Twins and Trains

Today started off sunny and gorgeous; Nick did a bunch of work outside, including cleaning our windows. Then the sky stayed bright but started to pour hail down on us! The hail lasted about 2 minutes and then it rained for about 3 more and the storm was over. There were reports of funnel clouds nearby, but luckily we didn't see any of that. No damage either, except for some downed leaves and we can live with that!

Tonight we went to the Fieldhouse with Rob and Bob and watched the first half of the Twins game (they almost won for the second night in a row). Afterwards, we had them over here and played TransAmerica and MarioKart. Bob won TransAmerica and I won MarioKart, but I've had a lot of practice. I've now beat the 100cc level (although one race is still just a silver cup)! Nick is catching up - he has all golds in the 50cc and is 75% done with the 100cc. I've had a lot more opportunities to play though!

It's Been a While

But not much blog-worth stuff has happened.

Last week for my birthday we played poker at Dave's house, including a yummy choclate Costco cake for me! I thought I was going to finish in the money, but ended up going out on the bubble - my big stack dwindled away to nothing. It was a double-bubble night because Nick went out one person before me. On Friday night, we went with a group of 11 to Old Chicago, then back to Dave and Smeeta's where my team dominated at Cranium! We then started a Euchre tournament but Nic and I didn't do very well - we were awesome at getting 9s and 10s but not awesome at winning tricks.

This week at poker, Nick and I both did much better. I was a monster and took out the first 5 people (including Nick and Sergei on the same hand!), then cruised into the top 2 without losing my chip lead. However, James got A-A TWO hands in a row and took the majority of my chips (I had 9-9). I was able to fight my way back and get a third of the chips, but I finally lost to him when I had the low straight and he had the high straight. It was still a good battle and I was elated to break my bubble-girl streak. We were actually ambitious enough to play a second game and Nick and I split - we were the last two people left! He had a lot more money than me so I think I would have gotten second again though.

At home, we've been on a huge Scrabble kick, playing pretty much nightly. I think we only played Empire Builder twice in the last two weeks! Beyond that, we haven't been doing much at all. Working, sleeping, and spring cleaning; just call us Mr and Mrs Boring :)

Scrabble Redemption

We couldn't resist and played a rematch of Scrabble tonight. Again we failed to use a good quarter of the board, but we were a little more cautious this time and managed to finish! Each of us got away with a non-word at one point when a challenge wasn't a good idea. In the end, I laid my last tile first to make the score 285-286. After getting the point from Nick's U I won 286-285. You don't have games much closer than that!

Nick spelled spelt - it's a type of wheat

Worst Scrabble Board Ever

Nick and I actually had to abandon our game because neither one of us could find a word:

For the curious, we built up the entire lower left corner of the board, then the words on the upper right, then the words on the upper right. The last word made was "AY" on the lower right. My letters are on the bottom and Nick's are to the right. Does anyone see any possible word for either of us to make? It has to be in our Scrabble dictionary to count.

Windmills Over Iowa

Our first trip of 2008! Quite a change from 2007, but the fun has to end somewhere. :)

Windmills Over Iowa

Nick and I spent the weekend in Iowa visiting with his family. We drove out on Thursday after work and were greeted by the newly redesigned family-living room area! It looked fantastic and was almost finished -all the furniture and such was in place already. It still needs some tiling, but they were working on that when we left so I'm sure next time we go everything will be complete (I'm sure Nancy hopes for the same).

Friday night we attended the rehearsal dinner for Nick's cousin's wedding, and Saturday was the wedding. It was a very nice ceremony and I had fun talking to all Nick's relatives at the dance. We came home and played Scrabble afterwards. I think all three games had the three of us finishing within 10 points of each other; one went to Nancy and one went to Nick. I was second both times. Sunday morning we had lunch and came home to Minneapolis. It was a very relaxing trip!

The Wait Is Over

Nick beat Dave and me at Empire Builder tonight!! It was a close race at the end but he had it easily in hand. We also read the rule variations in the instruction book and came up with a couple of interesting possibilities for the next time we play. We're looking forward to it.

Games, Games, Games

Despite the Scrabble debacle, we've still been playing games. That same night, Nick beat me at Trains, but I've beaten him twice since then. Yesterday we proved that we are slaves to advertising by going out to eat at Houlihan's after getting a coupon in the mail earlier that morning. The food was pretty good, not outstanding. Afterwards, we swung by Coldstone to get some dessert to take home with us.

As we were waiting in line Nick's phone rang; it was Smeeta! So we took our ice cream over to her and Dave's where we ended up playing 20th Century Trivial Pursuit (the weirdly impossible version). Smeeta and I decided we would take on all the guys (Nick, Dave, Ed and Jeff) and we managed a come-from-behind win by knowing that the Forrest Wood fishing competition is a bass-fishing competition. Ok, maybe that was a guess, but it doesn't matter because we beat them! It was our first question in the middle too!

Ice Fishing!

