We are on top of updates. Well maybe not. I could try to justify why there has been no update in like 2 months. There have been plenty of things happening around our apartment in the last 2 months. Although the bike from the last post has not gotten nearly as much use since I feel off mine and herniated a disc in my back. Not recommended, by the way. My back is slowly healing and I am getting back my mobility and hope to be able back to normal life soon and especially ready for skiing in February.

Claudia had Jen and Erika in town a couple of weekend ago right near her birthday. The did many things in the city although skipped hopping into the Chicago Marathon. They went to the Zoo and Aquarium (where they let you put on Penguin costumes). They also had a steak and deep dish pizza during the stay as well enjoying the culinary treats that Chicago has to offer. No hotdogs or Italian beef however. We all went out to Second City on Sunday. Second City is an improv/sketch comedy group based in Chicago that has been the starting point for many of the SNL cast.

Home Sweet Home

Although we did some traveling this weekend (to our southern neighbor Chicago and our northern neighbor Wilmette), we stayed pretty close to home.

I'm sure it comes as no surprise to our (faithful?) blog followers that some of Patrick's favorite activities include riding his bike and talking about bikes. It's almost surprising that it took this long, but three years after we started dating, I finally have a new bike to call my own! I'd been sporadically riding Dan's old mountain bike which never fit me right (he was at least six inches taller than me, after all), but a new bike that fits me properly is such a welcome change!!

My new bike is a Trek 1.5, men's design, and is a shiny red, white, and black which takes me back to my glory days (All Hail, Alma Mater, the pride of our hearts... Easton High School our High School so dear! HAHAHA). I got a new (matching) helmet as well to keep all my gray matter safe and sound.

We took "the kids" out for a ride yesterday - first a quick loop to pick up our produce box one mile away, then up to Wilmette, all along Lake Michigan. The Lake looked absolutely beautiful yesterday, a bright teal/blue, and from the beachfront up near Northwestern there was a great view of downtown Chicago. I'm kicking myself for not having brought our camera! Plus, the blog world needs to see pictures of us in our biking gear. hahaha

Keep in mind, we are now following in Oliver and Lisette's footsteps - we have two bikes per person in our household. Soon we will need an offsite storage unit just for our sports equipment!

Amidst all of our bike buying and bike riding, we had a busy weekend in the kitchen. On Friday night, while I was pretty much unconscious on the couch because of a nasty migraine, Patrick made pizza and then English Muffins! The English Muffins tasted better than Thomas' (probably because food in our kitchen is made with love - HAHA), and I'm still totally impressed that he did it (although he swears it was easy). We also put to use an oldie-but-goodie recipe on Saturday night: Charlotte's It's-So-Easy Pound Cake (with chocolate chips). We tried out a recipe from NY Times for no-knead bread - in the midst of that process we weren't sure how it would turn out, but it tasted great. It would be a great recipe for someone who loves fresh bread but doesn't own a stand mixer (I'm looking at you, Mom). Yesterday for dinner we made stuffed patty pan squash, using some squash that we'd received in recent weeks in our produce box. A winning recipe - but we were too hungry by the time they came out of the oven to find the camera and take a pic! I will, however, leave you with some pictures of the English Muffins.

(Did you know that English Muffins are made in a frying pan? I had no idea.)

The next few weeks should be pretty low-key... I'm hoping we'll get in quite a few bike rides before the weather turns frigid.

Remember, if you come visit us in Chicago, you too can have tasty homemade baked goods! :o)

Bar Harbor

Claudia and I were in Bar Harbor, Maine last weekend. We had a great weekend with my family, everyone was there to celebrate my parents both turning 60 this year. Now if Bar Harbor and Acadia were only closer to or more convenient to get to from Chicago.

The weekend would best be described as full of the outdoors and ice cream. I think that Claudia preferred the ice cream to the outdoor activities. We did enjoy some nice time in the kayaks. Got to see some wildlife that we don't usually get in Chicago. We also went on a horse and buggy ride through Acadia. We did not end up riding bikes although we brought a bunch of bike stuff with us, as Claudia wanted to kayak the second day as well.

Claudia catches up on some blogging

As Patrick's posts can attest, things have been busy in the KrugLea household this summer! Here's a recap from my side... Charlotte and Buster got married the week after us in Portsmouth NH. A beautifully simple ceremony on a dock overlooking the water followed by an amazing dinner at a restaurant nearby.

