Our First Valentines Day

We splurged on our first married Valentine's Day and had dinner at the amazing Ruth's Chris Steakhouse - our first time there. The steak was fabulous, and the service was superb! Afterward, we decided to do dessert at our favorite cafe, Main Street Coffee House.


We exchanged presents at home.


We both enjoyed the floral and cookie bouquets. I'm still enjoying my purse, and Josh will continue to the enjoy The Office season six for a long time.

What a joy to be married to my best friend! We are so in love!

Christmas 2010

We put up our little pre-lit Christmas tree and decorated throughout our place.

We celebrated early with both our families.
It was so fun to get Our First Christmas ornaments!!We spent Christmas day in Jamaica - lounging at the beach after a morning church service at our resort.

Christmas lunch was eaten on the beach (I get a kick out of their Christmas decor - red and green balloons!)

We dressed up for Christmas dinner.

Joseph & Mary

This winter Josh & I had the privilege of playing Joseph and Mary at an event our church was involved in. I was thrilled!! Unfortunately the weather was not cooperative, and the event was shut down after about an hour due to rain. Yes, RAIN in December!

Regardless, it was honor - if only for an hour.

Josh made an awesome Joseph!

I had some issues with my head-dress.

Don't worry - Jesus was played by a baby doll. No real babies got cold and wet.

Toledo-Bound!

Hello again! It's us...the Hrens!

This past weekend we had the opportunity to see the premiere of the movie that the lovely Jennifer was a part of last November. It was so exciting to not only be experiencing a movie premiere, but also to personally know the screenwriter and some of the "background talent" (a.k.a. "extras"). Here's how it went down:

The anticipation mounted as we climbed into the back seat of Jen and Andy's new Honda Fit (road trip!) and took off from SB to the grand city of Toledo, OH. How nice of them to drive, by the way. After enjoying the sights of the Indiana Toll Road/Ohio Turnpike (insert sarcasm here), w

e began to see signs that indicated we were closing in on our destination. YAY! Upon arrival in the town of Maumee, which I guess is a suburb of Toledo, we got to see this quaint old-time theatre where the big premiere was to occur.

The excitement ran fever-pitch from there! For those of you

who know Jennifer (and for those of you who THINK you know her), she has a major crush on one John Wesley Shipp...aka "Dawson's Dad" from Dawson's Creek. Of course he was in the movie AND was at this particular premiere. As for me (Josh), I e

njoyed seeing this girly crush my wife was having on a movie star. You'd think someone who'd lived in LA for a couple of years

would've had enough of celebrities. ;) Any whoo...she got to

meet Mr. Shipp and even got a couple of photos with him.

Lucky girl. Notice my "excitement" for this moment as well??

Any way, the movie was great. It even featured an extended on-screen moment for both Jennifer and her brother, Andrew. Very cool! I was very proud of my actress wife. :) Afterwards were lots of fun moments, a Q & A with the director and others, and of course the snapping of more pics. It was awesome and a great memory for all. Here's a few more pics to enjoy:

Date Night

Today was a lovely day. Josh & I enjoyed watching the Notre Dame game together. The Irish played amazingly well, which was a nice change from recent games. We clobbered ranked Utah 28-3.

After the game we went to the Southside for some errands - Target, Meijer and Starbucks. It was a nice, leisurely evening - birthday shopping for my mom, getting boring things like shaving gel and vacuum filters, and just enjoying each other's company.

We reminisced over warm winter beverages in cozy, comfy chairs. Always love Red Cup season! Thanks to Joel & Madison for the Starbucks gift card!

We LOVE Main St.!!

Greetings from "The Nest"! It has been far too long since the last posting, but we hope to remedy that right now.

One joy of living in South Bend has been our newest coffee house, Main Street Coffee! They are AWESOME!!! We love coffee, so it makes sense we would visit a coffee house from time to time. Not only do they have awesome coffee, they also make superb baked goods (made with love by fine Mennonite women - they do it best anyway) and have a barista staff like no other. Big props to Paul and his team (Dave, Ruth, Analiese, Micah, and all others we missed). Even better, they are less than a mile from our house, which makes it WAAAAAYYYY too easy to find time to visit. We love patroning local businesses and find any way we can to support them, even if it means gaining a couple pounds. ;)

Now that we are both working in Goshen, the search is on to find residence that direction. It makes sense after all, but we will shed tears of fond remembrance of our nearby coffee heaven. I guess it just means we'll have to patron their Nappanee location and make plenty of visits back to SB.

Family Reunion

Exactly one week after we returned from our honeymoon we left town for Family Reunion (Josh's dad's side). It was my 2nd family reunion, but the first as an actual Hren. This meant I could actually vote during the family meeting (yes, things are very formal at the Hren family reunion). We/I made banana bread to share with the fam. There was SO much food; it was delicious!

Yes, I was very proud to have the title of "Newest Hren"!