Wedding photos

Brad and Sara's Wedding







The happy couple
Sara- my cousin
Brad- my good friend
I went to australia with both of them. we bonded.









Here is a pic of me pushing my way to my third garter of the summer, you can see the look of determination on my face.

















And this photo is me with my trophy around my arm........ and some other people too



Jerad and Kerrie's Wedding








Here you can see a very handsome best man towering over his maid of honor counterpart at jerads wedding.











This is a shot of the greatest swing dance duo in the history of time. (actually the guy on the left, is really carrying the duo, his swing dancing abilities are unparalleled!)

Weekend in review

Craiger:
Whew, its been a while. much has happened lately, My friend jerad came back last week cuz he got married, it was awesome to see him again. I was the best man in his wedding, so I had a lot of stuff to take care of last weekend. First of all, I was in charge of the bachelor party. This was a big deal, honestly i worried about it alot, cuz i wanted everyone to have a good time, but i dont think they did....they had a GREAT time. we (me and jerad and the other guys in his wedding) went to chicago on a thursday. first we went out to eat at dicks last resort, its a restaurant where the waiters treat you like dirt and call you names and throw stuff at you. but when we got there, there was some huge man in camoflage telling us that the place was reserved for a private party for Navy Seals. but somehow we ended up getting in there and once inside we received free beer and an amazing free buffet meal. we ate and drank like $40 worth of food and beer. we mozied on over to whirlyball, this is an awesome sport which is a combination of lacrosse, polo, basketball, and bumper cars if you can imagine that. then we wandered around lakeview area until we miraculously stumbled upon a diamond in the rough.....the one and only country bar in all of chicago. so we set up camp there. also, carolyn and jen met up with us there, and joined us as we drank, danced, and sang our lungs out all night long. i felt a little bad, cuz jerad has a habit of knocking beers out of everyones hands when he is drunk on purpose. every other song there was some guy out there with a mop to clean up after us. the good news is that if there had been a wet Tshirt contest, i totally wouldve won. ANyways, that night was really awesome, it turned out perfectly.
So friday, the next night, we had rehearsal dinner, that was great. then went swimming in a hotel, and hung out for a while. then saturday was the wedding. Seriously, i was more worried than jerad, the groom. i had butterflies all day. i had to give him the rings, and i pretended like i lost em, and i was nervous that it wouldlook stupid, but it went over well. then i had a speech to give at the reception, and i almost threw up i was so nervous. i wrote a good speech, but was terrified i would screw it up. but i pereservered and made itthrough it, and it went awesome. plus i got lots of complements on it later, but they were probably out of pity. after i finally shed my speech anxiety i was ready to relax, catch my fourth garter and enjoy some dancing. only one problem. NO Freaking Garter!!!! you are probably dissapointed in me for not catching it, but you are sadly mistaken, because they didnt even throw one, so i had no chance of catching it, so at least i am still 100%. anyways, i took out my aggresion on the dance floor, if there was a rug on the dance floor, i definitely would have cut it. The nice thing about being the best man is that people actually think you are better than every other man there, just because it says so in the program, because i was asked to dance far more frequently than usual. anyways, the wedding was great, and i had alot of fun, even without a garter grab.
in other news, my dad just spontaneously had the urge to buy a whole case of Leinenkeugels sunset wheat beer (aka fruity pebbles beer) i never even told him how awesome it was, he just got it one day, and i was freaking pumped. this beer tastes exactly like the cereal fruity pebbles. and i know what i must do now, i must purchase some fruity pebbles, and pour this beer over it, and eat it and enjoy it. so i will tell you all how that turns out.
also, i will try and post some wedding photos later. i think i have gotten pretty good at weddings, and the news has spread, cuz my cousin asked me to be an usher in his wedding next year, and today matt olsen called and asked me to be one of his groomsmen!!! i am really excited, cuz marcel is gonna be one too. its gonna be awesome, and fun, and it is really a big honor.

Believe the unbelievable

Craiger says,
Thats right, it happened. I caught the garter again. this is 3 garters in 3 weddings in 1 summer. thats 100% accuracy. and this one was the most difficult of all, there were like 50 guys there competing, elbowing, jabbing, kicking, and fighting for this particular garter, and i emerged the victor. And i am already being hounded by women, for instance the girl who caught the bouqet, she and i had to pose for a picture with our trophies in hand, and she took the liberty of locking arms with me. That is like 2nd base!.....in a game with a thousand bases. aaand not only that, but later during the dance during the ladies choice song, the maid of honor requested i dance with her, which i gladly accepted, how can you turn down someone if you know for a fact that she is the most honorable maid in the entire room?? but dont worry i am keeping my options open, if i let those girls have there way i would only have one garter left, but i am saving up these three garters, maybe in case i meet that one special person....and she has two identical twin sisters.
i was gonna post pictures, but i think they were deleted from my camera, so i will try and get someone elses photos from the wedding, or more likely just make some paints and post those.

also i think everyone can post now, even those without blogs. thanks for catching that mark.

grilling hissy fit

Craig says:
I am all worked up about that G. damn firesafety email i recently received from dordt college. It says that we are not allowed to have our own gas grills outside, becasue they are a fire hazard. like what the H am i gonna start on fire outside besides propane and possibly a hot dog. Dordt is going to provide all of east campus with two gas grills for wveryone to use. i use at least one grill every day for atleast 2 hours everyday and if i have to wait in line to use that grill i will be madder than a goose in a snowstorm. do they really think that the grills are no longer a fire hazard if they are owned by dordt instead of me? how does ownership constitute fire safety? and the dordt ones will be more likely to explode, cuz if you dont own it you will likely beat the crap out of it and make it faulty and dangerous, but if you own your own grill you take care of it and love it and make sure it is always safe from fire danger. anyways i think my coblogger jason will be posting a paint about our disdain for this retched grilling sitiation that we are in, i am sure it will be a treat. but i digress.
one more note on my trip to chicago last weekend. two seperate people at seperate locations at seperate times in seperate scenarios asked me for seperate directions to seperate places and i gave them the CORRECT seperate directions and they were correct. i no longer feel like an out-of-towner, i am officially a proverbial in-of-towner. but enough of the past, lets look to the future. the future craig?. yes the future, all the way to the next two days. "in the next two daaaayaays (falsetto voice)"....... sorry if none of that made sense, it was a little tribute to conan obriens year 2000 sketch. anyways in the next two days i have a prewedding party to attend, and then a wedding, and a postwedding party aka reception. i look forward to all these events. this is my big moment to catch my third garter of the year. wish me luck.

I should have worn a facemask

Last night we had another hockey game and we got shelled 10-1 or something like that. I was playing defense, which is how we kept them from beating us by a lot. The thing that really angered me up, though, was that the referee would not let me play without a chinstrap on my helmet. My helmet is so tight that I leave every game with a migraine, and I swear I have dent marks in the shape of helmet pads all around my skull for the next 6-8 hours. So the point of having a chinstrap is something akin to having a piece of paper handy to hang out your car window in case the brakes fail and you need to slow down before plummeting off a cliff to your imminent death. Ok there's probably a better analogy but I can't think of one. So anyways, I had to get a helmet with a chinstrap, so this guy lends me his helmet, and I wear it, but it has no facemask! Which means my beautiful face could have gotten hit by a puck at a bazillion miles an hour just so that I could have a chinstrap under my neck to keep my helmet from rolling off my dead carcass lying in a bloody mess on the ice, hopefully in the onside position.



In other news, hopefully I will get to go out for tea at my friend's house tonight, he says he makes good tea. Otherwise I will probably go for a bike ride down my usual route, which means I grab an apple, hop on the fold up bike, and bike North to Donwood, then turn left and finish my apple in time to throw it down a drainpipe on the side of the road, but I usually miss and it just stays on the side of the road, and then I am just in time to grab a crabapple from my favourite apple tree that hangs over the sidewalk. There is sometimes a dog in that yard that gets mad that I eat his crabapples, and chases me along as I ride past his fence. I don't feel too bad, because I think he is just selfish and hoarding all of the crabs for himself because there are a ton of them rotting on the ground anyways inside his fence. I have a hunch that he does not even like crabapples at all. But that might be going a bit too far, so I won't let it become anything more than a hunch until I have solid evidence. After that I keep biking and turn right on Rothesay, which is sometimes a cruise night for punks who always like to yell at me as I ride my foldup bike, but I don't care what they say because I like my bike and it does not burn gas. Also it folds up in half for easy storage, which is why I call it the foldup bike. The other day I was on a bike ride with my dad, and he (lucky blighter) got to ride the foldup bike while I road a supercycle. We biked past a family, and the mom stopped my dad and asked him where he got the bike, because she just absolutely loves fold up bikes. She also had a cute daughter with her, but I played it cool and didn't make conversation. Both our parents like foldup bikes, though, so we will probably hook up sometime soon, I am thinking. So anyways, these punks yell at my bike, but I am sure that they are actually jealous deep down inside because most of the time they have to cram like 5 guys into a little civic and compliment their friend on how loud his subs are, even though they can't hear them because their eardrums blew out a few years earlier. I keep biking for a ways North, and then I may turn right on Foxdale and visit a few friends who live in that area, but I think for the most part I just annoy them because they do not have a warning that I am coming and need to get ready for a visitor because they are all girls. I think in a few years time they will appreciate me and wish I kept coming by, if I am not anymore at that time, but I may be, in which case they will probably not have quite appreciated my visits yet but someday they will. So anyways, that area is all populated by friends who are girls, so I do not always prefer to turn right there, but rather keep heading North on Rothesay and go the extra mile to my friend Bryan's house, which is usually kind of pointless because he is either working night shifts or sleeping after working all day, so I probably just bother him too. But, like the girls, one day he will appreciate my visits, I think, and I also like to pet his cat if it is there and hear his doorbell because it can play different tunes. Right now it goes: doooo - doooo - doooo - dooooo........ dooooo - dooooo - doooo - dooooo. I'll keep you updated if it changes.

