Summer time!

It officially feels like summer in the Buhler household.  Adam got sunburnt, we both have tons of mosquito bites, and our bedroom feels like a sauna (okay, the entire house does).  Despite this, we are having lots of fun!  Some highlights:

• Outside games at the Campanile - we played German tag, which evolved to KGB...it was pretty intense.  Fun was definitely had by all, despite the bugs and mud.
• Indoor games at NaeNae's - For a beginning, I pretty much rocked Nerts.  True, Janae won over all, but my score wasn't too shabby either.  I call for a rematch.
• Henry's and Amanda's wedding - it was one of the most beautiful weddings we've been to - gorgeous music (we sang "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing," one of our favorites!), beautiful scriptures, and an amazing couple.  Yay for weddings!
• DVDs from the library - we borrowed six, but ended up with seven total after visiting Adam's parents.  And yes, we watched them all within five days.  We have now experienced Rocky I and II - we're fans.  "Yo Adrienne!"
• I cooked shrimp for the first time in my life.  After five months of getting grossed out at the thought of deveining and shelling those creatures, my love for Adam prevailed and I made Shrimp Creole.  And, surprisingly, I actually kind of liked it!

My husband, the photo-grapher

We all know how sweet Kansas summer thunderstorms are. Well, Adam Bear took some awesome pictures before it started raining and has his own photo gallery on the Journal-World website...check it out!

A New Chapter

Well, school is out now.  For the first time since our marriage we can spend time together every evening without worrying about homework.  It's great that we have time to watch more movies and relive our favorite parts of Season 2 of The Office (it's the only season we have on DVD).  Karen has a new job now and we are both excited about that because she doesn't dread going to work every day.  Karen also has the wonderful benefit of an hour long lunch break.  That's a luxury that I've never been able to appreciate and I'm a little jealous.  Karen takes 10 minutes to eat and the rest of the time she watches episodes of The Office.  It is nice that I can pick her up on my days off and spend a little bit of time together in the middle of the day.  I've become a lot more helpful around the house now that I have days off.  I've been able to take up the laundry and grocery shopping and the occasional cleaning/organizing project in our small apartment.  It's great that I can help out now.  I also really love the time off to work on my photography.  I'm trying to keep myself busy and productive on something while Payless isn't using my time.  If anyone reading this needs pictures taken for anything from weddings to eBay auction pictures to sports to portraits, I'm your guy.  It's great to be taking pictures again.  I love exercising that part of my creative mind again.  It invites my OCD tendencies come out and play.  I'm very particular with my details and that's very beneficial with photography.  I'll let you see some of the pictures I've been working with lately.  I'm very excited about my new camera and lens because of the great detail I can capture in my pictures now.  The first picture is the whole thing and the second one is a close-up of the detail.  The color and detail isn't the same after I posted the pictures but you get the idea.

Birthdays!

Well, Adam had a birthday two weeks ago, never wrote about it, so I will share the fun festivities (after all, I had the pictures on my computer!).  The entire weekend was devoted to Adam - Saturday we celebrated with my family in Topeka, Sunday we celebrated with his family in Lawrence (and Mother's Day at the same time), and Monday we celebrated just the two of us!  I don't know who had more fun - Adam or me.  It was definitely fun planning surprises!

My mum baked a Devil's food cake on Saturday and Susan and I attempted to decorate it.  After we put the first layer of frosting, we realized we had no plan.  With that, we tossed around ideas and decided to make the flag of Haiti.  Problem - we had no blue frosting.  Well, we got creative and put a few drops of food coloring on the already frosted cake and took a fork to smear the food coloring around.  It worked!  Ta-da!  Jwaye Zanivese!

"It's a check!" - a classic quote from my li'l sister Debbie.  We made Adam follow suit when he opened the card from Grandpa Witt.

So, for Adam's birthday breakfast (on his actual birthday), I surprised him with waffles (I normally roll out of bed and set out the Raisin Bran, so this is big news).  I got to impatient, so he opened one of his gifts before leaving for work - The Star Wars Trilogy!

This is what stayed on our coffee table for two weeks prior to his birthday...I was just so excited for his birthday!  It was almost like having a Christmas tree!

