Secret torch for Torch

Hello everyone!

In going through our pictures, we realized that we had quite a few that we loved from Torch Lake. For those of you who aren't familiar, the Giddings family (my mom's parents) own a cottage on Torch lake, which is shared between three or four of the siblings. My grandfather is involved, and I have been going up there since I was a baby. If you asked me where my favorite place in the world is, I would say Torch Lake. Its been a joy to share this with both Nate and now Graham, and hopefully the Bell aunts and uncles next year.

On the way up, we had to drop off a deaf Australian Cattle Dog to a rescue in Lansing - we just happened to have a deaf ACD and the rescue just happened to be on our way, so we loaded him up. We were worried that Graham might mind sharing his seat with a dog, but he seems not to have minded too much!

When we arrived, there were many things to do! Nate and I try to make this our one true vacation each year, where we sleep in, sit around and do basically nothing. Since we were showing the place to Graham, and we had two fewer days that normal due to the wedding, we packed things in a little more tightly than normal.

This is a picture of the cottage, which while we were there housed seven people. Next to it is the 'small cottage,' which also gets rented while we are there. The first part of our trip, we had John and Judy (John is my grandpa's brother), their daughter Angela, her husband and their new baby. Thats quite a few for that little building! The second half of the time, Richard and Kay Gowman and their daughter Melissa.
One of our big activities was wine tasting, which surprised me by being a lot of fun. We got up early and went out, stopping at two wineries on our way in. The wine tour that we were on was on the Leelenau Peninsula, which is up the middle of Grand Traverse Bay in northwest Michigan. For lunch, we stopped at a place that used to be called the Bowery and used to be haunted... now its called the Jolly Pumpkin and looks a lot less ghostly. We did read up on the ghost story while we were there though. After, we went to a nearby lighthouse, at the very top of the peninsula. We had taken two cars, so the 'kids' went home from here: Nate and I, and Anna. It was a very fun day!Now that we're home and the school year has begun, Nate and I are keeping pretty busy with friends and activities. I've signed up for a quilting class - the lady who signed me up said that by this time next month I will either be a quilting addict or I will never want to see fabric again. Nate is hard at work on his game, which has its own highs and lows. We seem to be getting a little it of a cold. We would love to hear how your lives are going! Always feel free to call, write, text or anything! Love to you all!

A Long Overdue Look at the Bedroom

As many of you know, HELP the Animals (the no-kill shelter where I work) gathered together and prepared a room makeover while we were on our honeymoon. Mel, our close friend who picked us up from the airport and orchestrated the whole thing was on hand to see our reactions but unfortunately didn't video tape them.

Thank you so much to everyone who was involved: Anna, Brad, Corey, Ben, Cathy, Mel, all of whom worked like dogs while we were gone.

If You Build It, They Will Come

About a month before the wedding Justine proposed a new project to me: build a kitten house that includes room for kittens, mothers, food, water, litter, allows easy access for cleaning, and has a spot to run a heating pad's chord out. It should also be small enough to carry through a door into the house.

After a bit of sketching, I came up with a general design, then fired up Google's free CAD program, Google SketchUp. Since I was working with just right angles, it was an easy model to build on the computer. Below are a few shots of the 3D model I drew up:

As you can see, I designed two large doors, one on each side, and two flaps on the other sides to insert the litter box or food and water. I also put in a lockable cat door on one of the larger doors so we can easily insert the kittens/cats without releasing the ones already inside. There's also a series of steps up to the litter pan that should make it easier for small kittens to use.

SketchUp allows you to take measurements of your model, so I was able to draw up a list of materials, and how much of each I would need. A couple weeks before the wedding Justine and I went out and rounded up the supplies. I got a good start on the project that day and ended up with most of the bottom layer done as well as the doors. As you might imagine, finishing this project soon fell to the bottom of our todo list, and though I've done a bit here and there I haven't put in the time to give it the final push.

Yesterday afternoon I finished putting the frame together and reinforcing it then began cutting the wire covering. When Justine got home from work at the shelter, she helped me nail the wire to the structure. Once that was done we carried it inside, vaccuumed it, and inserted cats. All in all I think it turned out well, and was a really fun project to work on, from start to finish. I got a lot of good use out of my new circular saw (thanks again to Lynne and Brian) and once again my trusty power drill took all the abuse I put it through with flying colors. Below are some shots of the completed project (including the new inhabitants):

Honeymoon with company? (Part II)

After a while doing nothing in the condo, Nate and I started getting excited about doing some sight-seeing. Fortunately, Caro and her family were members virtually everywhere. First, we met up in Monterey, and we got to check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium. There were so many great exhibits! We got to watch the Otters being fed, and there were so many wings of different types of fish and mammals. Below are a few pictures from the Aquarium.