My parents and aunt came to Chicago to visit us the weekend after Charlotte and Buster's wedding. We had a great time exploring the city, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Highlights from the weekend were dinner at Ruth Chris Steakhouse, the Field Museum, and the Chicago Botanical Garden.

The following weekend I traveled to Easton for my friend Michelle's bridal shower and bachelorette party. A good time was had by all!

A few days after I got back from PA, Patrick and I headed out for our honeymoon - a week in Croatia followed by two days in Dublin (with Oliver and Lisette). That trip really deserves a blog post all by itself - it was a fantastic trip!! Here are just a few of the 2400+ photos we took over the course of our 10 days.

Michelle and Samir were married on July 10th in INDIA, and followed it up on July 31st in the Stroudsburg, PA. Michelle and I went to Nursery School together, and it was an honor to be one of her bridesmaids.

Since Michelle's wedding was on a Friday, Patrick, my parents, and I headed down to Avalon on Saturday for a quick trip. It was a nice -- relaxing -- weekend in Avalon, and we took care of the top layer of our wedding cake. It was tasty, let me tell you!

In the midst of all that, I've also been to Texas twice since the beginning of June for work.

This weekend we are headed up to Bar Harbor, Maine with Patrick's whole family to celebrate his parents' birthdays. These three innocent faces will keep things entertaining...

It's been such a great summer, and it's been nice to spend time with so many people we love. We'll be taking it easy for the rest of 2009 - some friends of mine are coming for a visit over Columbus Day, and we'll be in New England for Thanksgiving and Patrick's birthday. Other than those two weekends we're free for other visitors, so drop us a line and let us know when we can expect to see your similing face on our doorstep!!

Getting Stuff Done.

Or trying to at least. We had a pretty busy weekend. We were supposed to go to Ravinia with a Duke friend Friday night but the rain sort of washed out those plans. So instead we headed up to Grayslake, IL and our friend's uncle's house. It was quite an experience; great food, company and drink. It was a LOUD night. Loud enough that I seemed quiet in comparison, so that gives you an idea.

Saturday was the farm market since last week we didn't get a CSA produce box. A hail storm knocked out much of the crops at our CSA and the rest of the season was said to not be promising. At the farm market we got food for a week of meals; when we got home we had an email telling us we would be getting a produce box on Sunday. Oh well, there are worse things for you then too many veggies, like not enough freezer space. From there Claudia got her hair cut, well all of them, well I stayed at home and made fresh pasta for our pesto and pasta dinner, fresh pesto made later by Claudia.

Claudia got some new sneakers and we headed off to do our standard weekend errands. Once we got home I went out for a hot bike ride - it's finally up into the 90s with lots of humidity this weekend, it's been like a steam bath outside all weekend. While I was riding Claudia made the pesto and then we had a lovely dinner at our dinning room table. We find we connect much better at the table.

Then Sunday was Claudia's work party at the race track. Claudia won a whole 20 cents betting on a horse named after my mother and one of our best friends (Sue). We then got Claudia the heart rate monitor she has been eying since before we started the wedding registry and picked up a couple of other things at REI. It appeared we even had self control but not a ton. We did not have enough self control to drive by the Trader Joe's though, but we kept ourselves fairly in check there as well.

All and all a good weekend in Chicago, although it a warm one. Not that we don't know warm summers. We are off to Maine next weekend - the Lea's Storm Bar Harbor.

Travel Travel Travel

You would think we have high power jobs with the amount of travel that we do. But apparently a PhD student and an environmental engineering can rack up the frequent flier miles as well. Claudia is spending a week at home and very excited about it, while I am in Columbus, Ohio at the 10th US National Congress on Computational Mechanics. Not quite as exciting a locale as last year's conference or as good as next year's, although those are the world congresses - last year in Venice and next year in Sydney. Now I just have to come up with some great paper so my advisor will foot the bill or at least most of it. Claudia wants to turn it into a vacation in Australia as well, so that might should be fun if all the cards fall into place.

