.A. Frost. The night ended strangely, however, when a man wearing a t-shirt and jeans and carrying a sleeping kid in PJ's, his (presumably) wife and other child (also wearing pajamas and crying lustily) asked us first if we knew how to get to Stillwater without taking the freeway (we did not) as he and his family needed to walk there, then if we could give them a ride to Stillwater for $20. We declined. I felt really bad later, because there were children and it was a chilly night (September 29th), but I have a thing against letting strangers in my car or even near me when I'm getting in my car, especially at 10 o'clock at night. Later, after thinking about it some more, I really wished I had thought of the obvious: calling the non-emergency St. Paul police line (which I have in my cell phone). I think they would have reponded since there were children involved and hopefully the wee ones would have gotten out of that scary situation.

The most prominent thought that struck me with our anniversary is that I cannot believe a year has past already, and that I cannot wait for more to come. Last summer, while in the process of buying our house and settling in and planning our wedding, we kept saying to ourselves how things would slow down once we had the wedding. It didn't. But I suppose it never does. :)

So we've had a busy autumn, which is my favorite season of the year, by the way. Aside from both of us being extremely busy at work, Luke took up the new hobby of bike-riding. No, not BICYCLE riding. I'm planning on getting my motorcycle endorsement next February so we can ride off into many sunsets together. In the meantime, I've reached back to my roots and been a canning queen this fall. I put to use the extra tomatoes in my garden (bolstered by some more from the farmer's market) and put up 17 quarts of tomato juice and a dozen quarts of stewed tomatoes. Not only THAT, but my friend Lynn was generous enough to give me some of her abundant raspberry crop, which I froze immediately as I was up to my eyeballs in tomatoes at the time.

Finally, I would like to point out how awesome autumn is. No complaining here about the crisp, cool air and the beautiful colors. I think my favorite thing about fall is stomping through the dry, crunchy leaves on the sidewalks while walking Howie. So satisfying; it makes me instantly break out into smiles. So if you see a short woman with an adorable white & rust beagle stomping through leaves with a goofy grin on her face, that's me. :-)