The second activity that we did together was going to Carmel-by-the-Sea, about one hour away from SeaScape. I told Nate that one of the only things that I really wanted to do while we were on the coast was to go tide pooling, which we hadn't gotten a chance to do last time we were in CA. There was a beautiful white sand beach with tide pools nearby in Carmel, so we spent the afternoon there (without any sunscreen). Below are a few more pictures of that afternoon.

After another day or two we said goodbye to our home away from home and headed back towards San Francisco.

Hey Honey, where's the moon?

After ten day of relaxation, Nate and I wandered back to Indiana and realized that for ten solid days (and many partial too-busy-with-the-wedding days before that), the world did continue on without us. For Nate that meant catching up on emails, fixing bugs, and getting back into work at a rapid pace (calling any of my paces rapid might be a stretch -Nate). For me, many phone calls. We picked up many new cat colonies while I was away, and there were surgery days to be had, so we both suddenly became very busy. We did miss our lives in Indiana while we were away, so this wasn't an unpleasant re-entry, but we have put off writing about our lives for longer than we should have.

The honeymoon, to me, came in four very distinct parts, and these parts may have to be split up for two reasons. The first is just time; I am currently in DC with Aunt Joan and Kyla, and time only permits small postings. Secondly, the beauty of a weblog is to get things in smaller bites and have time to digest them before reading the next posting, to avoid getting internet fat. Watch those e-calories, people! I do promise to get everything up in a timely fashion, as well as some of the exciting details of post-honeymoonal life.



We flew into SFO late in the evening and stayed overnight with my girlfriend Caroline in her home in Piedmont (near San Fan, near Oakland). Nate, Caro and I are pictured above; many of you likely met her at the wedding. Caroline's parents were the ones who so generously donated the beach condo for us to stay in. We got into SFO at around 1 am, took time to rent a car, and fell into sleep as soon as we found a bed. The next day we had a late morning, got packed again and drove to the beach condo.

The place we stayed is called SeaScape, and it is located in Aptos, CA, very close to Santa Cruz. Below is the view from our condo.



For the first five days or so, Nate and I did, literally, nothing. What a change from having to wake every morning with the stress of the wedding, knowing how many things still needed to be done! We were so happy to just relax. We found a place that rented DVD's nearby and shared all of our favorite movies. One afternoon we took what must have been a three hour walk along the beach. I am not quite sure of the time because I have no concept of when we left or returned, just that we walked for a very very long way down the beach and then back.

The condo itself was wonderful. Below is the view from the sliding door. There is a kitchen, wonderful little table for eating and great space for just lazing about. Two bedrooms with wonderfully fluffy beds, and our bedroom opened onto another little patio so that we could see outside. Both closets had complimentary robes to use. Two adorable bathrooms, and even a washer and drier! Everything we needed, exactly the right amount of space for a newly-wed couple, and room service. Life was perfect.



Also, to make matters even better, when we arrived we found this, gift from Caroline's parents. Also included in the gift was a bottle of champaign and a ticket for a free breakfast in bed. What a wonderful time!



More to come as time permits!

No One Expects The...

Quick update to let you know about a dinner time surprise. While eating, and working on table placements for the reception, we noticed Juno was scratching in random places in the house. Shortly there after it looked like Juno was vigorously cleaning her underside, but then Justine noticed she was actually cleaning her new born puppy! Justine helped her cut and tie off the umbilical cord and birth her second puppy. Both the mother and puppies are in good health and are resting safely away from the other animals.

Okay, now make that three puppies!

So this was completely unexpected, in fact, we took Juno, who is 9, to the vet and he found a spay scar on her. We're wondering now if it was a C-Section scar, but perhaps not since the birthing went so smoothly. In retrospect, we realize the scratching she's been doing was nesting behavior. We also noticed she had been putting on some weight (but not nearly enough to look like she had three puppies) and figured she had been eating too much. We've also been having problems housebreaking her; I guess we know why! In hindsight There are a lot of clues we missed, but after getting the okay from the vet, pregnancy wasn't even something we fathomed.

We haven't had Juno for the entire gestation period, so we're pretty sure the father is a Papillon named Bandit from her previous home. Here are some pictures of the mother and her new progeny:

Evening in Bellworld

Hello everyone!

We just sat down and realized that we were overdue on a post here! Things have been very busy for a while now, especially in the evenings and weekends when we get a chance to work on projects. However, we've had some exciting events happen recently and we want to share everything with you!

We received two very important titles in the last few days. Last Wednesday, Hannah passed her Canine Good Citizen's test at Springwood park here in town. We were very excited, and Hannah got a hamburger, so she was excited too. We also have a team of my volunteers training dogs, and one of the girls made it through with her train-ee with 7/10, which was a great first try for the shelter dog. We were both very proud.

