"Get out of the net your not a fish" - Rodney Dangerfield 'Lady Bugs'

This picture describes a lot of how Mark and I have been since our last post....

We kind of want to kick something, look & feel angry, and also feel a little stuck in a net!

Now on the positive side of the photo were determined, strong, and full of poise like Sam is in this picture!

This October we're going to leave all unfinished business behind to move forward....
It starts this weekend with fun events!!

Thanks dear sister for letting us use your awesome photo as an example of our feelings :)

Today I have the best feeling and couldn't be more proud of my sister! It's her last season and she's going out like a rockstar, check it!
http://www.bsubeavers.com/news/default/115/3437/

Sam,
Your brother-in-law and I are so proud of you and can't wait to cheer you and your team on to more victories!! LETS GO BSU BEAVERS!

Mark & Sara

A Cloud is Lifted!

September is here already, we didn't know?!

All,

Please know that due to unforseen circumstances we have not been our usual selves the past...well month or so.

However, thanks to our traditional lifestyle we press on as we've always done. Life never hands you a lemon unless you can make some lemonade out of it....so squeeze away or be squeezed!!

TWO WORDS: Family & Friends, we love you and thank you for supporting us as always!

Lots has happened, but we will wait until after we celebrate new beginnings at Oktoberfest this weekend, we'll have lots to update you on so stay tuned!

Much Love,

Mark & Sara

Summer & Married!

Thank you all who came to enjoy our wedding day with us! It couldn't have been more perfect and to our family and friends, thank you for supporting us with this monumental step in our lives.

We can't call out our favorite highlight of the evening, but like most, the fireworks and dancing seemed to be the hit of the night. We only have so many pictures floating around of this day because everyone said they were just having too much fun instead of taking photos. We agreed!

It has been now three weeks and lots have happened and also not :( One is thank you notes, our bad truly, we had to sort through our goodies and our mission is to complete that on our way up north to the Velasquez family reunion this Saturday!

We did enjoy a few days after the wedding up north outside Duluth at Black Bear Casino. We love that place and gambling, I ended up being the bread winner that weekend (it helped pay rent at the studio I'm at :) We took our first wild ride together as husband and wife on our first day, we road on the new Alpine Slide at Spirit Mountain! It was awesome and its was a beautiful day with the quite the view coming up the slide, see pictures below. We dined in Duluth twice enjoying two very different places, but with Lake Superior as our view. We enjoyed indulging and took up suggestions from my cousin's wife, Muggs for one of the tasty places.

Even though we have not taken our official honeymoon we've made plans to travel to Europe next year just as summer begins. We're looking to start in Amsterdam, stop in Germany to visit my cousin and her family, Italy, Monaco, Spain (Barcelona), France (Paris), and last London, England. Mark hasn't traveled internationally and I have, but not to all of these countries, and I cannot wait to travel together for two weeks!!

Our main concentration on our honeymoon is staying cities with less tourist attractions (though we may stay in one or two). We both enjoy watching travel shows together when we watch T.V. and now that we've seen some places off the map, were ready to indulge in the european culture. To prepare for our excursion Mark and I said Spanish is our next mission. For one its my native language and it is secondary in the states now, so we will take courses to improve our speaking skills.

Now that its near fall we're gearing up for football season and no #4 will not be discussed here ;)We've been hopeful that our Vikings season will be as glorious as it was last year! Its nice to be settled down a little more now as we were both pretty anxious with the post-wedding blues for the last few weeks. Right now were just anxious for our photos, as you saw we had two photographers, and I'm sure they have their work cut out for them with over 2,000 pictures taken!

We hope your enjoying this fall-like weather and give us a call we'd love to see our family and friends after this great celebration!

Love & Hugs,

Mark & Sara

May was here, we think, and now June!

Today our wedding calendar says we're at 44 days until the wedding!

Some details of the wedding have changed, no worries nothing that would effect our guests :p but we're happy to be moving forward with things.

It's only been a little over three weeks since we attended Jerry's services. As Grandma Ozzie put it while visiting this past weekend...

"This too shall pass..."

A loss of a Grandparent is something I'm familiar with, but watching someone else especially your soon to be husband go through losing a loved one is just as hard. Mark could use some prayers for him right now to overcome the heartache he's been feeling. We acknowledge that right now we must try to overcome sad feelings and put forth a happy faces towards our wedding, but we will admit we have heartache and its not easy to do this but we will do our best :)

On a brighter note Mark and I both got to enjoy a little retreat away from our chaotic last few months over Memorial Day weekend. Mark went up to the cabin with his Mom and my parents. They all enjoyed a weekend of fishing, wedding planning, and relaxing :) they all sounded so refreshed after. Samantha, my friend Lindsay, and I enjoyed our vacation in Daytona Beach & Orlando, Florida. We soaked up the sun, enjoyed delicious meals, relaxed while indulging in mojitos poolside, enjoyed a spectacular view of the Daytona Beach coastline for dinner one evening, and played in the Disney Pleasure Island Market Place.

