Wheaton Weekend

This past weekend Sam and I went home to Wheaton for a fun family filled three days! We drove in Friday night and had a wonderful meal with the Haist's! Unfortunately, we didn't get any pictures with Mom & Dad Haist this weekend, but know that we love you and enjoyed staying with you. Thank you for being so hospitable!

Saturday morning we woke up to beautiful fall weather and couldn't have been happier to be home. We headed to Jesse's homecoming football game and loved watching him play! He was asked to be the captain/ do the coin toss for the Homecoming game, which was really neat. He is quite the football player, for those of you who haven't been able to catch a game yet this season... we suggest you do so! After the game, we enjoyed a homemade BBQ pork lunch with the Dean's and celebrating Grandpa Nelson's birthday at Gino's East that night. It was great to see everyone, and we are thankful we got to celebrate with you Grandpa! We love you very much!

Sunday we went to Blanchard for church, Egg Harbor (the standard on the Dean side) for brunch and then off to the AT&T store with the Haist's before heading home to St. Louis. It was a weekend packed with family and we loved every minute of it.
We are so blessed. 

Family back together again! We love you!!

Mom & Dad at the game! Dad does an awesome job running those sideline numbers!

Jesse coming off the field!

Jesse is #55 (the cute center)

My bald husband and I at the game! :) 

Chilly fans!

When did little brother get bigger than us?? He is growing up too fast! Krista and I both had an emotional weekend watching him play football :) We are proud of you Jess man (Sam is too). Love you!

A fun friday.

On Friday, my beautiful bride and I joined new friends, Josh and Katie, for a picnic at the annual "balloon blow" at Forest Park. Let me tell you, it was a lovely affair. Good wine, good cheese fondu, good hummus, and good hot air balloons make for a fun (and good) time. So, if you're in the area next September we would love for you to join us in our new family tradition. It was awesome. 

When we first arrived ... 

Here they come! 

Still coming ... 

The finished product! 

New friends, Josh & Katie. 

Yes, we matched (accidentally).

Wedding Pictures!

Our professional wedding pictures are finished! 

Here are some of our favorites, but you can view the whole selection at: 

http://www.grandriverimaging.com/stofferphotography
Email address: (Your personal one) 

Event Code: 17120-222

A special thank you to John and Maura for capturing our day for us - we love our pictures! 

Sunday Adventures

With the beautiful weather this weekend, we decided to have a Sunday adventure and get out and explore this fun city we're living in. We started our Sunday with an awesome service at South City Church then headed to the Greek Festival at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church. We had a delicious lunch before heading to Laumeier Sculpture Park. It was gorgeous park with some really neat modern art sculptures as well as nature trails. Overall, it was a great day! 

We also want to wish Grandma Nelson a happy 70th birthday today! Wish we could have celebrated with you. We love you and miss you!! 

Here are a few pictures from our day ... 

Greek food!! 

You can't really tell from the picture,
but this giant cat was made of cut glass. It was really neat. 

Our favorite sculpture ... a giant eyeball! 

Sam was nervous because a huge sign read, "Do not climb on sculptures"
 ... I made Sam take this picture anyway :) The title of the sculpture, "Poet at a table". 

Picture at the park

Sam and I had fun trying to guess the titles of the sculptures ...
Sam won this one. It's name was "knot". 

This picture was taken for our good friend Nathan Meyers ...
it's a sculpture of carbon and oxygen atoms.
It reminded us of lipids, which Nathan studied in college :)

Happy Birthday Mom Haist!

Last Thursday we had the privilege of having guests come to visit!!! Mom, Dad, Ben and Grandma all came to visit on their way to New Orleans (Ben goes to Tulane University). Not only did we enjoy a wonderful dinner at Charlie Gitto's on The Hill (one of our favorite places), we also enjoyed celebrating Mom's birthday with mini dark chocolate cheesecakes!

Happy Birthday Mom!

We love you!

Haist Family Reunion '10

In case you didn't know, the Haist Family Reunion is one of the most hoppin' events of the year. In fact, it's so big of a deal that it has been covered by Time, People, and Rolling Stone magazines. Well, that might not be true, but nonetheless, it is of monumental significance.

This year's theme was "Going to the Chapel" during which we celebrated Uncle Dave and Aunt Sandy's 35th wedding anniversary by participating in the renewing of their vows. The big event took place at the Culver Academy chapel in Culver, Indiana. For those of you who may be interested, Jim Haist while playing for the Wabash High School football team did bring home the win against Culver Academy (back in the good old days). We're proud of him.

We loved seeing everyone at the reunion and spent the drive home talking about how blessed we are by our families. We hope you enjoy a few of the pictures from the weekend!

Love you.

Grandma and Grandpa's farm ... "The Saltbox" 

Sam wanted his picture taken with the famous football player ...Jim Haist aka Dad. 

What an example of true love these two are. We are blessed by their 69 years of marriage and can't wait  to see what the next 68 years and 11 months hold for us. We love you both! 

Grandpa getting the grill ready for some chicken cooking! 

Flipping the chicken ... notice Dave's face. He takes his job very seriously. 

Dave's gloves help him to perfect the cooking of the chicken! 

Sitting with The Supervisor of the chicken making. 

Gaye and Ben at the waffle breakfast ... Gretchen and Shawn are the waffle pros. 

Sam's photography skills ... enjoying nature on the farm. 

On our way home we stopped to enjoy a Monical's Pizza dinner with Grandma Dean!

Our new friends.

From the time she was a little girl, Katelyn has always loved fish. While she has had many Beta fish over the years, we decided that we finally needed to fill her (12 gallon!!!) aquarium in our new apartment. It makes a beautiful addition to our guest room.

However... our guest room is not simply a guest room. It is also our office/workspace and, let me tell you, it is filled with many, many books. As an aspiring pastor/theologian, Katelyn has graciously allowed me to name our fish after some of my favorite theologians!!!! While this may seem like a purely kind gift to me, there is her underlying hope that these names will not appear as options for our children someday. Clever.

So... it is my pleasure to introduce to you our newest friends.

The completed tank!!!! 

Watson is a balloon belly Molly. 

Named after Thomas Watson 

Martin is a yellow/orange Platy. 

Named after Martin Luther 

Eddie is a white with black specks Platy. 

Named after Jonathan Edwards 

Calvin is a black and white Platy. 

Named after John Calvin 

We have 2 catfish, one named Charlie and one named Bunyan. The catfish were Sam's pick ... the woman at Petsmart convinced me because they eat algae off the bottom of the tank. Lucky for Sam.

Named after Charles Spurgeon 

Named after John Bunyan