In other birthday news, my dad turned the big 6-0 last Friday.  In honor of him, the siblings put together a video for him, documenting important events in his life and their influence on us.  Well, Adam was in charge of getting the videos together to send to the Gees for final editing, and we just laughed and laughed at these next ones.  My niece and nephew are so cute!  Enjoy!

Almost done...

It's Adam's week, but he'll probably want to write about his birthday festivities (they began on Saturday and will end tomorrow on his actual birthday) and the end of finals, so I'm just going to leave a brief posting.  First, to thank Heidi for the gorgeous banner and layout she made for us.  That girl is quite productive on her sick days home!  Thank you again!  And secondly, to showcase a video I made for a group final project.  Enjoy!

It's located here if you ever want to watch it again!

What time is it?!

You know the beginning of High School Musical 2 (okay, maybe some of you don't...we definitely do in this family)?  The clock is ticking and everyone starts saying "summer, summer, summer, summer" faster and faster while getting louder.  That's how I feel.  It's SO close, but not quite here yet.  I have about one more huge project in each of my classes, but other than that - I am finally at the end (of this semester)!

I had to take a really frustrating music education class this semester.  Don't get me wrong - I love music.  However, this class has been the plague of my life.  We have learned how to teach a elementary music class, classroom behavior and discipline, and how to fill out a resume.  All good things, but in a music class?!  Seriously?!  Not once were we taught how to apply music into our general classroom.  Ridiculous.  Anyway.  We have to take turns creating lesson plans and "teaching" our class.  I make sure to have a lot of fun with this and this was the subject of my last lesson:

In other news, I cut my hair! I cut it a month after the wedding,

but once you cut, it's hard to stop! My goal is to NOT wear it 

up in a bun or ponytail, so I had to take drastic measures. And 

here's the result:

Goodyear

Well, last week Karen got to toot her horn about her last year home from a mission, and now it's my turn. April 26th made it one year here in the Sunflower State. A few things happened in this last year and here is a list of some of the more notable events:

• I got home from my mission and was released as a full time missionary on the evening of the 26th.
• 8 days later, in the wee morning hours of Cinco de Mayo (That's May 5th for you Gringos) after watching the last of the original Star Wars trilogy (which happened to be Karen's first time seeing it. I told her she was un-American for not having seen it before) we had a DTPR (Determine The Possible Relationship) and sealed the deal with a kiss.
• My sisters and nephews came the following week to see me for my 22nd birthday.
• I started working temporarily as a Custodial Engineer (yes, a janitor) at an elementary school. Thank goodness for iPods.
• Two weeks later I started working at a call center where I answered questions about the FAFSA and other Federal Student Aid programs.
• My Granddad Everett Buhler passed away in June having been diagnosed with cancer several months before. I was sad to see him go but found peace in the fact that I saw him after my mission.
• Karen and I went on a very important road trip to Utah where we grew rather fond of each other. (The trip was originally organized to set me up with a mission companion of Karen's. Looks like I was too good to pass up, eh?) ((Karen just called me a nerd for that last sentence. I chided her for her poor use of the word 'nerd'.))
• I started school at JCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC to work on my general education credits. It's a third the price of tuition at KU so I'm taking advantage of as many credits that transfer. I declared a major in Accounting but have yet to take a class in it. I think I like it...
• One Friday night in September Karen and I sat down and made our financial goals for the next year and in seeing that they were the same, we decided to get married over Christmas Break.
• Two weeks later I found out how temporary my job was with Federal Student Aid and two weeks and one day later I was out of a job.
• One Friday night in October I gave Karen a sparkly ring.
• In late October I started working at Payless where I am a Retail Operations Specialist. I have to know pretty much everything about how a store is run and I get to deal with customers a lot too. After working there for about 6 months, I can almost say that I feel comfortable answering 80% of the questions.
• One Friday in January we got married.
• We went to Chicago and I got sick.
• I'm living with a girl now.
• We paid tuition, bought two Macbooks, an LCD TV, DVD player, Microwave, bed, car insurance, and health insurance all within a months time. Gosh, life just got a lot more expensive!
• I bought myself my own Digital SLR camera!

I'm supposed to put a little synopsis or something here at the end. I'm also supposed to say how wonderful Karen is and how blessed I am that she was there when I got home and now we're married. So, I guess that about does it. (I'm contributing to this blog with influence from Karen if you haven't noticed.)