After returning from our retreats we learn that life still has those challenges awaiting us when we get home. Sometimes with facing our challenges we find ourselves growing more and feeling like we're headed towards a better place. Mark and I are a good team and always get reminded of that during a tough time, sometimes we just need to be reminded of that.

After we visited Ozzie this last weekend we accomplished our wedding ceremony details and got help from her on scriptures too :) thank you Ozzie! It was helpful to have her insight onto some details we hadn't finished. After our visit their we stopped in Hayward to visit my cousin, wife, and the newest member to our Johnson family...Lilja! Right way she took to Mark and loved his Twins sweatshirt and bright Twins hat! I've never seen anything like that from a baby and yes I have pictures!

This weekend were headed to the cabin together, FINALLY! We'll have a few friends and the DUKES with us this weekend for a much needed good time at Fairview! Not all of our pals that were invited could make it, but truthfully less chaos the better for us right now.

Last but not least, I'm excited to say all of my cousins with the exception of one from the Johnson side will be coming to the wedding! Two from Seattle (Ruth & John) and the other (Aran) from Colorado! I couldn't be more excited to have my family all be in one place!

Ah...June 2010 we'll never forget!

Hugs to you all and PS checkout our wedding website and send us a message, we'd love to hear from you!

Mark & Sara
aka
The Future Thompson's!

May...2010

Hello all,

Early Thursday morning Mark's Grandfather, Jerry Thompson passed away surrounded by his family in Chisago. We're saddened by how fast this went for Jerry, but know Mark spent some great days with him since this began.

We we're able to spend Wednesday evening with Grandpa Jerry and was so glad we had the opportunity to be with the family.

We love you all and thank your kind wishes for Mark and I. It really makes us so grateful to have support and love during this time.

We do have information on the funeral services for Jerry.

Please go to: www.bradshawfuneral.com
Go under Obituaries and look for "Gerald Thompson, Sr."
If you would like to send a memorial you can do so thru this site.

Much <3,

Mark and Sara

Winter-Spring 2010 Pics

We took a trip up to Black Bear Casino & stopped in Duluth in March:)

The first ever TWINS game played at Target Field!

My professional photoshoot for my studio. Down 90lbs!!

These are are my Zumba Demo Girls after our great Free Demonstration

that was Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at STUDIO CATES

The two Summer 2010 Brides enjoying a WILD Game!!

Spring is here!

It's April!

Today we're exactly 100 days until our wedding! This may be a huge shock, but we're ready and not at the same time! Our mother's have been very helpful this last month with keeping us on board :) we tend to let or I tend to let this be put on the back burner, but thankfully have our "maja's" to keep us on track!

Over the past few months we've been enjoying our newly remodeled parts of the house and just enjoying our engagement! We've finished spring with our annual "Spring Fling" at Afton Alps, I visited my Aunt & Uncle in Grand Marais, and celebrated St. Patty's Day.

Besides our usual annual events we've gotten a lot of planning done and we're enjoying planning for our honeymoon, reception playlists, and our future showers/parties we're having! Speaking of parties we also did add another two friends to our wedding party! This was exciting as one friend moved home and the other just needed to be added :) so we're onto a total of 16 for our total party!! Yikes!!

One piece of news we would like to share is that Mark's Grandfather is having treatments for his Multiple Myeloma, a form of cancer that he was diagnosed with back at the end of February. He has been doing radiation treatments at Regions Hospital and was moved to a transitional care facility about a week ago. Just recently though he went back to Regions to start Chemotherapy and to stablize his blood count levels, but is in the process of moving back to another transitional care facility soon. Please have him in your prayers! Here is his Caring Bridge Website: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/jerrysrthompson

One other major news is I quite the health club I was working at...super long story but it all was going for my ultimate goal so life is good! I have all my classes at one location and its booming, thank you all for being here to support having my own business-Stillwater watch out because we'll be rumbling downtown Stillwater with ZUMBA!

