Life In the MidWest

I love my mom. Happy Mothers day to her and all the amazing mom's that do so much good. My sweet mom sent me my camera chord so that I can put pictures up for her and anyone else that would like to follow along with my life in Wisconsin :) So, here is our journey thus far:

This is on our LONG drive to Wisconsin. Matt gets really excited over landmarks and historical sites- this was some monumental butte... of which I do not remember it's name... but it was cool.

 I had to beg Matt to pull over for just a couple hours of sleep. The man is relentless, I think he could drive non-stop for... forever, which I'm really grateful for. BUT I get nervous when he starts to look drowsy, so
we slept a couple hours and then hit the road again. I think we traveled 27 hours with our few stops. Here is the Mississippi River and the bridge that connects Iowa and Wisconsin.


We spent our first week or so staying with Matt's dad because we didn't have an apartment yet. He lives in the middle of nowhere... literally. There are a couple hundred people in town, but he doesn't even live in town. He lives like 2 miles down a dirt road down in the 'holler.' Boy was it a change of scenery! But I'm very grateful we had a place to call home while we looked for a place. This is the house in the holler.

Here is some of the surrounding land. A.k.a His front and backyard. His house is surrounded by hills and forest. We saw deers running by several days, there are tons of little bunnies hopping around, and of course COWS in the field. Oh, and I can't leave out the dang rooster that woke me up too early several mornings :)

Boy and dog reunite :) This is Matt's massive dog Polar. He is a gentle giant, and I'm growing fond of him because he follows us around when we trapse through the woods and helps me feel safe :)

I found these sweet boots in the barn and cleaned them up. Yee haw! I love them.

I've been informed and now fully experienced that the only thing to do in Wisconsin is the OUTDOORS. This is such a new world to me... I don't spend alot of time outdoors.. well I didn't. But now I do. And you know what? I'm enjoying it :) It's so good for me. This is the river that runs through Dennis' (Matt's dad) property. We went down one afternoon and fished for a bit. Here's Matt and his bass he caught.

Here's Matt and his bass and his wife that he caught :)

That day we also stopped by the Grotto. It's a strange monument but pretty cool. It's entirely made of shells/rocks/etc. Really interesting.

A few weekends ago I experienced my first canoe trip. Matt loves to canoe, and last year went on a 4 day canoe trip. I offered to accompany him on perhaps a 4 hour ride, but no longer! He assured me the river was really slow and we shouldn't have any problem. I believed him until we almost tipped in the first 10 minutes haha THe water was murky and we couldn't see more than 2 inches down. We hit a stump, I fell backward off my seat, and water started to fill the canoe haha We were laughing so hard but luckily I didn't tip it over! We also hit a few log jams and actually had to carry the canoe to shore and climb around the log jam til we could get back on the water. Natually I climbed through some stinging nettle and had a red bumpy rash up my hands and arms the rest of the ride. Oh and when I decided to relieve my bladder by squatting behind a tree... there was a snake staring up at me. ha I screamed and Matt laughed. Story of my life :) Overall though, we had a really good time.

This past weekend we travelled to a beautiful state park with Matt's friend and took his boat out on the lake. We fished for hours and had a good time. Look closely... you can see our first catch of the day haha A TINY perch. But it got better, we caught all sorts of fish.

Here is Matt's big bluegill.

I got a decent sized bass. Matt says you have to kiss the first bass you catch. I say no way. This is my first time even holding a fish haha

The park was beautiful. There were all these little geese following there mamma around. So cute.

One weeknight we went out to this big M after work. We walked up to the top and had a good view of the rolling green hills of Wisconsin.

A few nights ago we were invited to the wedding of one of Matt's friends. He was excited for me to see what a Wisconsin wedding was like. It was a PARTY. I've never been to anything of the sorts. The people at our dinner table told us the estimated guess for the cost of the wedding was 30,000 dollars. WOAH. It sure made for a good time tho. We were fed a delicious dinner and then danced away... and then left because people were getting pretty rowdy. I didn't have my camera with me at the wedding, so I asked Matt if we could take a picture when we got home to remember it. This is what I got :)

I am sure loving life with this guy. He keeps things pretty exciting and I'm learning so much about him, myself, US and life in general. It's gonna be a good summer :)