Holiday Season

We haven't been up to much lately other than decorating ( and rearranging then re-rearranging the furniture to fit our new tree) and getting ready for the holidays, the Meyer Christmas is on the 15th at my parents house...and my cousin Kristen and her husband Todd welcomed their baby girl Lola last week so I can't wait to meet her there!.....Nate's immediate family's Christmas is on Christmas Eve, then the whole Billups family will get together Christmas Day. Finally my immediate family is gathering at our house on the 29th. Nothing like spreading everything out;)

Anyway, here are a couple festive pics of Mags!

And yes, still pretty nice weather for December!

Hawkeye Homecoming

We had a surprisingly great day yesterday! My brother Nick, sister-in-law Jill and nephew Gage were camping at Coralville Lake and also did a little tailgating with us. We had great weather, a big ole W against Minnesota, and spent some fun times playing dominoes and cooking over the fire at the campsite!

We now have a few weeks of peace before the debacle that will be the 7pm Penn State game, so we're going to rest up!

Next Saturday I am walking a 5K in Iowa City called the Ponsetti Races. Dr. Ponsetti was a leader in the treatment if club foot and, luckily for us employed his talents at the University of Iowa, and they now have a 5K and 10K every year in his honor. It's a great cause, and the company I work for is a sponsor, and I'm pretty excited!

Then the next Saturday is the annual Meyer Fall Festival! I'm sure there'll be a separate post on that;)

How 'Bout Them Hawkeyes

Ok, so our football season hasn't gotten off to the hottest of starts, but tailgating season 2012 has been awesome! One of my coworkers, Reed, lives on Melrose and we are renting out our parking spots in his driveway and tailgating in the yard. Such a short, pretty much no-hill walk to the stadium;) We have actually been blessed with great weather and, believe it or not, 2:30 games, so we have had some great tailgating so far, and maybe a little too much time to drink.... Reed also has a dog and a fenced in back yard so Heather and I have been bringing Roxy and Maggi to play with Linus on Saturdays as well! Then we don't feel so bad about leaving them kenneled up all day....we're such good mommies....

So, the hawks barely beat northern Illinois at Soldier Field and then lost to ISU but beat UNI.....I can't imagine how the rest if our season will play out, but I'm just going game to game right now. This weekend we face central Michigan. At first I thought this might be a pushover game but then I heard they beat Michigan state a few weekends ago....hmmmmm. I guess we'll see.... As always, Go Hawks!!!

Maggi

Our new bundle of joy, Maggi! We have actually had her for a little over a month now and she is 3 months old. She is such a good puppy and sooo cute!!!! She's learning and growing so fast!

Starting on the downstairs living room

The only room we haven't done much with is the downstairs living room....so now we're starting! I have only redone the couch by getting a stretch suede slipcover at Bed Bath and Beyond and yellow pillows to go with the Hawkeye theme. Not too shabby! Next job will be to frame and hang out 4 Iowa bowl game pennants from the 80's....that might be a little more work (although this slipcover wasn't the easiest to get on straight either...) Hopefully more updated pics to come!

Fifty Shades

I caved into the phenomenon that is the Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy.....and now that I have finished the last book I do think it was worth my while! I read the first two books on vacation and the last one here at home, but I would definitely say the last one was the best, in my opinion! They don't disappoint in the "dirty" area either, but obviously that's what they are known for so I was expecting that.  If anyone wants to borrow them, give me a call;)

Friday (on Saturday)

Friday was pretty windy so we didn't go out fishing at all:( We have PLENTY of fish though, do no worries! We finished up our shopping by hitting up Nate's favorite orchard, Koepsel's. We didn't eat all day to save ourselves for dinner either! We went to The English Inn in Fish Creek and had the "all you can eat fish fry". It's a Friday tradition;) You can pick from perch, catfish, cod, walleye, and smelting have as much as you want of each! Ugh, we were super full after that! We made drinks and watched the sunset for the last time up here.....bittersweet. Some of the other owners were back up again for the coming weekend or 4th week so we visited with them as well!

