down on the farm (and other bjerkaas family reunion adventures...)

eric and i have spent the last week at our lakeside leisure. it's the annual bjerkaas family reunion! look how excited we are!!!


we went out to the old bjerkaas farm and all the brothers wheeled out their tractors. apparently, they're quite the rage with that bjerkaas generation. i never saw that coming.


eric getting a tutorial from his pa.

i know eric first as a math teacher and a soccer coach. a guy who plays guitar and works out. air force brat, army vet. a bostonite, a california artist man. but never, ever did i expect to see him on a tractor. or that at his family reunion, his dad and uncles would wheel out a parade of farmalls and john deeres. so fun. :)


even i got to drive one. :)uncle forrest, explaining his giant farmall beast...

apparently, my john deere hats would have been appreciated here.
eric took me out on the loooooooove boat
i know, i look super cool in this picture.
i like this man a lot.

our new place

we've spent a good deal of the summer at the house my parents used to rent to my little brother, helping them fix it up. now we're finally moved in and getting settled, just in time for us to leave for a family reunion in minnesota and then our honeymoon in mexico! i'll tell all about it later, but, for now--here's the pictures!

the master bedroom...




the guest room. eric let me put up some of my pictures from sudan. :)


the bathroom...


the living room....

(notice the green chair. a bit out of place...)

view from the dining room, peeking into the living room and kitchen...
the rest of the kitchen...


the dining room, complete with matching family photos. (eric's idea.)

Kimmie's belated birthday celebration...

I wasn't able to be with Kimmie for her birthday, so when she came down, Eric and I decided to throw her a little belated birthday party. We got her a cake. That's Hello Kitty. And a Hello Kitty backpack. Of course, there's a long story behind that...

We also went to see UP. In 3D. Hence, the ultra cool glasses. And, naturally, Kim brought her Hello Kitty backpack.

Our new wheels...

We got bikes.
Our first big married-life investment--bikes. That suits us.
And it's good, 'cause we're both a little porkier than we'd like to be right now.

One of the first weekends we had them, we took the canal from La Salle to Ottawa and back. Something like 33 miles, once you add in coming from our place and our detour to Charlie's baseball game. Not too shabby.
We were definitely hurting after that. A leeeettle saddle-sore. Yowza.


Anyway, there's us, doing the bike thing.

How close is too close?

I never imagined that I'd end up living in the Illinois Valley, living in the same community as my parents.

But, here we are.

And, as it turns out, I quite like it.

In fact, we've been spending a lot of time with my parents lately--laboring to get their rental house ready for us to move into, and just hanging around--and Eric and I agree, it's nice to have family so close. It's nice to be able to just drop by the house, or have them drop by here. It's nice to get together for dinner, or run errands together.

And I think Eric is fitting in well. We're still doing our "What I Like About You Today" thing, and after a time with my parents, my "What I Like About You" almost always includes my liking how he gets on with my dad and mom. It's just a really good deal.

But how close is too close?

Mom and I were shopping at Kohl's this week, and I went into the dressing room to try on a few things. I came out, toting some shorts and a shirt that I liked. And just as I was coming out, Mom was going in... carrying the same shirt I had in my hand.

Weird. Just weird.

And maybe a little too close.

Eric, on fatherhood...

Eric had his first inkling toward fatherhood just recently.

It didn't come from seeing his brother's adorable new little one last weekend.

It didn't come from my cooing at how cute the baby clothes were as I craned my neck to see the baby aisle at Target, while Eric grabbed my hand tighter and yanked me away.

It didn't even come from God's Word, the command to be fruitful and multiply or the heavy charge relating to bringing up children in the Way.

It came yesterday at church.

It was Fathers Day, as you're likely well aware, and our church gave copies of John Piper's 31-day devotional, Life as a Vapor, to all the dads, as a gift.

Apparently that's what got him.

He turned to me, patted my knee and said... "Andi, we've got to start having kids. I'm missing out here."

Yup.

Eric finally sees the reward of fatherhood, and he wants to capitalize.

Sigh.

;)

Hung up on the Alamo...

One of my students brought me a hanging plant as a gift on the last day of school.

It left me a little depressed.

I have no where to hang it.

We only have this teensy, teensy window. And no porch to speak of.

So, like I said... no where to hang it.

Sigh.

Sometimes I get really sad about where we live. I mean, our little cave is nice. But sometimes the no-windows thing really gets to me. It's just so... gloomy in here.

But there are good things about our little nest. It's unique. It looks like the Alamo from the outside. Not many people can say that. It has carpet everywhere. And in the strangest places. Like... on the walls. And in the bathroom. And in the kitchen. And it's all different carpet. Umm... the loft part is really cute. (Blue shag carpet.) And we made a nice little sitting area up there. That we never use. Sigh. The kitchen has pale blue cabinets. And pink walls. Whimper. Oh! We have the best shower head ever. A wedding gift!

