Greenfield Village and Shrek 4

This past weekend Brian and I both had Saturday off and we weren't heading to Grand Rapids, so we decided to do something fun (and mostly free!).  We started the day off by stopping at Best Buy to order a new computer battery and buy a headset.  After that quick errand, we went over to Greenfield Village.  The day started off a little dark, but it ended up being a beautiful day!  We walked around the village, saw the sheep, ate lunch, and watched part of the baseball game.  We then headed over to the Museum to see the new Play exhibit, but weren't overly impressed with it.  We then headed to the movie theatre and saw Shrek 4 in 3-D.  It was a great movie!  Here's some pictures of our day.

Plant Update

Well, the plants all went within hours of posting this, so unfortunately there are no more left.  We've got a few other things we'd like to get rid of, so keep your eyes open for more!  :)

Plants for Adoption

I have a hard time throwing away perfectly good plants and their pots, so I've decided to put my plants up for adoption.  Below are pictures of them in their pots.  Let me know if you'd like any of them.  We'll deliver!  First come, first served!

Bikes, Groceries, and Camera

We've gotten a few new things in the past couple of weeks and I'm finally getting around to taking pictures and showing them to you.  We're pretty excited about it all and are looking forward to using them more.

On June 12, while in GR, we bought new bikes for both of us.  We'd been contemplating getting new bikes for our move to Germany and finally made the decision to do so.  I got a Trek bike and Brian got a Gary Fisher bike.  I don't really know a lot about bikes, but they're supposedly nice ones.  These will be our main form of transportation while in Germany, so we wanted to get decent ones.  When we bought the bikes, we also got racks for the back with bags so that I can go grocery shopping with my bike.

Here's our bikes stored in our office.  We wanted to be able to break them in before we move, so we decided to bring them to Belleville with us.  We can fit them both in the car which is quite a feat in and of itself.  The two flights up to our apartment is not the greatest and Brian has to bring them up and down when we use them because they are too heavy for me.  They move constantly while in the office so that I can get at my bookshelf and closet, but it will work for the time being.

This is my bike with my two grocery bags.

Here's Brian modeling his bike.  He has a bag that goes on the top of the rack, but he didn't take that grocery shopping when we took this picture.

On Tuesday, we decided to try out the bike grocery bags we bought and rode our bikes over to Meijer to get our groceries.  Meijer isn't very far away, so the bike ride was not difficult at all.  Unfortunately, we forgot that we had to buy charcoal for our small group picnic this Sunday, so Brian ended up balancing it on his rack the whole way home.  We filled both of the grocery bags almost full and I took those two.  When we got home, we counted up the pounds of food we bought and figured out I had taken 27.5+ pounds of food and Brian had taken an 18 pound bag of charcoal.  We were quite pleased with our accomplishment!

Here's my two bags full of groceries.  I learned you have to be careful when taking them off because the bike falls over once one of the bags is off!

Here's Brian's bike with the bag of charcoal balanced on the rack.  It worked fine, but he did have to go a little slower.  He has plans to make some sort of platform for his rack for the future.

Here's me modeling my bike with the groceries on the back.

The other purchase I made recently was a new camera.  I've wanted a small point and shoot camera that I could just take with me wherever without having to lug our bigger one around.  I got a very generous gift from the staff at the Allen Park Library and my parents for my graduation, so I was able to use that toward the purchase of my camera.  It is a Canon PowerShot SD3500IS Digital ELPH with a complete touch screen on the back.  I'm still getting used to how to use it, but it will come with practice.  It came in the mail on Tuesday, so all the pictures above are taken with my new camera.  We also went and got a hard case for it because we plan to take it backpacking next weekend and wanted to keep it safe.

Here's the new camera and the case.  I was excited that they had a purple case because the camera is just plain black.

We also bought new hiking backpacks in the past few weeks, but I will save pictures of those until I have pictures of our hiking trip.  We are going to the Adirondack Mountains July 1-5 with several friends of ours.

Father's Day 2010

This year we got a bit creative for Father's Day for my dad.  My mom had the idea to get Dad the ladder golf game and we went a little farther with it.  Instead of just buying him one, we decided to make him one because it was about half as much to do.  Brian had a lot of fun making a mess of our living room with PVC dust and then gluing the pieces together on our balcony in between the rain we've been getting.  He also drilled holes through the golf balls and made a pile of multi-colored confetti on our kitchen counter.  I put the golf balls on the strings and tied them together at the right lengths.  We celebrated Father's Day last weekend and gave Dad the game then.  I'm looking forward to playing it with him!  Here's some pictures of some of the steps that took place in our apartment.

Ponstein Get-Together

This past weekend we got together with the Ponstein side of Brian's family.  We had a picnic dinner at Grandpa and Grandma's house and played some games outside.  It was fun to play with the little kids and see everyone again.  Here's some pictures of the festivities.

Brian Diemer Run 2010

This past Saturday, Brian and I ran the Brian Diemer 5K.  My dad walked the race.  It was a hot and humid morning, but we all did very well on the race.  Here's our results:

Brian - 24:04
Beth - 30:58
Dad - 44:59

Dad near the finish.

Dad's almost there!

Brian and I after the race.

Whitecaps Game - Memorial Day 2010

On Monday, we went to a Whitecaps game with my family that was both a Mother's Day and Father's Day gift for my parents.  It had stormed in the morning, but the late morning and early afternoon turned nice and very hot!  The game was at 1:00 and we made it 3 1/2 innings until it started to downpour about 2:00.  We all ended up in the upper concourse by the food to wait out the rain and see if they decided to cancel the game.  We ended up waiting about 1 1/2 hours before they finally decided to cancel the game.  It was raining very hard, hailing, and thundering and lightning quite a bit.  There was a ton of water on the field, but we were impressed with the drains they had in the outfield to take care of it all without ruining the field.  Since enough of the game wasn't finished, we got to turn our tickets in for new ones and now are going again on my birthday, July 23.  Here's some pictures of the game.

Indianapolis - Memorial Day 2010

This past weekend we spent a few days in Indianapolis for my cousin's graduation open house.  We left Saturday morning and got to my Uncle Todd and Aunt Dawn's house shortly after lunch.  In the afternoon we headed to the open house and ate some good food and played some rousing games of Cornhole.  After the open house, we went to get ice cream and played some games (Brian played Nerf Wars with my cousins, Michael and Matthew!).  Sunday we went to church and then my Uncle Steve, Aunt Diane, and cousin Rachel came over for the lunch.  After lunch we headed to GR (see the next post for pictures from there).  Here's a slide show of pictures I took in Indianapolis.  I have a pet vicariously through these relatives, so there are lots of animal pictures.  :)