The other exciting news that that one of the dogs from the shelter and I passed our test to be a therapy dog team! Hannah is way too excited to be a therapy dog, and Rufus doesn't listen well enough, but Wagner and I passed the test using only hand signals yesterday. We still have some paperwork to do, but will be beginning to visit hospitals and such very soon! We're hoping that by working with our local team, we can get a new people into therapy dog training and find a wonderful home for such a wonderful dog. You can see pictures of him here.

Nate's been plugging away on the website, which is now up and running. Highlights include online applications that users can fill out, stat tracking, a lost and found page he programmed, and a header on each page that displays random images when you load the page. Go to www.helptheanimalsinc.com and take a look! He's been working very hard, and we're all very proud of him. We presented all of the information about the website at the HELP board meeting last Monday, to cheers! I think it looks great, but he says he has a list of tweaks he'd like to make. His other project lately has been working on the bathroom, putting up drywall, repairing the old plaster, and building a wooden frame as pictured here.



If anyone has any interest, Nate and I have a cat that we are trying to place. We have spent weeks getting Ying (pictured below) healthy, and now that she is, we want to keep her out of the high-stress, high-bacteria environment of the shelter. She is very loving, sleeps by our heads every night, and is talkative! If anyone you know has room for this loving girl, would would appreciate it. We have to take a cat who's throat closes when she gets stressed and needs injections.



I am headed to Chicago Monday through Thursday of next week, and am very excited about that. I have some cousins there, and it should be fun to visit them. I'm chaperoning a trip for our church(meeting), so there will be high-schoolers with me. I feel a little strange about being responsible for them, but we'll see how it goes. Ahh!

Peaches has finally gone to a new home, which leave us with a bitter sweet feeling. It took four adoptions for her to actually go, and the house feels emptier now that she's gone. It will be very strange when we go to bed tonight, to not have her cuddling down with us. She did really like the lady that she went with, and I just talked to her at home and she said Peaches is settling in nicely, so we're hoping that all goes well. We just got a new one, named Juno, also pictured below.







Last night we saw Rockapella in concert here in Richmond, and it was a great show! Nate knew them from an old PBS show he used to watch called "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" and I knew them from their amazing a cappella. If you get a chance to see them, we highly recommend it!

We got to test our wedding cakes this weekend, and you all will love them! We're doing white-lemon-berry and chocolate raspberry. Yum yum!

Love to you all!

The land of vegan cupcakes

An update from the Bell-Kahler household is overdue! The main reason for this is that I've been very bad at putting new batteries in the camera, and I hate doing blog updates without good pictures. This, however, will be the post of links, because there are a lot of things happening online that we're excited about.

First, the cheerleading team had a reporter come and spend some time with us just after the beginning of the semester. The woman was very nice, and she came to a few of our practices and a game. I'm not sure why the sudden interest in cheerleading (possibly they were discussing the teams futile record), but the result was this:

http://pressroom.earlham.edu/articles/2009/02/good-cheer-team-support-just-shout-away

We're just a class C college cheer team, but its nice to get a little recognition and to be able to show off a bit.

Our house has fluctuated a little. We had a shepherd/shiba names Cooper for a few weeks with a broken leg, who just went back. He and Peachers are best friends, and we got a little video of them playing together which was adorable:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBkFSq9oX1g

Then we took a beautiful black lab lady named Myrna, to teach her some manners. She's very good in the house, but wary with new people, so I try and take her out with me as much as possible. We also disappeared a miniature schnauzer this morning, and he's very sweet. Will post pictures of them soon, as soon as I find fresh batteries.

Nate has been hard at work on a website for the animal shelter (I've infected him with the animal bug!). We're trying to get as much done before this weekend as we can. We're enjoying the work, Nate likes to teach me his html tricks, and we're laughing and teasing each other a lot.

The title refers to the many cupcakes that are sitting on our counter, which are all 100% vegan (no animal products!). The group that is raising money for HELP tomorrow is an animal advocates group, and they can't support the use of any animal products... they made me watch a video of how they treat egg-laying chickens and I'm considering building a coop so that we can have our own eggs here. We both know that vegetarian and vegan is more sustainable, but haven't been able to make the switch over yet. We can't seem to find a vegetarian dish that tastes as good as some of our favorite meat ones do. As an additional thought (and yes, I see the irony here), I don't think I could give up eating shrimp.

Thats all folks! Hope all is well in your respective necks of the woods.

Snowed In

Hello family and friends!

Sorry for not being up on writing! We got back, school started, and things got very busy! Today is a snow day for me, as pictured below. Unfortunately, Nate had to go to work. Indiana does this thing about driving on snowy days, and a level 3 emergency would have made driving today illegal, but we had only a level 2 which means that people are allowed to drive to work. Fortunately, my only class today was physics, and the professor comes from a very long way away.