Here's a few shout outs:
*Grandpa Thompson (Jerry) we're praying for you daily for continued progress!
*Samantha-you're almost done with your 3rd year of college OMG way to go! Get back soon my MOH!
*To all my Zumba students/family/friends-you're amazing, keep up the hard work, and thank you for the business!
*Grandma Ross: You rock and are amazing after what you went through this winter two words ROCK-STAR!
*My Cousin Hans: Dude, you're one amazing traveling man and seeing you travel the country enjoying your passion is so fun to see, you rock!
*My Cousin Aran & Wife Nicole: Congrats to both with Lilja, she is so beautiful and can't belive I will see you this summer a new addition to the Johnson family!
*To Mark to my wonderful fiance: You're one awesome future husband, you work hard, play little, and always amaze me how you handle our hectic life, keep it up pappa fiance!

That's all for now and will post pictures of the past few months!

Mark & Sara

February & Boccee!

February is here and almost March!

We can't hardly believe it's March almost...it feels like Christmas was just here and we just got engaged. Regardless, we power through each month just waiting for Spring like you all are.

Lot of wedding planning has been done and our Save the Dates are going out this next week so keep an eye out for it! Some of the fun things we're looking to do have been booked and now we just are finalizing catering and reception site details. I will admit I go in spurts of planning then I come down real quick. I've learned that planning a wedding is the complete opposite of planning a construction job, weddings come with emotion and construction is a start and finish process. Ask my Mom, I wasn't liking how this all goes, but have learned that patience is still not my virtue and will work on that with our Pastor who by the way is named Mark too!

So as I said our Pastor, yes we've met with Pastor Mark of the United Methodist Church and enjoyed what he calls learning ways to grow in our relationship. Just after our first meeting it was surreal how we're talking to "our officiant" for "our wedding". I hope our relationship survey goes well, however just prior to our meeting Mark and I discovered our main issues and feel ready to tackle them. Having Pastor Mark in our lives to help us grow I think we're both ready for that guidance and doing it together as a team.

Other wedding info to share is that we've booked Mark's Grooms Dinner at the Gasthaus Bavarian Hunter for Thursday, July 22nd, 2010. This is a fun place to hold the Rehearsal Dinner as we love German Beer and a pretty scenery, so this should be a great event to kick off our wedding weekend. But other than that we're gearing up our Mark's Groomsman and Ushers for getting them fitted and miscellaneous things.

It's funny how you would think wedding planning is our #1 project its more like #3. Right now we've had our house in construction mode. We're finishing ceilings in the lower level in the back room, kitchen, dining room, and office. We've had a Taper at he house finishing our walls and ceilings in all those rooms as well. Now comes painting in all and bathroom tonight. This is been a prolonged process as our Engagement happened, Christmas, and then awaiting our Tax Returns. But after the flood I will say it was much needed after living in the house for five years it needed some sprucing up.

The second important subject my Zumba classes. They're building up in size in town for my Semi-Private classes I had to move to another location! This is very exciting as I have been still under full time hours and have lots of goals to obtain before we get married and just after. So wish me luck at this additional studio, STUDIO CATES!!

We will be posting pictures of our latest & greatest moments it's going to be a great Spring! We're heading up to Grand Marais the first weekend in March to visit my Aunt & Uncle. Snowshoeing, great conversation, and snow should be a great getaway for us!

Hugs to you all and we have strong prayers for Mark's Grandfather Jerry Thompson this week, we'll keep you posted on his results of his tests!

Mark & Sara

Engaged, New Year, and Lots of Planning ahead!

Thank you to everyone who has sent us such kind words on our Engagement! A lot has happened since December 14th. We spent pretty much a week celebrating: Our Engagement, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Our Annual Naughty or Nice Party, and New Years!

Almost too much celebrating had me sick between the 24th of December till New Years but am back full swing!

We've been setting up our Wedding Website, Save the Dates, Reception Vendors, and notifying our wedding party of their duties! The church is booked, Bridesmaids dresses are picked, Groomsman Tuxes are being picked out next week, meeting with Mamma Maria's (our potential Caterer) tomorrow 1/13/2010, my dress is ordered, and DJ has been booked! Woofdah! A lot has been done so we can enjoy the upcoming Spring and then Summer!

Check out our website: www.theknot.com/ourwedding/SaraRoss&MarkThompson

Our next Wedding goals are: finalizing Ushers, bridesmaids fitting & ordering only 3 left to do thankfully, booking our Tent & Table rentals, and finalizing our budget & guest list.

We do have around 225 for invited guests and know not to expect them all but seriously if they do HOW AWESOME!!! We plan to hibernate the best we can until Spring by working, me teaching, and finishing major planning. We hope to get up to Lusten in February to visit my Aunt & Uncle for a getaway and looking forward to our Annual Frozen Boccee Ball Tournament this year.

It's been a great 2010 so far and looking forward to continuing our Engagement buzz!

Hugs to you all!

Mark & Sara