We're still here!

As usual, it seems we go about 10 months or more between posts. However, that should be changing soon.

Our summer has been great so far and is only looking to get better. We'll be hitting the road this week to drive to Maine to spend some time with Kendra's grandparents. On the way we'll hit St. Joseph, MO to see Tim, Glenda, and Levon and have a fun-tastic 4th of July with the Missouri gang.

In May we drove to New Orleans as part of a group from our church that went down to work with RHINO. RHINO stands for Rebuilding Hope In New Orleans and is an outreach of the St. Charles' Ave Presbyterian Church. During the evening, they feed us and help us to interact with city in ways that you normally wouldn't as a tourist and our days were spent working on houses with Habitat. It was truly a unique experience, as we came to understand New Orleans as so much more than Bourbon Street. That's were the tourists go but it is not the true New Orleans. Judging the city by Bourbon Street is like judging the entire state of Wyoming by Jackson Hole. Yes, it's part of the state, but it's much different from the rest.

Hope you're all having as great of a summer as we are! Keep watching for pics from our upcoming adventure.

Medicine Bow Peak...all 12013 feet of it!

This morning Kendra and I woke up way too early for a Saturday and hiked up Medicine Bow Peak, just west of Centennial a little ways and about 45 miles from Laramie. Side note: Medicine Bow Peak rises 12013 feet above sea level and is the highest summit in the Snowys. We started our hike from the Lewis Lake trailhead and came up the south side of the peak. Next time we go out we'll probably start at the Lake Marie trailhead and come up from the west.

The hike was only about 4 miles roundtrip and took just over a couple of hours. It was a very nice way to spend a Saturday morning. If you're looking for some good hiking there is a lot in that area. The Sheep Lake trail, which we backpacked on last weekend, offers some great trails, too. For our anniversary we started at Brooklyn Lake and went 8 miles up to Sand Lake and 8 more back the next day.

Lastly, check out the Taj Mahal in Ft. Collins. We ate there last night and it was great. The chicken curry is delicious!

Yes...we are still alive!

Well, it has been extremely too long since Karl or I have been on here to post a new blog! So lets see if I can remember what all we have been up to since our last post....Halloween 2008...eek! Here goes nothing.

November 2008 -
I went to Boston for the Green Build Conference with a school group. It was a blast! We saw a lot of neat sites and learned a lot about Green Builing at the conference (we also visited the Cheers bar).

Karl and I went to Arvada, CO to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with the Heimbucks. Dinner was great, but even better was the midnight shopping trip on the night of Thanksgiving. Gail, Marcy, Kelly (Marcy's cousin), Karl and I went on about a 6 hour shopping spree from midnight to six in the morning. We all survived, but I think we almost lost Karl.

December 2008 -
Karl and I finished yet another semester at UW and then spent the majority of Christmas break in Colorado visiting our wonderful families. We spent Christmas with the Hamels....one of the craziest Christmases yet with the Hamels I think! Mom and Jess were up wrapping presents until after two in the morning (all of this taking place in the living room where everyone was having a sleep over...makes it difficult to sleep!) and Karl and Ryan were wondering what in the world was going on...this is not how Christmas Eve is supposed to work.

January & February 2009 -
Thinking back on January and February, I can not recall anything tremendously interesting that went on...just school, work, and church things.

March 2009 -
Karl and I split up for spring break. He went on tour all over Wyoming with the Happy Jacks (the UW mens' a'capella group), and I went to California with Erica and Collette to see Jess. We both had a lot of fun doing our separate things (I think going to Hollywood and Disneyland with my sisters wins over driving in a van all over WY with a bunch of stinky boys!), but we were happy to be back together after a long week apart.

April 2009 -
We went to Guernsey for Easter this year. Karl, James, Curt, and Dad all played music together at church...a great tradition for the Heimbuck men! We also started a new tradition this year, the Guernsey Disc-o-rama (I believe that is what we called it). We had a family disc golf tournament at the new disc golf course that Dad has been working very hard on. The results: Kendra & James tied with Shelby & Dad for last, Curt & Marcy second, and Karl & Mom first.

