we're married!!!...again

she's fine.

www.sweet-pea-photography.com/familyblog

we might cancel it...

i mean, not really. we're not canceling anything.

but i'm not gonna say that it didn't cross my mind.

So. this week started off interesting with kevin and my driving from champaign to my parents' house, staying there for about 2 hours, before leaving again to highland park. allyson and sky had given us her birthday tickets to see Punch Brothers at the rivinia. after a few missed exits (there and back) we ended up at rachel & kristen's new apartment. i really enjoyed the concert, but it felt great to get out of that car.

slept on rachel's air mattress. . . until kevin got up in the middle of the night, tried to fill it up more because it didn't seem quite as full as when we went to bed. . . but soon gave up and jumped on the couch.

i woke up on the mattress. but really, on the ground. airless.

then we head back home. . . only to get back in the car later to go spend the night at matt & michelle's place in sycamore. 10 minutes away from their place, we got a call from my mom saying that allyson was in the hospital and that she and dad were driving down to stay with the girls and she'd call me later.

ugh.

she did call later, saying that al would have some tests done on wednesday (today) and we'd just have to play the next couple days by ear. . .

got home today after doing a good job at keeping busy in the morning: getting the aprons printed, joining our phone plans (and getting new phones), writing paragraphs about ourselves for some secret wedding thing my mom is planning, wrapping a couple european presents, buying nice soap...fancy bubbles...ice cream candy toppings...champagne, and making 1st drafts of saturday's schedule and the ceremony's program.

everyone has been really helpful, from aunt di and megan weeding the tomatoes & picking up more ice cream, to aunt linda offering to come up on thursday instead of friday. . .


mom & dad did come home tonight with averhy & eden, so tomorrow should be an interesting mix of cleaning, preparing, and baby-sitting.

The next week includes

Hopefully a run about 2pm. A hair cut tonight at 5pm for me. Then hanging out with the DeKalb clan tonight.

Saturday: Jessica's wedding in Western Illinois - it's near Galesburg? Half an hour southeast of it anyways.

Then a drive to Champaign that night (Saturday), followed up with some packing of items. A Dos Reales food-a-bration at 6pm on Sunday. You are officially invited.

Then driving back up north with stuff on Monday morning/afternoon. (I would personally like to squeeze in a grilling session somewhere if possible...)

Planning for ceremonial celebrations next Saturday. With rehearsal dinner at Ach-n-Lou's pizzeria in Aurora Illinois on Friday. Oh, baby.

Now I'm quite sure I missed about a million things that need to be done and that I'm doing. Let's just call that a rough sketch.

We're headed to IKEA, right...now. And then to Bellacino's to meet up with Neal. Frankly, I'm excited. A little secret: I've never been to IKEA. Or Bellacino's for that matter.

K

CORN ON THE COB!!!!

WE'RE HOME!

yep, that's about it.

the beginning of the end

welp. we're almost done.

we stayed up until 2am last night watching season 1 of The Sopranos, in hopes that we'll be able to shift our jet-lag-clocks a little before we get home. so, we went to sleep at "8pm" and got up this morning around "4:30am" but really i woke up at 8am, which has happened almost every day for the past two weeks which is annoying and would be "2am" at home.

so. maybe we can stay up later tonight.

regardless, our bus leaves the Swindon bus station at 7:15am tomorrow morning, putting us at Heathrow around 9am, with our flight leaving at 12:50pm.

translated:
our bus leaves at 1:15am
Heathrow at 3am
flight at 7am
O'Hare at 4:20pm (10:20pm)
home by 6pm (midnight)
Festival until....10? (4am?)

yikes. tomorrow is going to be a long day. hopefully our Welcome Home Festival will keep us awake. . . we'll see.

maybe rachel jean will be our entertainer for the evening.

and now: a short photo-story by kevin m. reader:

home sweet home-ish

ah, The Wrights.

Mr and Mrs Gary Wright live in a cozy little house on Bower Green (no where near Swindon) with their bouncing baby girl and lovely pup, Angus.


. . . and, until Tuesday, so do we--which is a wonderful comfort.

bloody weathhhhherrrrr!

well. we're leaving belgium tomorrow. and we're leaving fast.

we got tickets on the EuroStar. from Belgium to London in less than an hour. which is absurb. but should be awesome.

we saw Hancock tonight, in english.

i haven't taken many pictures since we got here, but here's a couple that i like:

first, Kevin oogling at a little famous boy peeing.

















and this is the Atomium, Dad.



















next time you here from us, we'll be back in the UK.

That's it: learning to say goodbye to the things we love.

It's final.

We have booked our last bus tickets to and from Heathrow. We have a way to get to the airport.

Also, we spent a lovely day in Brussels, walking around in the rain. It was cold but adventurous. We rode the public transportation and got to know the city on a first hand basis. Saw some very interesting plazas and buildings.

We then went shopping and I made dinner for everyone, with Amanda's help of course. It was the lovely potatoey goodness that I used to be so fond of making. Potatoes, cheese, sausage, garlic, spinach, spices. Wonderful.

We walked around and looked for all the peeing statues in Brussels that makes them famous. We found one of three. The most famous one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVYwY3Fb7QQ

I ate more ice cream tonight. I think every time I eat ice cream, my body hates it more than the time before. My mouth however, is in love with it. I'll have to officially switch to soy ice cream when we get back. Maybe have a little carton of it for me on the 26th. No more ice cream for me, sad times.