Craig says:
hey. have you ever done something super fun and then looked back upon that moment later and say to yourself, "hey, that was super fun". Thats wwhat this weekend was like, i am looking back upon it now and saying to myself "hey, that was super fun". but i think i made a dumb decision by not going to lollapalooza at all. i didnt get myself stoked up for it the week before, so i think that is why i wasnt so excited about going. I really wish i could have seen ryan adams, and iron &wine, and the shins, and the chili peppers, and wilco, and like 30 other bands, but i htink isaid that wrong, cuz i could have seen them, but i decided not to. i think i subconzciously fear spending money and having fun.
anyways, the weekend really was great. i saw carolyn and tricia and jen and my sister alot, and it was so much fun ahnging out with them. tricia and jen are really cool, i am thinkking about asking them to be my friends.
friday i got to see dan de jong and cody ellens, and as if that werent spectacular enough, we even went to a cubs game together. the cubs were up to there usual antics, i.e. being terrible, but even tho they sucked, i loved it. I love the spirit there, its so fun. then we walked like 16 blocks to my sisters apartment and it turned out she wasnt eventhere, so we were locked out. i felt like an idiot.
saturday i saw dena and katie. it was fun, even tho dena fell asleep within 3 minutes of my arrival. but she needs her sleep. i was really happy i got to see her before she left, cuz i have no idea when i will ever see her again. that is a weird thing to think about, what if i never see her again. i hope i do.
well thats about all i did.
oh yeah, i also saw a real live snake. that was sssssssweet.

He should have worn a face mask

On Wednesday we had another hockey game, and, as usual, we lost, but this time only by 4. If the trend continues, we should tie our next one, because we've gained 4 goals on our opponents each time (0-12, 0-8, 3-7). For some reason I have this hunch that it won't happen, though, because our team really sucks. But anyways, the best part of the game came 4 minutes before the end of the 3rd period when yours truly got kicked off the ice! That's right, my mild-mannered temper suddenly exploded in a flurry of punches and bitings and stick and skate slashings that ended in a bloody mess. Because it seems like we can't get away with making a post without a paint in it, here's a little illustration of what it probably looked like:


Ok, that didn't happen. Actually all that I did was hit a guy in the face with my stick by mistake and give him a bleeding nose, which caused him to say fu@& quite a few times. It was his own fault for not wearing a face mask, but I was the one who had to go to the changeroom for the rest of the game. Oh yeah, and Chris had to sit out my penalty in the box. I think he was a bit pissed about that. All in all, it was a good game, because the most annoying guy on our team didn't show up, and we actually scored some goals. Oh, and there were two girls on the other team, they were pretty good and one of them tripped Chris and gave us a penalty. Another time this cocky son of a b on our team nailed one of them to the ice (this is a no hitting league) which made me feel sorry for her and ask if she was all right because it was right in front of the bench but a few people made fun of me and thought I was just trying to hit on her. That's what I get for trying to be a nice guy.

Today is Saturday, which means only one thing for our family: garage sales. Our weekly tradition includes a few cups of Tim Horton's, at least one embarassing scene as my dad tries to haggle the sale of a t-shirt down to 25 cents from 50 (usually one with a disney character or some sort of a cat on the front), and ends with a carload full of what my parents would call plundered treasure but what I usually consider to be total junk. I hope that my other half of this blogger team is enjoying the Cubs game or concert or whatever he's going to today and is thinking of me because I'm just a little jealous of him.

The weekend

These are some pictures of how i envision this coming weekend in chicago.