Last weekend I finally made it out to the ice house. The guys are still in the same spot they were before and they are still catching lots of perch! The new roof makes the whole thing nice and cozy.

Ice House 2008

Fish in the hole!

Nick and Ed each pulled up a fish at the same time!

Sergei's "Big Catch"

Beyond that, we are just staying warm at home. Nick and I saw another movie, Dan in Real Life, and went to Granite City with Ed and Dave. Nick and Dave won at tennis for a second consecutive week and I got to go to a free show at Acme courtesy of Ed's birthday. Neither of us did very well at poker this week.

Today is a gorgeous day. The snow is melting and Nick and I felt comfortable as we were running errands. It wasn't a pain to walk from the car to the store and back out again! I got a new battery for my cell phone (hopefully this fixes the problem) and Nick bought a new racquetball racquet (maybe he can beat James now). We even took a walk around the block when we got home!

Scrabble Hates Me

I pulled my new letters from the bag and made "BUTCHER" - but no where to put it. After I tried to sneak a word past Nick and he challenged successfully, I realized there was a spot that it could have gone if I had noticed it. I then made the word "BUT" and pulled out "TEA". Couldn't get that on the board either and had to settle for "TEACH". Finally, I pulled out FELD. Yes, three turns in a row and I didn't get a single one of them on the board. Final score: Nick 308 to Karin 280. He was happy to finally win a game against me; I've been on a great win streak lately.

Domination!

Dave and Ed came over tonight to share some of the ice house fish, followed by a game of Empire Builder. Apparently, all my recent practice against Nick paid off because despite having a slow train for about 10 turns longer than everyone else, I won quite convincingly!! It was a sleeper win too - no one noticed all my Mexico City/LA routes adding up to big money until it was too late. It's only 11 PM but everyone's heading out and we're going to bed too. Quite the exciting Friday night.

The DeSantification Process is Complete

Christmas is officially over. I took down the Christmas cards on Thursday after work (I liked how cheery they made that corner of the kitchen but I was sick of sweeping up glitter!) and today Nick and I made up the bed with our wedding quilt again so the Christmas quilt is folded up and put away. There are no signs of the holiday anywhere.

We had a pretty low-key weekend. Saturday we went to another movie - August Rush. It was interesting but SO SLOW! The movie could have easily been about 45 minutes shorter without losing anything. I don't know if I could recommend it just because it was so slow. Rent it maybe and you can fast forward to the end of scenes. We also played a game of Empire Builder (won by me) and ordered pizza. Today was also pretty boring - church, a little shopping, and two games of cribbage (split). We are enjoying our time spent quietly at home though!

Most Efficient Trains Game EVER

Nick and I just finished a game of Empire Builder in about 65 minutes! Wow! We both had lots of good routes and the final score was close: 272 to 262. Good practice for next time Dave comes over.

Beyond Football

We had a fun weekend! On Friday night, Dave came over for random stir-fry. Nick mixed a bunch of small bags of frozen veggies together to clean out the freezer and served it over rice. It was delicious and now we have more space. We played three games and everyone won once so it was nicely balanced. Nick and Dave each won a game of Puerto Rico and I won Empire Builder, handing Dave his first loss since the very first time he played.

On Saturday, Nick and I slept in then tore through the cleaning before heading out to have some fun. I saw Enchanted with Jess. It was so cute! I loved all the Disney movie spoofs in it. Both of us were glad that we went with each other and not our husbands though - I think it would have been another movie where Nick asked if we could leave halfway through. I am impressed that Dave sat through the entire thing! Afterwards, we went shopping at Archivers. I bought a ton of paper. Now if I only had some pictures I could finish up the blue scrapbook and start on the green one. Yes, I am obsessed! Working on August now and I barely took any pictures in January so it should go pretty quickly.

Meanwhile, Nick went out to the ice house. They had a ton of people crammed in there and the fish were biting! I got home and the sink was full of live fish! He didn't count them, but I am looking forward to the perch fry soon.

Nick's fish!

Also on Saturday, Mom and Dave swung in for a visit after dropping off some furniture for Thomas. We made tacos for supper and Mom and I played Trains while Nick and Dave talked. It was a close game, but I won. Sunday morning, Nick and Dave went on a Fleet Farm mission to find a creamer and then stopped out at the lake so Nick could show off his ice house. Mom and I played an old favorite while they were gone: Priscilla! I started off pretty slow and Mom won the first game, then I came from behind to win the second. In the tie-breaker, it was back and forth until the final round when I managed to win again! Luckily Mom doesn't mind losing. :)

What a great weekend. We're having fun staying home in 2008...wonder what happened to that travel bug???

A Return to Normalcy

After a brief hiatus (one night of Scrabble, one night of cribbage and one night of [gasp] no games), Nick and I returned to our new favorite, Empire Builder. Thanks to a brilliant last-card pick-up (coffee to Savannah when I was already in Mexico City!) I was able to defeat him by 15 million dollars! I even gave him $4 million on my last turn - I was trying to help him out. I think it was one of our best games ever.