I think Claudia is just happy to have a few weeks with little to no travel on the horizon. We got back from the honeymoon and then she left again for a meeting in Texas. She is racking up those Southwest frequent flyer miles though, earning free flights and free drink coupons too. Way to go Claudia. Now we just have to feel like actually having a cocktail on a flight sometime. Claudia has been practicing sleeping on planes mostly - she tries to be out before the wheels have even left the ground, she is pretty good at it too.

I however did not fly to Columbus however, I got to take a mini van with 6 other guys from my research group. Not too bad though.

WE DID IT!!!

We did it!!! Saturday May 30th was an absolutely beautiful day - perfect weather, and a perfect day! Here are some of the things that have stuck in my mind...

- I woke up at 5:30 am (not because I had to be up that early... just because I was, well, awake), and the weather was beautiful. I opened the door to my room and the hallway was full of balloons!

- I remember being really calm all day

- Watching Megan hold on to her flowers for half of the ceremony while at her seat on Ellie's lap.

- Kicking my dress into place during the ceremony (perhaps not so gracefully).

- Our emotional vows

- When 4-year-old Megan tried to get communion after seeing 8-year-old AJ receive communion. No, Megan, you're not old enough yet!!

- Seeing Patrick D. come up to communion on his crutches (and then having my Pat explain to me the story of how Patrick D. broke his ankle... and then me telling Pat that this was not the time to be telling me this story!)

- Dani and AJ in the water. We distinctly remember hearing someone yell at AJ "IF THOSE SHOES GET WET!!!!"

- Pictures on the beach with the little girls

- Pictures on the beach with the big girls, and getting my dress wet with a fast-approaching wave!

- Hiking up my dress and Pat rolling up his pants so that we could take pictures in the WATER (still waiting for the professional photos for those!)

- Being really excited when I caught my first glimpse of the orange and green paper lanterns at the cocktail hour because I loved how they looked!

- We got a group photo during cocktail hour! I never thought that would actually happen!!!

- Being really excited when I saw the postcard table (did no one take any pictures of that?!?)

- Every time I looked at the bridesmaids I thought about how much I liked their dresses, and how classy they looked! Good work, girls, you looked fantastic! :o)

- Hearing our friends laughing when we were introduced at the reception to Kanye West's "Touch The Sky" hahaha

- Dancing with my brand spankin' new HUSBAND!!

- My dad's heartfelt speech

- Looking at myself for the first (and only) time all day in a full length mirror once we were at the reception and thinking - "WOW I'm a bride!"

- The anniversary dance - and Ben dancing with the photographer?!?

- Dancing with the kids at the reception.

- Right before the cake cutting, Ron the wedding coordinator looked at us and said "are you two going to be good?" And yes, we were good... no cake smooshing here!

- Talking to the Quenettes and realizing that I'd somehow agreed to divert our honeymoon so that we have a layover in Lyon so that we can spend some time with them. Looks like we're going to have to go back to Europe again another time to visit with them - we booked our honeymoon flight last night and we have a layover in Dublin, not Lyon!

- Alex D. being pissed at me because I asked her about work during the reception. hahaha What can I say - I was curious!

- Being able to get all 16 Tufts people together for a picture so quickly - and that our photographer so kindly stepped in to take the picture even though he was already "off duty"

- Mr. Messler requesting the Copa Cabana and telling the DJ that it's my favorite song.

All in all, it was a perfect day. Thanks so much! Feel free to comment with your own

4 days and a wake up

We're almost there! We've had a relaxing weekend in Chicago getting ready for the craziness of next week. Everything's printed, we're almost packed, all errands have been run, and I really think we're all ready to go. The weather report looks great - let's hope I don't jinx anything by saying that - but right now weather.com says it'll be 70 degrees and sunny!

But as they say, "no rain, no rainbow": Let's hope we don't need a "stunt groom"!

Two Weeks to Go.

We are two weeks to go and dare we say we are ready. We have one craft project left and then some final organizational stuff. We have to pull together some stuff once we are in Avalon but the to do list for Evanston is just about non-existent. But it was a busy weekend to get us here.

We did have time to try out a few early wedding gifts after writing thank you notes. We are using the policy our parents set for use when we were little: you can't play with the toy until the thank you note has been sent. Should help keep us motivated to keep up with them, otherwise the pile of boxes in our dinning room might eat us alive. Although finishing up the craft projects has helped clear out the dining room already.

We cracked out our new crock pot this weekend and made some pulled pork with homemade BBQ sauce. Pretty good if I do say so myself (pictures included for your enjoyment). Claudia made rhubarb cake and Patrick made bread, both pictured as well. We skipped the picture of the corn bread that was a team effort and did not work out so well for us.


Pork in the new crock pot

Pork has been pulled.

3 Weeks To Go

Two weeks ago we got our last piece of paperwork to get married according to the Catholic church and this weekend was our big trip to Avalon, NJ to start the process of getting the paperwork to let the State of New Jersey let us get married. Included are a couple of pictures of Claudia and I after we submitted our application to get a marriage license. I would say we have nothing to show but you can see the lovely shovel and bucket they gave us along with two kisses (Hershey) and a heart shaped bottle with some shells in it that we can put some sand to.

We also met with the soloist for the ceremony, the florist, and the caterer for the rehearsal dinner. All were pretty uneventful. We also stopped at the grocery store on the way in and picked up the making of a few quiches for the morning-after brunch.

Tomorrow is hair tryout day for Claudia and we are meeting with the catering guy for the reception. Although the real story there is that we are tasting cakes. We have been looking forward to this since long before we got engaged. How can you not like cake testing? Everyone loves cake, or at least the two of us love it, or at least frosting. We will report back on the details the the cake test later this weekend.

What I forgot about this weekend when I wrote this was that it was arts and crafts weekend as well. Time to assemble postcards oh the joy.

Claudia & Patrick

The Planning Continues

Planning Continues, the to-do list grows and shrinks, but we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are now less then a month away and we have much to do but things are coming together. We are working on the final details of the schedule of how things will go so that we can get our craft projects completed. I guess in the sense of full disclosure I should say Claudia is working on all this and I am trying to help. The craft projects are definitely hers, although she has discovered I am very good at trimming edges off of things, or filleting them as ACAD would call it.

Last weekend we went the Catholic Camp and now have a diploma that will let us get married in the Catholic Church. The weekend was very good, Claudia liked it a lot and we are both glad we chose the longer but more "us" centered pre-Cana. We have heard that other marriage prep classes are basically you being talked to for most of the time and tales of 45 minutes on Natural Family Planning. The goal of the weekend seemed much more to teach Claudia and I how to communicate with each other then what we really needed to talk about.

This weekend we have lot of errands to run as we are going to be away next weekend to get our license so that the state of New Jersey will let us get married too. We have lots of stuff planning for that weekend. I think that is going to be visiting vendors and arts and crafts weekend. Which means Patrick will be an assemble line. Unfornately I have a test shortly after we get back and Claudia is gone for business in the middle of a couple of weeks there. We feel good on prep but also think things are going to get pretty crazy.

Hope to see you all in under 30 days.
Patrick & Claudia

Busy Planning

Things are busy around the KrugLea household currently. Wedding planning and prepping has kicked into high gear. You can tell this is a marriage of two engineers when you see some of the organizational systems. We have lots of spreadsheets. Works great with googledocs because we can both share and edit them.
  

There is excitement each time we update the guestlist spreadsheet with who is coming. We look forward to hearing from the rest of the people shortly. We've heard back from almost 50 people so far, and about 47 of them are Claudia's friends and family - I suspect that my family is just punishing me, because I always send back RSVPs at the last minute and sometimes after the last minute.
  

We final have our pre wedding trip planned, once my syllabi were solidified. It is so much fun planning the whole thing around your midterms and projects. The quarter is just getting started but it promises to be less intense then last quarter, which is good because otherwise I might have to leave the ceremony early to finish a project, and I feel like Claudia would not be happy with that.
  

So all is well here and things are coming together, and we are moving to high gear to get everything done. I predict we will either experience no way of getting everything done or we will be there with one week left and have nothing to do. However knowing me, I doubt that.

Patrick

Back in the day

Ahh, it was the year 2000 (or maybe we were partying like it was 1999), Claudia was dating Jason, Patrick was actively pursuing other interests, yet this picture was taken in Sue's dorm room: This past weekend, this picture of Claudia and Patrick surfaced, probably taken sophomore or junior year at a dance at the Catholic Center...

Shocking, really, that it took us four years after graduating from Tufts to start dating! hahaha...

Shaun, thanks for digging up this picture - it had us laughing all weekend! :o)