I'm going to think about the shower head from now on, when I see my hanging plant sitting anyhowly next to the front door.

power struggle...

eric says i turn into a 5-year-old in the mornings.

but that's only because i'm trying to act like a 5-year-old.

here's the thing--eric got out of school a whole week before i did. and he threatened to sleep in every morning i still had to go to work, because i've very much enjoyed--and expressed my enjoyment in--the fact that i don't have to be at work until an hour after he does. and i'm always the last out of bed.

so he began the week trying to be the last out of bed.

and so i began using every 5-year-old, preschool tactic i knew to get him out of bed before me.

limp noodle.
puppy pout.
poking. tickling.
trying to barrel-roll him out of bed with my feet.
outright whining.
guilt-tripping.
sweet-talking.
and acting as needy as possible.

i was afraid nothing would work, and we'd be in a stalemate long after i was meant to be at work.

but something must've.

because i've always been snuggled in the covers at least a few minutes after he's left the warm nest.

(i win! i win!)

i wonder if i can keep this up all summer...

Eric is standing here, trying to get my attention by flexing his calves.

This must be some sort of ancient mating ritual, revisited.




(I think I'm just going to write about every strange thing Eric does. "This is going to backfire on you, my dear Andi. People are going to think you married a buffoon." -Eric)

Bjerkaas bachelor pad...

I married a nearly 35-year-old bachelor.

And it’s so, so clear sometimes.

The other night, he brought potato chips into bed. I guess he thought one special treat—the mere having of potato chips in this Bjerkaas household—called for another.

I mean, honestly, who in their right mind thinks they can bring potato chips into bed?

Every time I rolled over onto a fresh crumble of chip shards… I wondered that very thing. With increasing emotion.

And, what’s with the toilet seat? We dated for how long? (OK, not that long…) And I was over here how many times?! (OK, not too terribly many times…) And never was I faced with the gaping ugliness of the toilet seat being up.

That first week we were married? Must’ve happened half a dozen times. (Small exaggeration.)

Eric himself has breathlessly reported moments of bachelor relapse to me—harrowingly close calls of nearly leaving the bathroom door open whilst he peed.

The terror. The terror!

Yikes-ah.

You’ll have to keep praying for us, as we adjust to life as a “we.” :)

Beating boredom...

Sometimes working at a preschool can get a bit mundane.

The endless barrage of “Mrs. Bjerkaas, he hit me!” “Mrs. Bjerkaas, can you button my pants?” “Mrs. Bjerkaas, I have to go potty.” “Mrs. Bjerkaas, she told me to shut up.”

Etc., etc., etc.

So sometimes—especially while I’m sitting outside watching the kids defy certain death on the playground—I have to find ways to entertain myself.

(Lest I become stupider. And forget how to interact with adults. And so forth.)

It wasn’t long before I came up with the “What will the kids grow up to be?” game. That was fun. But pretty cliché. And not altogether captivating.

But then I came up with a much better game—trying to imagine what my husband was like in preschool. Oh, yeah, lots of fun. I compare him with the kids and see which traits I thought he displayed then. It’s also fun to play using Kimmie. Or my dad.

Kissy Face

This morning, as we were getting out of the car for church, Eric refused to kiss me, on account of the fresh coat of lipgloss I’d just put on.

Men.

Sigh.

(I keep finding old blogs scribbled on scraps of paper here and there... weird.)

A confession...

Ok, well, it's probably pretty obvious that someone is a leeeeettle obsessed with her wedding photos. Sooooo... sorry about that.

I've never before wanted this much to look at this many photos of myself.
It's a really strange feeling.

But doesn't my husband look handsome?!
And isn't everything just so perfect and pretty?!?!
And these aren't even half of them!

Sigh.

I got home from a bike ride nearly an hour ago, and I've been looking at and posting them since. Eric kept looking over here again and again, then finally said, "What in the world are you doing?! I thought you were going to take a shower. ... You smell."

My husband thinks I smell.

Dreamy sigh.

The honeymoon--and wedding picture day--is so over.

My daddy...

Oh, he thinks he's so funny.
Sort of like my husband does.
I totally married my father.



Did I tell you it was a few minutes before go-time at the church, and we realized no one had grabbed the flowers from the table at the lodge? So Daddy flew back to the cabin, grabbed them and made it back in time to catch his breath and walk me down the aisle. No problem.
(This is why he's holding the flowers, not me.)


All the kids, Christine and Kimmie had already left. It was just my dad and me. Waiting.



We don't know how to dance.