A million years ago...

October 15, 2005 seems both like yesterday and a million years ago, both for all the right reasons.

Happy anniversary, love.

Happy 30th, dear Matthew

I've been thinking for a long time about a post for Matt's 30th birthday today. How do I poignantly wish him a happy milestone without sounding trite or sappy? So instead of relying merely on my own words, I'm sharing the adapted words of another instead:

"A Man Who Thinks He is Thirty"
Adapted from a poem by Ogden Nash

Unwillingly Matthew awakes,
Feels the sun with terror,
One unwilling step he takes,
Shuddering to the mirror.
Matthew is in Matthew's sight
Just old and gray and dirty;
Twenty-nine he was last night;
This morning he is thirty.

Shining like the morning star,
Like the twilight shining,
Haunted by a calendar,
Dear Matthew is a-pining.

Silly boy, silver boy,
Draw the mirror toward you:
Time who makes the years to whirl
Adorned as he adored you.

Time is timelessness for you;
Calendars for the human;
What's a year--or thirty--to
Loveliness made person?

Oh, Night will not see thirty again,
Yet soft her wing, dear Matthew;
Pick up your glass and tell me, then--
How old is Spring, dear Matthew?

Congratulations, Ben and Tracy!

Two of our very favorite people got married the weekend before Thanksgiving. Ben was Matt's roommate in college (really, for the better part of a decade), and Tracy is his perfect match. To give an idea of how awesome these two are (and how wonderful they are for each other), this was their wedding invitation:

It should also be noted that Tracy has two daughters. I would say that they helped pick out the invitation, but we know Ben too well. This is what he wore at the reception:
And this was the topper on their cake:

I had class the weekend of their wedding, so I had to stay at home, but it looks like it was a great celebration:

And even though this one is blurry, I have to throw it in, because it's so classic Matt and Ben. Matt is dancing like a white guy (probably saying "AOOO") and Ben is pretending to pick his nose. So juvenile, so ridiculous, so sorry I missed it:

We wish you many happy years, Bennie and Tracy!

Many Years Ago...

Twenty-some years ago, two moms made their children--a little boy and little girl--join children's choir at Immanuel Lutheran Church. The girl always sat in the front row, mouth open wide, singing all the words. The little boy sat in the back, playing with his choir robe, shoving the other boys. The girl was a smartypants and didn't have time for the boy's antics. The boy was a year older than the girl and thought himself to be much cooler.

The parents of the boy and the girl were good friends, so the boy and the girl knew each other as they grew up and moved on from children's choir. The boy wrestled and was his team's captain; the girl starred in plays and was section leader in band. Eventually, when the boy and girl were in high school, the boy's family decided to join another church. The boy left and the girl didn't see him for many years.

After high school, both the boy and the girl decided to go to college in the Fargo, ND/Moorhead, MN area. The girl went to Concordia (Fear the Ear), and the boy went to NDSU (Go, Bison). They never saw each other, even though the boy's roommate dated one of the girl's roommates. Then, in August of 2001, the girl was celebrating a friend's birthday at a bar that she didn't really like (she was still a smartypants who wasn't a fan of antics) and the boy was there with some friends (still goofing around). They had a "you look familiar," "where do I know you from?"
conversation until they remembered children's choir, their white robes with red bows, and running through the church. They began to spend more and more time together, reconnecting as old acquaintances, then connecting as friends.

On November 4th of that year--the girl's birthday--she realized that the boy from children's choir was more than just an old acquaintance or new friend. The girl is a bit obsessed about her birthday, and out of the blue, the boy remembered to call. This is no small miracle, considering the dates that have slipped the boy's mind since then. After that particular November 4th, however, she couldn't stop talking about the boy, and a roommate asked, "When are you going to stop pretending that he's just a friend?"

On October 15, 2005, back at the same church where they sang together in children's choir years before, the boy and girl were married...


Three years later and hundreds of miles from that church in Minnesota, they're still living happily ever after.

I love you, Matty! Happy anniversary.

Congratulations, Anna!

My brilliant friend, Anna, passed the bar exam! Well done, gorgeous.

What a year! Anna graduated from law school, married her Toddie, went on (actually, is on) an amazing Costa Rican adventure honeymoon, and passed the bar. Wow. I'm exhausted just typing it; I can't imagine living it.

I'm how old?!

I know I'm not that old. I'm young, really. Today, I just feel ridiculously old.

I was in line at Costco this afternoon, and an old woman with her even older mother were in front of me. I like to cart snoop, and I saw Ensure, Depends and something else that only old ladies buy. The "young" one realized she forgot something, pointed at me, and said to the older one, "If I'm not back when it's our turn, let this lady go in front of us." This lady?! I'm not a lady! I'm a girl! "Let this girl go in front of us!" "Let this person who doesn't buy Ensure go in front of us!" Then, I looked down and saw Fiber One bars and bean salad in my cart. I am old.