Tomorrow we'll walk through the city of two languages some more (Brussels speak French and Dutch officially). And see the 5th largest Catholic church that was built in the 1950s and is just minutes away from where we are staying. There is also a park outside with some large diurnal green parrot birds that have become a mainstay in the local wildlife here in Brussels. Apparently these exotic birds escaped somehow and bred and took off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWwb68m74vI

After a bit of research the local legend has it that they bred from one pair of escaped birds, and they are Monk Parakeets.

Au reservoir dogs. Frank Sayanara.

and that song by the cranberries was given a whole new meaning

our last night with Huckleberry consisted of kevin consuming a Zombie at the Mirador where we ate awesome burgers, having some more wine, and yummy nuts while watching a movie, and then refusing to put on his pajamas. as seen in the photo.






we made it to Belgium! they have little buses. that's our new friend Wim. Kathy is behind the camera. we'll be staying with them until the 11th. and we like them already.







the 1.5% beer that Wim used to cook dinner.

it tasted like root beer.
sort of.






dinner.
beef.
zucchini.
mushrooms.
barley.
and fresh fresh basil. from the plant. on their balcony. from Wim's parents. on their farm. 1.5 hours away. in Belgium.



tomorrow we'll going to cook for them. kevin will probably do most of the work. but i'll stand there and look pretty. and i'll force him to buy ice cream for dessert.

we're also planning on finding all the peeing statues that Brussels has to offer. well, all the important ones anyway.

kevin thinks i should have written 'anyways' instead of 'anyway'. he also thinks i should have said 'wrote' instead of written. grammar police? anyone? spelling bee winners? rachel? char? which is it? WHICH IS IT???

goodnight. . . maybe we'll have waffles in the morning.
(kevin reader approves this message)

not that lakes have topography. . .

on top of the mall. with frankfurt behind us.
K Stew showed us all around town.







hooray for kevin stewart!
he helped us eat right.
by german standards.

and introduced us to Apfelwein.
yum.



the night we stayed in mörfelden:


the buffet's first round.
later we discovered that breakfast was not included.
good thing there was no one at the desk when we walked in.


we stuffed ourselves.






cereal, sausage, chicken nuggets, yogurt, cheese, croissants, cake,
fresh fruit, pain au chocolat, prunes, juice, hash browns. . .


dried apples. my favorite.





then back to frankfurt!



kevin and our canadian frankfurt host, huckleberry, bringing a mattress up from the basement.











resting after all their hard work.






tomorrow: belgium.

unless we decide to stay with huckleberry for a few more days. . . .

dutch, german, italian, french...but no english

heard fireworks in frankfurt by the river...but thanks to jason, we got to see some, too.

must. sleep.

-kevin


okay. really fast:

we starting leaving serbia at 7am on the 3rd. we got to Zurich (a surprise destination) at 8:30am on the 4th. left Zurich at 9:02am on the 3rd and got to Frankfurt around 1pm. met up with Kevin Stewart after buying an over-priced watermelon on the street. stopped by his place to adioy our packs, and walked all over Frankfurt...and sang the National Anthem while walking down a dark street at 11:30ish pm. Happy 4th! crashed that night at his Canadian friend, Joe's place, (because K Stew's roomie is a nutso...long story) which turned out to be great. K Stew came to get us around 9am on the 5th and we did more walking.

ate sausage.
ate awesome german desserts.
ate schnitzel.
ate frankfurters.
ate sauerkraut.
K Stew ate a Pig's Hock. look it up.

nutso roommate forced us to hotel it tonight, so after a long "direction-less adventure," and a short "i solemly swear to never again book a hotel room without first writing down the directions" oath-taking later, we plopped into our fantastic hotel room.

our fantastic hotel room with gummy bears on the pillows instead of mints.

i'm in Heaven. German Heaven.
.amanda.


. . . photos and things later. . . they may have gummy bears, but they don't have free wifi. . . €10/hour or €17/day. yikes. thank you for in-the-lobby-free-compy.

food glorious food

serbian cuisine has treated us well thus far.

our first meal:
this is pickled cabbage leaves stuffed with ground meat and rice. with a little ham on the side. awesome.








then pick either walnut or poppyseed strudel for dessert.






this was breakfast:
some kind of heavy cheese pastry thing. also awesome.
and there's some drinkable yogurt in that cup. . . more tart than ours is. . . not my favorite.






that's mina. with a dinner of sliced sausage and cheese and tomatoes and peppers and bread.








last night's dinner:
"serbian salad" which was tomatoes, peppers and onions
bread, cheese of the region, more sausage and some cheese/butter spread








after dinner last night. ripe watermelon for dessert.





after dinner drinking. . . rakia.
you're supposed to drink it before dinner to whet your appetite, but mina thought we should wait until we had something in our stomachs. . . so that we wouldn't throw up.







hard candy we had today. with sesame seeds in it.






tonight's dinner: basically a cabbage salad with chicken and dumplings. the dumplings are really something like gnocchi.








then we had ice cream. but the photo wouldn't upload. maybe later. . . then i'll put up the photos of the crepes that mina's mom is going to make later tonight. cannot wait.

rewind: a montage

now that i've figured out how to put videos on this thing, i've pasted some highlights together for you.

it begins with a street performer in Paris, then two music groups playing at the Festival in Bourg en Bresse, then to kevin pong-ing with an Italian, us at the station in Florence, a special clip for Rachel Jean Muehling, and finally the train from Venice to Beograd.

enjoy.