We will be leaving as bright and early as we get around tomorrow morning:( It's always saddening to leave, I hate it. But we plan to drive almost straight through (with a quick stop in NL to drop off dirty clothes) to Baxter for Dun Das and to see a bunch of my fam! So much for relaxing and recovering-ha!

Until next time!

Thursday

Well, we did a lot of eating today... We had lunch at Summer Kitchen where they have wonderful soups! I also bought a cookbook there for their soup, it's that good!

Once we were done we stopped at the City Farmer red barn specialty store again for gifts for my parents. Hope they like them!

For dinner we went out to eat at a nicer restaurant called The Shoreline in Gills Rock. We got a bit dressed up and the food was amazing and the sunset beautiful (our table was right by the window with a great view) so it all made for a very very nice evening.

We went fishing twice today, salmon fishing in the morning and bass fishing in the afternoon. This morning we caught one salmon and actually a big brown trout! This afternoon we only caught sheepshead (freshwater drum) again and did a little catch and release;)

It's been a very nice day, sorry to say tomorrow is our last! We will finish up our shopping tomorrow as well and try to get some good fishing in! We have been mainly fishing off of Ellison Bluff but I think tomorrow we will try Door Bluff.

Have a good night!

Wednesday

We went out fishing around 4:30 this morning and got a fish right away, then nothing. After we got back to the cottage we got cleaned up and went to Al Johnson's for breakfast. It is a well known restaurant up here in Sister Bay that has goats feeding from grass on the roof! It's known for its Swedish pancakes and meatballs, which we had both of! It was delicious!

The rest of the day it was pretty windy so we didn't go out again, but I did finish the first book of the Fifty Shades of Grey books....it's good and a very easy read, but doesn't have much substance (other than being super dirty....) I also got some good sun today;)

Sunset was cloudy so no picture of that today....

Tuesday

Not much to report today. No fish. We did go shopping in Sister Bay and I got a sweet beach hat! I had a cheap one from target that I bought last year but it had hung from the closet door for a year and was all bent and weird so it was time for a new nice one;)

Some of our many stops today included Seaquist Orchard for some snacks, Sister Bay Bakery for some wonderfully greasy Corsica Bread, Tannenbaum to browse through some beautiful holiday decor, and the Red Barn stores for some specialty shopping.

For dinner we got carry out from an Italian restaurant in Ellison Bay called Pasta Vino. We loaded up the picnic basket and cooler and had a sunset dinner cruise on the boat, complete with wine;) It was very nice! We also fished while we cruised but it yielded nothing until the very end when we were picking up the lines for the night we got a bite. But the dang thing started swimming toward the boat and them turned around and we lost him....

We came back and watched the sunset on the pier and saw a nice little family of ducks;) now we're just enjoying a nice, cozy fire in the fire pit with a couple drinks then we're off to bed so we can get an early start on fishing again in the morning!

Monday

Today was very productive! We caught 5 sheephead and 2 salmon (and u had a huge brown trout break my line and get away...), got some gifts for fam/friends back home, got a pie at Bea's, and got pecan rolls for breakfast! We even read in the sun a bit too. We only took the boat out for salmon tonight, it was pretty rough this morning still.

We also went driving around a bit when we went to get the pie at Bea's and found the random bench we saw last year. It's in the absolute middle of nowhere but painted on it is " AT&T Hot Spot". We seriously laughed about that for a long time. Really?! Hot spot??? Haha.

Also another good sunset;)

Sunset

Relaxing

To finish off last night we visited the street dance and watched some pretty good fireworks out in the bay. Needless to say they were awesome, launched off a barge in the middle of the harbor ad directly above us!

This morning Nate and Steve went out but it was pretty windy so I slept in (darn;)) but they still got a pretty good size fish and another much smaller one that they didn't know was in the line but found when they reeled everything in to head back.....he'd been dragging for awhile....