I went next door to the liquor store after that. A kid who didn't look like he was old enough to drink asked if I needed help finding anything. I swear his voice cracked when he pointed me toward the Octoberfests. When it was time to check out, I looked at the sign that says "We card under 30." I reached for my ID, and the prepubescent clerk just looked at me. I am old.

Ordinarily, those things wouldn't bother me too much. But I've been thinking lately about my upcoming birthday. Rebecca says it's the last time I can honestly tell people I'm turning 29. I say, life is slapping a really sticky band-aid on my arm. Just rip it off! Skip this whole 29 thing and let me turn 30 and get it over with already.

Highlights

I wanted to wait until I could post a photo or two of Anna and Todd's wedding before writing about what a great time it was, but my camera battery charger is somewhere between Maryland and Minnesota. That's a story for another time. For now, here are a few of my personal highlights, all of which include only mental pictures anyway:

• The look on Anna's dad's face during the ceremony. I've never seen emotion like that from him. I was already crying, but his face made me bawl.
• Spending almost a whole morning with the Feyder family! Bel and I played with princess stickers, and Frank followed Rebecca around like her shadow. I made poor Bel give me 100 hugs before I left their house that morning, and I missed her as soon as we left.
  
• Anna's friend, Cameo, walking full-speed into a glass door at our hotel. She made the floor shake. I really wish I had a camera for that one.
• My highlight, by far, was the shopping trip that Rebecca and I took on Friday afternoon. We had a classic conversation about buying new shoes that went something like this:

Rebecca: "Should I get this pair of flats? I'm already getting these boots."
Rachel: "How much are the flats?"
Rebecca: "About $60. But if I buy two pair, I get 25% off both of them."
Rachel: "And how much are the boots?"
Rebecca: "About $120."
Rachel: "Okay, so that's $120 plus $60, which is $180. 25% of that is (five minutes later) $45. Subtract that from $180 and you have (another five minutes pass) just $135. So that's like getting the second pair for just $15!"
Rebecca: "So I'm saving $45?!"
Rachel: "And you're getting super cute flats for just $15! You'd be crazy not to get them."
Rebecca: "Oh, I'm getting them."

On the road again

At some point, Minnesota is going to ask why I even bothered to move. I'm back home again this weekend for the wedding of one of my very favorite people in the whole world: my Annabear.

Congratulations, Anna and Todd! I can't wait to spend this weekend with you guys!

Sweet success!

I baked a cheesecake about this time last year, and it's taken me that long to try to bake another one. My maternal grandmother is from New York, and her aunt (my mom's great aunt and my great-great aunt) had a cheesecake recipe that has been passed from generation to generation. I first attempted to bake the famous "Lapp Family Cheesecake" twice in as many days last fall.

The first time I tried it, I had the oven set 100 degrees warmer than it should have been. I blamed that on the old, practically illegible recipe card my mom had. The second attempt a day later, however, was even more painfully unsuccessful, mostly because I had only myself to blame. I used the wrong Kitchenaid attachment, and I ended up with so much air in my batter that the cake puffed up in the oven to the point that it overflowed the sides of the pan. I also used a springform pan that was too small, so an already precarious kitchen situation became an outright kitchen disaster. But it didn't end there.

Instead of scooping up all the bits of cheesecake that had landed on the bottom of the oven (and hardened, thanks to the "cook it for an hour and a half and leave the door closed and don't you dare open it for anything!" rule), I decided to turn the oven to "clean" the next day. I don't know if I thought that a self-cleaning oven actually scraped the chunks of stuff from the oven, or if I just didn't want to know. Either way, when I locked the door and set the oven to "clean," all those bits of greasy cheesecake went up like a bunch of Roman candles. Smoke was shooting out the back of the oven, Barley was barking at the stove, and at some point, there was a rather large explosion. I turned the oven off and tried to open the door to air it out, forgetting that the oven door locks for quite some time after being set to "clean." I opened windows and brought in auxiliary fans, but the smoke was too much. I took Barley to the basement, but it was still too strong. My eyes were burning and he was rolling around on the carpet, rubbing his face. So we went outside, where I contemplated whether to wait it out or call the fire department to bust into my oven and put out what was, in my imagination, a raging inferno of cheesecake. Ultimately, we waited it out, sitting on the front step and chatting with curious neighbors until the fire in the kitchen went out.

As easy as it is to laugh about it now, last year's disaster was more than just a culinary failure. This recipe was something I should have been born knowing how to make! I think it took me a year to try again not so much because I nearly burned down our house, but because I was failing a long line of Lapp women. I must've channeled them better last night, because the end product came out beautifully (as evidenced by the fact that half of it is now gone, though Barley played a hand/paw in that one):


Oh, what sweet, delicious success!

Still crazy after 35 years

35 years ago today, I wasn't even a glint in my parents' eyes. Fortunately, they were a glint in each other's, regardless of what future in-laws had to say about it.

Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad!