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The Martin's

This past weekend our friends Lee & Jana tied the knot in St. Cloud! I work with Lee and we went through training together, however, he took a territory in Indy about a year ago so we haven't been able to see them as often as we'd like to since the move. Our friends Nick & Sarah who live in MO surprised us and stayed with us on their way to St. Cloud Thursday night. I also work with Nick and we hadn't seen them in almost exactly a year so it was great to see them another day before the wedding.

Saturday morning we headed up to the wedding and it was such a gorgeous day for a wedding!

The church service was beautiful and the bride and groom went for a ride around the block in a horse drawn carriage - so cute!

The reception was at the Radisson Hotel in St. Cloud and everything was great! It was really nice to see our friends from my work that we hadn't seen in a while.

Sunday after the wedding we had a fun filled day of shopping at the Albertville Mall and Trader Joe's. I bought my very first Coach purse which I felt slightly guilty about but at the same time, it was a steal of a deal, and it was a reward for passing my test :) We got some Christmas presents bought and we also bought our very first set of Correlle dishes!

I've been wanting to get Correlle dishware forever. We always had them growing up and I've loved them but have never broken down and bought them, until now.

After about 4 hours at the outlet mall we headed to our last stop, Trader Joe's. A friend of mine at work has talked about how good the food is at Trader Joe's and after driving past one in the cities last weekend I decided we had to check one out! Surprisingly, it isn't all that expensive and from the food we've ate so far, it's delicious! I love pumpkin so when I saw a pumpkin butter, I had to get it. I had it on my mini bagel this morning for breakfast and it was amazing! So good :) We will definitely be going to a Trader Joe's again and I can't wait for the one to open up in Rochester so we don't have to drive up to the cities to go to one.

Step Up for Down Syndrome

Last Saturday we headed up to the cities and participated in the Step Up for Down Syndrome Walk with some of Jeremy's co-worker's for Miley Ahrens. It was a gorgeous day and it was great to spend time with some of the people that Jeremy works with and their families.

The cute banner that was on the tent.

The walk was right down the road from Como Zoo so we decided to visit the zoo after the walk.

Duck Hunter

We need an ark!

Let me just start by saying I have never seen so much rain in my life! I'm not exactly sure how much rain we've gotten but I've heard that we got around 10" since last night!

I realized it was storming hard last night but didn't realize how much. Last night Jeremy decided to do a load of laundry but this morning I remembered that it never got put into the dryer. So I was going to quick throw it in the dryer this morning but when I went into our laundry room I noticed that our rug was pretty wet. Looking around I realized that most of the laundry room floor was wet. Nothing was leaking and the sump pump was running so I had no clue where the water was coming from. After yelling for Jeremy to come look at our wet basement he determined that the sump pump must have overflowed due to all the rain we got over night. Luckily the water was just a thin layer across most of the laundry room floor and slightly under the stairs and into the carpeted living space.

We quickly moved everything out of the way and wiped up some of the water before we had to get to work. At this point I think we had already gotten like 6 inches of rain. It continued pouring all morning and after finding out that one of my co-worker's and another one of Jeremy's co-workers has water seeping into their basement through the walls, I got quite nervous!

Due to the weather, Jeremy was soaked and came home from work at the same time I was coming home to check on the house. Thank god we had no more water in the basement than we did before we left for work. We started moving stuff out of the way and when I went back to work Jeremy got the clean up the water with a shop vac and started drying out the carpet etc.

There are tons of schools around us that are either closed or starting late and both Jeremy and I had to take detours home from work because the normal roads we drive on were covered with water! A couple of the parks in town are flooded, people were evacuated out of their homes, and it just keeps raining!

Check out some pictures of all the water.

The road Jeremy normally takes home from work.

Our backyard.

One of the parks in town.

Opening Bow Hunting

For anyone who doens't know my husband, he is obsessed with hunting. It was opening bow hunting last weekend and Jeremy was obviously excited.

He had a great opening weekend and shot a nice 8 point buck on Saturday night. Here some pictures of his nice buck! We're trying out a place down here to get our meat processed so I hope that it tastes just as great as the place we used to go to back in WI.

3 down and 5 to go

Finally after studying for the past couple months I took my third CPCU test on Wednesday and I passed! It's always such a great feeling to know that my studying paid off! Now I only have 5 more to go!

I was pretty nervous about this last test because it was short answer. I hate short answer tests. I would prefer to take a multiple choice test any day of the week!

I found out I passed the test Friday morning, which was a great start to my Friday! Being that it has to get graded by someone instead of a computer, I figured I wouldn't get my score back that quick, but I did! And crazy me, I already signed up for my next one.

Since starting my career, I've now taken a total of 7 tests. Three for my Associate of Commercial Underwriting Designation, one for my Associate in Insurance Designation and now three towards by Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter designation. I'm hoping to get my CPCU done within the next couple of years so I'm taking as many as I can in a year.

I'll be taking my next one, which is thankfully a multiple choice test, probably in December sometime. In the meantime, I do have a couple of weeks off from studying because I have to wait for my books to come in.

Time for enjoy my time away from studying for the next couple of weeks and do some digital scrap booking or card making or anything BUT study!