Then we had some much needed breakfast at The Viking in Ellison Bay and said goodbye to Lindsay, La, Rita, Kevin, Mike, and the kids. They were only up for the weekend....but it was great to see them and get some baby time with 2 month old Hadley;)

Once Steve headed back for Iowa , Nate and I headed to the Piggly Wiggly for some quick grocery shopping. When we got back we basically lounged around, read our books, and had a few drinks while soaking up the sun:) Love it! It's so relaxing and peaceful here!

Tonight we plan on grilling some pork chops and taking it easy. Hopefully it'll be a beautiful sunset (last night it was overcast and rainy).

First Fish

We stayed in Sturgeon Bay last night and got up to Ellison Bay at 6:30 this morning. Steve was already out and had caught two already so he swung back around and picked us up and I reeled in 2 more nice salmon and Nate reeled in 1 more! Unfortunately the first one I tried to bring in got away....and of course it would have been the biggest of them all. Dang it! But here's a few pics of our catch. Now we're off to enjoy the parade and Ellison Bay Days!

On The Road Again

We are heading to Door County, WI as of 4:30 Friday afternoon! We may stay in Green Bay or we may go all the way, we'll see..... We are going to keep a little daily journal on blogger so stay tuned;)

Patricia Billups

We have had a week full of family so far.....but not under the best of circumstances. Nate's grandma Pat passed away in her sleep last Friday night/Saturday morning. If you have to go I guess in your sleep would be my choice too, but her passing was definitely unexpected and sudden. Everyone met at their farm to help rally around Jim (Nate's grandpa) and make decisions about the next few days. EVERYONE was there from Nate's family and we spent a lot of time together looking through pictures, cleaning, talking and sharing stories. Unfortunately Nate's aunt and 2 uncles were up in Door County on their last day of vacation when they got the news. Needless to say that was probably the longest drive ever. We are also heading up north tomorrow (Friday) so we had a lot to get done at work and home before we left! The visitation was Tuesday and the funeral was yesterday. Pat left a lot of great memories behind and we will miss her immensely. The service was beautiful and completely packed-a true testimony of what a great person/friend/mom/grandma/great grandma/wife she was! Nate along with his sister Meghan and their cousins were all paul bearers and myself, Nate's cousin's wife Emily and his other cousin's girlfriend Erin were the gift bearers (we presented Father with the communion bread and wine-I'm not catholic so I had no clue what that entailed until we were basically doing it). Anyway, it has been a very emotionally draining week. It just makes you remember to never take anything for granted. We were so thankful we had Nate's mustache birthday party the weekend before, which Pat attended and rocked an awesome mustache to boot! It was the last time most of us was with her and it made it so so special for everyone. Below is a pic of all the cousins/paul bearers and a link to her obit.

http://www.weertsfh.com/obituary.html?id=2278

White Trash Night!

This past Saturday night was a themed night at one of our local bars-white trash night! We really got into it....or maybe we are just a little too trashy to start with and these "costumes" were all too easy to come up with! Anyway, here are a few lovely photos from the evening!

Wedding Weekend!

We had a great weekend back in LeClaire/Princeton for Nate's sister Meghan's wedding to Craig Black! It was a simple and elegant ceremony with family and a fun reception with friends added. It was held a the Black Watch country club in LeClaire and they used the same space for the ceremony and reception and it was open bar all the way, it was a really nice place! Attached are a few pics of us through the evening, we had a very good time:

At brunch the next day at Nate's parents house Nate's cousin Evan and his wife Emily also announced that they are expecting a little one!!!! I believe her due date is at the end of September. Also, small world, because she is currently a teacher at Collins-Maxwell! Weird huh!

V-day

Happy valentines day everyone! Nate spoiled me this year with these great flowers, lady and the tramp DVD, and a nice picture frame that he said he wants to take nice pics of us at his sisters wedding this weekend and put in. Awwww, what a cute and thoughtful idea;) I got him some whiskey stones and an old fashioned shaving kit . He is obsessed with his newly grown handlebar mustache and has been talking about a shave like on Sweeney Todd (except without the throat slitting). Haha.

I also just for an iPhone and wanted to try mobile blogger app. So far, awesome! Next week I'll put up pic fr Meghan and Craig's wedding!