And We Danced.

I fell in love with Macklemore and Ryan Lewis at this year's Soundset music festival.  I think Trevor was off meeting Prof (we love him, too) and didn't fall for them like I did...at first.

I kept listening to them and they kept coming out with more and more awesome music.  It wasn't long before Trevor was hooked, too.  Not only do they make insanely fun music, they write some downright meaningful stuff, too.  I mean it when I say I was hooked from the get go, but when they came out with Same Love there was no turning back.  It was the first song that brought me to tears at face value (not because it reminded me of a funeral or something else tear-worthy).  I love it so much I'm going to plop it right here into the blog:

My stand on marriage equality is no secret and I'm proud to live in a state that voted no on an unnecessary and downright hurtful marriage amendment this year.

Anyway, back to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis.  As soon as we found out they would be at First Ave. this fall we got tickets.  We met up with our friends Adam and Kelly when we got there.  Unfortunately, photos can't capture how awesome the show was, but here they are anyway:

My favorite photo of the night.  Good work, hubs.

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Macklemore came out wearing a poncho.  Dude is stylin.

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One of their totally fun songs is Thrift Shop, so many people came wearing thrift shop attire.  Macklemore spotted a couple stellar fur coats and borrowed them.

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Thrift Shop features Wanz.

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We got to meet him.

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I have no photos of the Same Love performance-I was too busy enjoying it and trying not to cry.  What Macklemore said leading up to the performance and the song itself was probably the most memorable live music moment I've ever witnessed.  He talked about how proud he was of MN for voting no and of WA (his home state) for voting to legalize gay marriage, both very recently in this year's election.  I said multiple times that night I feel like we're part of music history.  I can't wait to look back and tell our children the story of the marriage equality movement.  

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 And we'll get to tell our first born she was there, too.

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This is Macklemore's And We Danced get up. Just one of their super fun songs!

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Aside from the headliners, the rest of the music was pretty darn good, too.  And, again, this is hip hop with a message.  First up was Xperience then Dee-1.  I especially liked Dee-1 because he took a moment to point out that just two years ago he graduated from college and spent time as a middle school math teacher.  He stressed that he hasn't always been making money off the microphone and there's absolutely nothing wrong with working hard at a "real job."  Better yet, his minor was Sociology.  I did go meet him and tell him I thought it was cool he took time to say all that, and that my major was Sociology, too-very nice dude.

-A

Appomattox.

This is a total slacker post, but I kid you not Trevor lives in front of the computer these days. So, I'm blogging from my phone.

Every year my work has a raffle as part of our fundraiser. We get local donations and some bigger statewide items, too. They're all great prizes so we usually but quite a few tickets and win a handful of prizes. Last year we won two tickets to a Guthrie Theater performance-one of the top prizes. We finally decided we should use them so we went to see Appomattox on Friday night. Trevor was agreeable to go, but not overly excited. The play was a comparison of sorts from 1865 and the Civil War to 1965 and the Civil Rights movement. We both enjoyed it, we're thoroughly entertained and even had some good laughs throughout. Trevor thanked me for talking him into going. It was fun to have a date night and do something different. On the way into the theater we talked about how much more complicated it'll be to do stuff like that in just a few short months!

-A

2-135 Formal Dinner.

This will probably be a bit of a slacker post, but I'm obviously behind. Trevor's unit's formal dinner was weeks ago. It was great to see friends from the unit and deployment, both those who were deployed and those who stayed home. We got to celebrate a good friend's last drill weekend before getting out of the Guard. And, I'll admit, it was a little bittersweet for us both since Trevor will be transferring to a completely different unit come October. Like I've mentioned, these people (soldiers and their loved ones) have become like family. I know they're not actually going anywhere but it will still be different.

We got ready at the hotel, went to a restaurant for drinks, then headed to the dinner. We got a professional photo taken, ate and talked with lots of people and listened to a few speeches from the leadership. Then it was time for more socializing and eventually the scenic route walk to the Legion. We got a little mixed up and ended up walking much more than we needed to, which was even sillier since I could have just driven us the whole time. It was a great night with great people. We were all exhausted, some hung over, for our second day of reintegration workshops the next day!

Here are a few photos from the evening. I'll add more when I get them from friends. My prego brain forgot to put the memory card in the camera.

 Cory's last drill.  At least it was a good way to go out!



Ribs and Spices and Salmon-oh my!

 *Note: If you're reading this via a link from Facebook, or even if you're not, you may want to go ahead and type in your email address and hit 'follow by email' to the right.  That way, you'll get an email when there's a new post.  I'd like to stop posting these to Facebook pretty soon, and I'd hate for you to miss out on all of our awesomeness ;)

This is exactly the type of weekend we've been waiting for ever since Trevor got home.  Unfortunately, I don't have many pictures, but it's blog-worthy anyway.  Friday morning Trevor had class and I took Rowdy for a nice, long walk then did some cleaning.  Once Trevor got home, we met up with my dad and went to Smokin in Steele, an annual BBQ and Blues festival held at the fairgrounds in Owatonna.  They were just getting set up, but there was still plenty to see.  We enjoyed some good ribs and a milkshake, plus all the great smells.  Then we went to the Big 10 for some beers and appetizers.

Saturday morning, Trevor, Rowdy and I went for a family run/bike ride.  

Trevor made us a nice, big French toast breakfast and did most of the clean up.  How did I get so lucky?  After some down time, we got ready to go and headed north.  Our first stop was Penzeys to check out some spices.  My dad has just about everything he could possibly use (and more?) from Penzeys, so we thought we'd check it out for ourselves.  It was hard to choose but we found a few good ones to try.  Our next stop was Coastal Seafoods, another one of my dad's favorite places.  We got some fresh Scottish salmon, more on that in a minute.  We made sure to allow some time to visit our friends Cory and Ashley since we were in the area.  Cory deployed with Trevor to Kosovo in 2007-2008 and he and Ashley married last September.  After a nice visit, we were off to our final destination, Chris' Welcome Home party.  Chris was Trevor's commander for the deployment and his wife Molly and I became good friends.  She was my FRG co-leader and is still running the show.  It was great to see them and it's always fun to celebrate others coming home.  Speaking of others, we saw more deployment friends there too: Cassie & Jon (and Addison) and Amy & Jerad.  We had some good food with good company, a great way to end our busy day.

Today has been exactly what it should be, for me at least-a nice, quiet, lazy Sunday.  Trevor has been hard at work on homework for most of the day, but I guess productive is a close second to lazy.  The big finale to our weekend was one of the best parts: our awesome salmon dinner.

Words can't describe how good this meal was.  We'll definitely be doing it again!  High-five for an awesome, pretty low-key weekend.  More of those, please!

-A