This past fall, Franz played football and Kathryn was a cheerleader for his team. They had a great time! It was a lot of fun watching them...

Happy Holidays!

I hope that all of my friends and family have a wonderful Christmas and New Year's. May the new year bring everyone joy, peace and happiness!!

I will be uploading a few pics of the kids from football I think - and possibly a few more.

Take care everyone during the holidays, and be grateful for all that you have!

Grand Canyon - summer 2008

Well, it's been some time since I have posted, many months...

In June I was laid off, so we debated about going on our vacation, but I decided that we all needed to do something, so we went on a shorter trip than planned and just went to the Grand Canyon. We took Tim's mom along with us as well.

The kids hadn't yet been to the canyon, and there were AMAZED! we covered their eyes and walked them to the edge - pictures just don't do the canyon justice and the kids eyes just bugged out when they saw the size of it.

I'll have to post some pictures later, but they had a great time. We walked along the rim of the canyon near Grand Canyon Village, and drove to the eastern side of the canyon stopping at all of the overlooks. The kids and Tim went right to the very edge of the canyon in some cases, something that I wasn't brave enough to do - as I said, I will have to post some pictures.

It took me some time (four months) but I did eventually get a job, at Obopay (www.obopay.com), a company that does payments via mobile phones. Interesting stuff, and good people. I started at the very end of September, just in time for me budget-wise... didn't have to think of selling the house, thank God!

So for next year, we aren't sure where our travels will take us, but we are definitely looking forward to going somewhere!!! Tim was suggesting that my mom and I take the kids back to Disneyland, we just might do that (while he goes fishing, D-land isn't his kind of place... it's the wilderness for him :-)

Travel Planning for summer...

Well, here we are at the end of April already - we're planning a couple of trips at this point, one fishing up at the Feather River, and this summer another trip to the southwest - Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, and possibly Mesa Verde too. I will be sure to put up some pictures once we have gone...

In the meantime, we're just doing the usual daily stuff, working, kids going to school, all the usual.
We haven't had any faires lately - most of our faires are in the late summer and early fall.

Our 2007 travels...

During 2007 we took a couple of trips, the first was over Memorial Day weekend, when we traveled to Nevada to go opal digging. We bought a bucket at the Rainbow Ridge Mine and spent all day digging through the mud looking for opals. We found several good ones, most of the them in the first hour that we were there!


We also hiked to two different caves in the area - the first being Convict Cave, where early in the 20th Century a man who escpaed from prison hid out for several months, living off of the land, until he had too much of just 'survning' and turned himself in. That's the story we have heard from the locals...


The second cave is called the Last Supper Cave - it was used extensively by the local indians in the past, and was completely excavated by a local university archealogical department at one point.



Our Second trip was a trip to the northwest, including Yellowstone park. The kids had a great time camping out and fishing, and seeing all of the spots of interest in Yellowstone. We got to see buffalo, elk, deer, and even a small bear! We spent two weeks fishing in Montana and Wyoming, and just relaxing and enjoying being away from the city and our jobs!!


I will try to get some pics posted soon of our trips...

Our Story

In 2005 I decided to join the St. Andrew’s Guild, a historical re-enactment group that my brother and his family had belonged to for many years. I thought that this would be something fun to do as a family, and allow me to reconnect with my brother. We hadn’t been very close as kids, but seemed to be getting closer as we both got into our 30’s and I had my own children. With a 6 and 7 year old I knew that my kids needed some positive male role models, and I had hoped to find some in the guild. Little did I know just what I would find…

For most of the summer of 2005 I was flying back and forth from the west coast to the east coast for my job. At the time I was working as a consultant implementing TeamTrack Software. I managed to schedule my trips such that we were able to attend most of the faires that year. And at the end of the summer, I met Tim at the Pleasanton Faire in September. We chatted a couple of times at the faire, and looking back now we both had some interest…

Unfortunately, because of my traveling for work I was unable to attend the next two faires, so the next time I saw Tim was at Winter’s Feast in November. I sat with him and we talked for awhile, there was definitely an interest. Unfortunately, neither of us pursued at that moment…

Then, in December, I got a call from Sir Drew, the guild manager, and told me that Tim was trying to get ahold of me – so I called Tim back and we started talking, both by phone and through the computer (email and Instant Messaging).

