The Newport Blog: Christmas MT + Mandy's Wedding

Stephen and Ginger flew to Montana. Bad weather stuck us in Minneapolis overnight Christmas Eve. Fortunately, Nancy's college friends Steve and Vicki Taborek live nearby, and picked us up for the night. Ginger hadn't seen their two kids, Lucas and Dominika in about 10 years. See all the snow at their house!

 

We arrived in Billings on Christmas Day, and celebrated at Aunt Mary's house. (Grandma Pearl, Ginger, Stephen, Uncle Jim, Aunt Mary, Nick standing with Mandy on his back, Donna seated and Kelsey beside her.) Ron and Nancy drove to Billings Sunday afternoon after their church service in Cascade. They are showing off the finger-knit scarves Ginger made everyone for Christmas gifts.

Most of the week, Ginger worked on the wedding cake for Mandy and Nick (who sketched the design and drew the people on his computer). More cake photos. The cake weighed 40 pounds- enought for 1/4 pound each for 160 people! The interior was Funfetti cake, with some layers white chocolate ganache frosting and some dark chocolate. The cake topper was from Ginger & Stephen's wedding cake.

 

 On Wednesday, Danyon threw Mandy a bachelorette party. Below, Mandy receives the requested "nothing sexy!" underwear from Breanne, and adorably decorated mini-presents from Shannon.

  

 We had lunch and went ice-skating. Left photo: Katie, Iman, Breanne, Mandy, Danyon, Kelsey, Ginger, Kristian. Right photo- Donna joins the party.

The wedding ceremony was at First United Methodist Church in Billings. Mandy had three cousins come to visit from afar- Zach (best man) from Texas, Kelsey from Washington, and Leah from Arizona.

Nancy arranged all the wedding flowers with the help of Gramma Pearl, Kelsey, Mary, Bid and Bobbi. Bobbi also made little crosses for each of the bouquets.

The color theme for the wedding was rainbow. Below, colorful bridesmaids plus Anna and Kristian make the rainbow complete. More Wedding Photos! (Red- Ginger, Orange- Anna, Yellow- Lindsey, Green- Katie, Light Blue- Breanne, Dark Blue- Danyon, Purple- Kristian.)

Ron and Nancy were married at the same church in 1982. See their wedding photos. 

 

 Mandy and Nick, while listening to Zach's best man speech.

  Mandy and Nick went to Las Vegas for their honeymoon. The rest of us enjoyed post-wedding rest and sledding. (Rainbow sled picture for Mandy! Leah, Zach, Stephen, Kelsey) Ginger also copied a lot of favorite childhood photos from Mom's photo albums. See them here.

The Newport Blog: Daily Life

We don't go on adventures all the time. Here's what Stephen and Ginger do in Daily Life.

Stephen is a Junior Architect at A4 Architecture. He has been there since October of 2009. Stephen works with Ross, the Managing Director, and Kathleen, fellow architect. The company is a full-service design firm specializing in high-end residential, historic preservation, and commercial design.

Some of Stephen's drawings and renderings:

 

Ginger worked a variety of jobs over the year. During the school year, she was a substitute teacher for the Newport School District, K-12. She generally taught at the high school. She also worked for the 2010 Census enumerating group living quarters.

Her home business Gingercakes sold eight cakes and two sets of cupcakes. During the summer, she worked in the bakeshop at Stop & Shop.

Now Ginger is working at Newport Geothermal as a Project Manager. She writes proposals, does research, and some advertising including new web design. (What is geothermal?)

Below, her fab uniform for her last day at Stop and Shop. She made a cake for her sweet co-workers. Fall cupcakes!

 

Ginger's new boss, Hazard, is scouting out sales at the Rhode Island Home Show. Hazard has been in several articles recently; check out our facebook page. To the right, drilling a well at a beach-side project.

 

How does Ginger get to work everyday? (at least while it's warm...) SCOOTER! Found on Craigslist for a great deal. And the engine is so small, no special license is needed. Now she can gas up with pocket change. 

Celebrating Stephen's 25th birthday on a boat!

Our friend Ingrid is a chef on charter yachts during sailing season. Here is her website. She helped Ginger start the cake business and came up with the name! Ingrid bought several cakes this summer for birthday parties on yachts. They met while substitute teaching.

Newport gets some good wind at the point of the island, Brenton Point State Park. An excellent place to fly a kite!

  

Ice-skating downtown with our friends Jen and Kathleen (Stephen's co-worker)

Our friend Phoebe boards her horse, Dolce, at Glen Farm. Ginger helped let out the horses in the mornings and feed them. Phoebe entered her first competion and won several ribbons!

 

Phoebe's great dane Madison was also in a dog show this fall. 

Our little dog Winnie passed away this November. We miss her deeply, but we had a wonderful year with her. Here she is wrestling with her best friend, Madison.

 Of course, Stephen is hard at work on our new apartment. Here's a "before" shot of the kitchen. Stephen started by removing EVERYTHING you see here.

Here he is re-tiling the bathroom. (after also removing everything!)

 Happy Fall!

The Newport Blog: Thanksgiving NM

We flew to Las Cruces to spend Thanksgiving with Stephen's parents, Honey and Rene. Tearing up the toast for stuffing!

Stephen's sister Melanie, her husband Adam, and their daughter Sophia also drove in from Austin. Sophie had fun dancing with her Grampie. She is five this year and has her first short haircut!

 

The Thanksgiving Feast

We had fun with a craft kit, making little snowmen, polar bears, and penguins.

 

Friday was Ginger's birthday, and Stephen's aunt Linda's on Saturday, so Ginger made a few cakes. Also, Honey taught Ginger how to finger-knit, so she started making scarves for Christmas presents.

The Mackewich family got together up in the mountains for a party. Honey's brother Frank and his son Adam on far left, brother Mike and wife Terry on far right with her daughter in orange, and Honey's sister Linda in gray sweatshirt.

We went bowling on base. Here's Sophie "teaching" Grammie & Grampie how to bowl.

 Cocoa/coffee/tea toast! Spending time with family as the weather starts to get cold.