May 2009 -
Another semester was wrapped up at UW. I walked in the graduation ceremony on May 9...I haven't quite finished my degree though. I still have to finish one more class before I am completely finished.

Karl and I went to Italy and England for a Shakespeare class. We had a blast! We spent a week in Italy (Verona, Vicenza, Milan, and Venice) taking in all of the historical and beautiful sites and architecture. Then we went to London and Straford-upon-Avon for 12 days. In those 12 days, we explored all of London's wonderful sites, went to Warwick Castle, saw seven Shakespeare plays, saw Wicked, and went to a London Philharmonic concert. We took in a lot of culture during our trip....it was amazing!

June 2009 -
After returning home from our Europe trip, Karl and I had to return to the regular daily grind. I am working for the Real Estate Office again this summer, and Karl has a research grant continuing the research that he was doing last summer. Our weekends are all very busy for the summer, filled with numerous weddings and visits to see family. During June we traveled to Newcastle for a wedding that Karl's band played for, and we went to Green River with Erica and Ryan for Flaming Gorge Days.

July 2009 -
We went to Erie/Aurora, CO for the 4th of July and spent a lot of great time with our family. We went hiking with Mom and Dad in the morning and caught a Rockies game in the evening on the 3rd; the hike was beautiful and the game was great...the Rockies won, and we saw fireworks. On the 4th, Karl and I went shopping and bought camping equipment (backpacks, a tent, and water filter) and then went to Erica's for a bbq.

Just this past weekend, we went to Custer, SD for another wedding. We had a ton of fun this weekend! We got to camp out for two nights and use our new tent. Also, the wedding we went to was beautiful, and Karl's band rocked the reception! It was a blast dancing to their music!

Well, I think that I hit the major points of what we have been up to since our last post. Hopefully, we will be better about posting in the future! Just going back through the past 8 months, I have realized just how lucky and blessed Karl and I are. We have such wonderful family and friends and have shared such special times together. We love you all!

Halloween

On the last post we put up a picture of the awesome pumpkins we carved a couple of weeks ago. Now that Halloween has actually come and gone, we have a picture of us in our costumes. You might be asking yourself, is Karl actually dressed up as anything? He looks that nerdy all the time, and what did Kendra do besides wear old lady clothes and put a grumpy look on her face? The explanation to those questions, we dressed up as Dwight and Angela from the Office.

We thought the costumes were funny and it was a lot of fun to have somewhat matching costumes. Now that Halloween is over, though, Karl will just have to put on some smaller glasses and Kendra put on her new clothes and always cheerful face!

First Post!

Hi everyone! Karl & I thought that we would start up this blog so that everyone can keep in touch with what we are up to.


So, what have we been up to since the wedding? Let's start from the beginning of Karl and Kendra. Right after the wedding, we went to Seattle to start our honeymoon. We had a blast in Seattle. We caught all of the tourist sites...the Space Needle, the Crab Pot, the Experience Music Project, Pike's Place Market, and of course all of the awesome city skyscrapers.

After spending a couple of days in Seattle, we set sail to Alaska on a 7 day cruise. The highlights of the cruise were definitely the amazing site seeing, hiking to the Mendenhall Glacier, and the awesome food! We had such a great time on the cruise. We stopped in Juneau, Skagway, and Prince Rupert, Canada.


















After we got back from our honeymoon, we jumped right back into real life. We got back to Laramie the Saturday before classes started and had just enough time to get our apartment cleaned up from all of the wedding gifts in order to start the semester.
We are well into the Fall semester now and are extremely busy! Karl is busy with his singing, research, and teaching a section of College Algebra. He is really enjoying teaching. Kendra is taking her Senior Design course this semester, which is a remodel of the Engineering Building...she is really enjoying working on the project!




We have been watching all of the Cowboy Football games this year...but have been pretty disappointed! We still have fun going to the games though. For homecoming, we bought matching sweatshirts to wear to the game.





Last night we carved pumpkins at C-4. Karl carved a pirate ship, and Kendra carved Garfield. We think that we might go into the professional carving business after we graduate!