My Broken Arm

Then, on the night of January 5^th I fell off of a step-ladder and broke my right arm in two places. This sent me to the emergency room and on to the surgery room. I was not a happy camper! During the next two weeks I was on some heavy drugs, and Tim says that we talked a couple of times, but I honestly don’t remember too much about that two weeks! Tim wanted to come down and visit me, but since I wasn’t able to shower at all because of my cast, and being somewhat vain, I didn’t want him to see (or smell!!) me when I was all yucky and drugged out and in pain. So, we weren’t able to go out until the end of January – Saturday the 28^th to be exact.

Our First Date

On our first date, Tim drove ALL THE WAY down to San Jose from Willits (a three hour drive!). We went out to dinner at Red Lobster (still one of our favorite places to eat). We had a wonderful time – we talked the whole time we were there. I still had my right arm in a cast, and the waiter was so cute, he offered to cut my food for me. By this point I had become fairly handy working with my left hand, so didn’t need the help, but it was nice of him to offer.

After dinner we tried to decide what to do, and we decided to just head back to my house (my nephews, Jean Luc and Andre, were spending the night and watching my kids). We ended up, the 4 of us, sitting on the couches watching a movie – one of the Lord of The Rings trilogy. Tim left I think about 10 or a little after, and drove all the way back home, 3 hours. That was an awfully long drive for a first date, but he said (and still does) that it was worth it.

We both had such a great time on our first date, and we could talk about everything – we both ran up some pretty spectacular cell phone minutes during those first months. So we decided to have a second date – again, Tim drove all the way down and we met up in Fremont – Jean Luc and Andre were using the gift certificates that I gave them for Le Mans Karting.

So things had started well, and were continuing well, and by March, Tim was driving down almost every weekend. Those weekends that he didn’t drive down, we were either going to faire or we drove up to Willits.

The Handfasting

The first year, everything went so well! My parents were a little wary, after all Tim has rather long hair and my parents are very old fashioned. But between Tim and I, and the kids, we all got along great! A true family.

In June of 2006, we were at the Campbell Faire and the McCutchen’s had a handfasting ceremony. Both of us got an idea… we already knew that things between us were perfect, we were already thinking about getting married, so we hatched a plan; at the Pittsburg faire in August we wanted to get handfasted. There is some debate about the historical accuracy of handfastings, but we felt that it was a way for us to make a commitment to one another, to pledge ourselves, in front of our friends, to one another. So we talked to Dame Bronwynne, and to Her Majesty, and planned a handfasting for Pittsburg – we told no one else about it! Wow, were they all in for a surprise!

Her Majesty said that it was a couple of her friends that wanted to be handfasted, so nobody knew that it was us, although some said afterwards that they were suspicious. So when Sir Drew asked who comes forth to be handfasted, Tim waited for a dramatic pause, then said “I do!” A gasp rose from the crowd, and some folks went running to get others in the guild who were not in court at the time. It was wonderful! We just loved surprising everyone – although we received a few very good-natured threats afterwards for not letting anyone know about it ahead of time. And then Tim got down on one knee and presented me with my ring! It was so wonderful; everyone was so excited for us, and everyone was looking forward to us making it official.

So then came the discussion about where to get married… Tim asked if I wanted a church wedding or a faire wedding. Since I had already done the big church wedding, and didn’t relish all of the expense of a formal wedding, and since we both love going to Renaissance faires, I said that we should do a wedding at faire. We checked with the guild and faire board about having the wedding at Pittsburg, and everyone said it would be no problem. We thought it would be the perfect way to have all of our friends there to celebrate with us.

The “Faire”ytale Wedding

So, we now had the date, August 11, 2007, and the location, the Pittsburg Renaissance Faire, so then came all of the other details, wedding attire, flowers, and so forth. Everyone came to together to help us, family, friends, and many of the guild members. I was able to get help to sew a wonderful wedding dress; Tim did the full Prince Albert, kilt, vest & jacket, everything. It was a beautiful day, and we had a wonderful time.

We first did an un-handfasting by Lord Mossman, followed by the wedding, Tim’s family pastor was able to perform the wedding ceremony for us, and everyone thought it was all so romantic.

Now here it is January of 2008. We’ve been dating for almost two years, married for almost 5 months, and still the honeymoon is never over!

Initial posting...

Well, isn't a blog the ultimate in ego? Assuming that others want to read your ramblings? I'm just trying this out to see how it works... curiosity.

I wonder if my family and friends would be interested in keeping up on our daily comings and goings with us... or more likely with our monthly comings and goings, I certainly have too much to do to allow me to post daily!!

I will have to figure out if I can post pictures, etc...