A review of the last few weeks;

Nate and I drove 13 hours from Virginia to Michigan before New Years, and spent the holiday with my grandparents and parents. At midnight, three generations of couples exchanged kisses and drank champagne. Everyone had a really wonderful time.



A few days later, almost every female that was important to me in my younger years gathered to wish Nate and I well at a bridal shower. Nate made a brief entrance to pick up my five-year-old male cousin who came with his sisters. Interestingly, the cousin, Grant, thought that they were traveling to our wedding that day, and that he was missing it. He spent all day hanging out with Nate and Dad, and I’m not sure what he thinks now. The women had a wonderful time, and I was honored that so many people came out to wish us well. We got 5 sets of sheets, three for the guest bedroom and two for our bed (read: we have a nice guest room! Come visit!). There were many cookbooks, which we're trying to use. My grandparents gave us a clock that they had made, which we love very much. What an amazing day! A few pictures are attached. Some of the amazing women I know Getting advice from my sister
The clock
Myself and Kate, who won the first game!

As soon as we got home, Becca and Mike Bubb arrived! They stayed for a few days and we did many things that we had done when they lived in town. We ate at El Rodeo, they helped us cook a few nights, and we played more board games in three nights than we had since they left. Becca and I spent a morning at a bead shoppe and made some awesome jewelry, which we are wearing in this photo!

In other news, classes are going fine, and we have a potential adoptive family for Peaches in PA that we really are excited about! We've started trying to look through each recipe book for new recipes to make, and making unique shopping lists every few weeks. In this way we've found a few things that we're really excited about, and many things that we will probably never make again. Some interesting experiments. And, now that this long post is out of the way, hopefully we’ll be going back to doing 1-a-week shorter posts that I can get done faster and more often. Love to you all!

A New Update For The New Year

Hello loyal readers!

Our last few weeks have seen a lot of traveling, but a lot of fun. We spent the week before traveling working on the Christmas letter for the Bell family, and splitting up audio of Nate’s grandfather Colin Bell. We barely had time for anything else! Then when those were finished, we had about 12 hours to pack up and get on our way! After getting everything ready, we left one weeks worth of food for the cats and left from Nate’s work at 4 pm on the 23rd. We drove all evening, and arrived at Holly Hills at around 2 am.

Spending time in VA is always exciting. Our first day, we went out to get the Christmas tree and decorated the house for the holidays. We enjoyed many long walks with our dogs, especially Hannah, Rufus and Merlin, an Australian Shepherd that was found in Richmond and was in our care. On the topic of dogs, Joan and Alister came to the farm a few days later and bonded again with our rescue papillon, Cricket, and took him home just after Christmas. All reports are that he is doing incredibly well, and we’re so happy he’s in a wonderful, low-stress environment.
Christmas brought warm times with family.

We spent the morning and early afternoon with Molly, Laurel and Carlos in Charlottesville, then reconvened in Palmyra at the dog park for a nice walk to the Rivanna River. We got a great picture of Birdaloo, Carlos and Laurel’s dog. Later that day, we returned to Holly Hills and had a tasty dinner with Tom, Jennifer, Joan, Alister Graham, Laurel, Carlos and the two of us. We spent all day giving and receiving presents as well as laughing and smiling.

On Saturday, we went to The Flaming Wok with the entire family and Jesse Drummond and friend for a bridal shower of sorts. Conversations were animated and covered a variety of topics, from gardening, to triangles, to the next day’s hunt. The food was flavorful and the chef entertaining. The family gifted us with a very important work of art pertaining to Nate’s grandmother Elaine who passed this fall.

Sunday we got to go visit a neighboring farm of Holly Hills to see the beginning of a hunt that Tom was involved in. We learned all about the tradition of the fox hunt, and marveled at the hounds and horses. Tom leads the ‘third flight,’ which is the younger kids. Tom’s definitely the one that I would trust with the youngsters.

Monday we drove 9 hours to Indiana, spend an hour working out things at home and picked up a dog to take to Michigan, and then drove the 4 hours to Michigan. We arrived at about 9:30 in the evening and fell asleep very early! The next day a family came to pick up the extra dog that we brought (another adoption for HELP the Animals!), and we spent the day relaxing and shopping. We did Christmas on New Years both at home and at Grandma and Grandpa Giddings, and brought in the New Year together. At midnight, there were three kisses from three different generations: our grandparents, parents and us. In a time when we’ve been thinking so much about family ties, it was great to be able to share this time together.
We will be returning home on the 4th and are looking forward to a visit from some close friends (Mike and Becca from Philadelphia!). We wish everyone a safe and happy 2009!


(Here are some pictures from our journeys)

Christmas Lunch at Molly's House


Christmas Dinner with the Bell Family


Family Shot Outside The Flaming Wok


Laurel and Carlos' Birdaloo Being Cute


Tom Before the Big Hunt


Three Generations Enjoying the New Year