In other news, the scrapbooking store by our house closed today. They lost the lease on the space they were renting. So from now on it's a 10-15 minute drive to get supplies instead of a 2 minute one and I have to actually go through stop lights and on the freeway. To those of you in Iowa, you're probably thinking big deal, but to me it's a little sad.

Scrabble WTF

Nick and I sat down to play Scrabble tonight for the first time since New Year's Eve. Apparently things didn't quite get put away correctly when we were done that night. The board was starting to fill up and there were still a lot of letters left in the bag, then I pulled out a 5th D. Uh-oh. We played a little while longer, but Nick was creaming me and there were so many tiles that we ended up calling the game. We sorted out the letters and found that we were missing both Cs, an I and a U. Meanwhile, there were 20 extra tiles in the bag, mainly As and Es. Oops. After some counting, we now know that both sets have all their letters! Next time we play two games at once we'll have to use two tables or erect some sort of physical border between the two. Now for a rematch...

We Beat Ed!

Tonight Nick and I played tennis and managed to beat Ed and his partner in one of the sets! Final score was 4-6, 6-3, 2-7 (tie-breaker). I'll take it! After tennis Ed and Dave came over and we had supper and played Empire Builder. My 4-player game stinks!! I didn't even have $200 million when the game ended (but I was close). Dave won again - he's gotten really good at the game, really fast. Go Dave...I guess...

Upset Weekend!

While Nick was busy at the fishhouse today, I stayed at home and watched the Chargers upset the Colts and made two scrapbook pages. He came home with a pizza and we sat down to watch the second half of the Dallas-Giants game. It wasn't a great game but the Giants managed to win! That means they get to come to Green Bay next week. The teams I was rooting for over the weekend went 2 for 4, but the most important two won so I can't complain. Green Bay beat New York 35-13 in New York in Week 2 - hopefully a good omen. Go Pack Go!

After the game, we played the concluding round of Empire Builder. Nick had a better train and was consistently about $30 million ahead of me, but I caught up at the end and managed to beat him by $20 million when his cards stalled out. Go Karin! To finish the weekend, I'm going to make one more scrapbook page and Nick's going to play his computer game. Here's to a good week before the NFC Title game comes around!

More Weekend Details

Nick is doing some work and I'm still up and feel like posting so here's some random blabbings. Last night Nick went out to the ice house - still no fish! Better luck next time! I finally got the right paper and was able to finish up the pontoon pages from our camping trip in June. That gets me caught up through our first Vegas trip of the year and leaves me with only about 20 pages left in the blue scrapbook. It's a monster too - almost 100 pages! I think the next one is going to be a little smaller because that bugger is heavy (yes, I just finished a book set in England).

Today (Saturday) I got up early and started cleaning. Our house is now sparkling clean, and with the exception of my Christmas cards and our wreath, completely de-Christmas-itized. A little sad, but only 10 more months til I can get it all out again! And the wreath and cards are going to hang around for a while longer because they're easy to clean up and I like how they look. Nick and I then made a run to Costco to get some food, then came home and played Empire Builder until the game began.

Our Spread - Only the butter didn't come from Costco!
Amazing but true: 6 people ate 95% of that veggie platter!


Keeping a stiff upper lip - this was after the Seahawk's first touchdown!

Ryan Grant gave me a scare early on with his two fumbles that were converted into touchdowns, but after that the game was all Packers. I knew Brett was going to come out throwing and when Greg Jennings caught his first touch down pass I knew it was all clear sailing until the end of the game. It was great! We watched most of the Patriots-Jaguars game afterwards - wish the Jags would have played a little better in the second half and taken care of business!

When football was over, Nick and I sat down and finished our game of Empire Builder. He beat me, but I put up a good fight (had about $215 million). I demanded a rematch and managed to dominate the entire time, leaving him with one city unconnected and only about $150 million. Guess we'll have to play again to determine the ultimate champion - darn!

Ok, guess our day wasn't all that interesting, but I had fun writing about it. Big football day tomorrow - good luck to the Colts and the Giants!

Happy New Year 2008!

A pictoral story of our New Year's Eve. We had a great time celebrating! All of our games had randomly selected teams, and everyone was tied going into the last one. Ed and I ended up winning so we were the big winners! Without further ado:

I couldn't resist this Costco cake! It says "Merry Christmas" because it served a dual purpose as the dessert for our dinner on Saturday as well.


Tacos for supper. Yum!


Choose a game, any game!


We used a timer for Trivial Pursuit and it came down to the wire - both teams were trying desperately to land on brown! In the end, we tied, but it was very close!


Tequilia shots! No one saw that coming!


Cranium winners.


I've still never won a game of Bohnanza - I did add to my stash of ties though!


Talking to Smeeta in her remote location after another of her favorite games - Taboo.


We went downstairs and turned on the TV to watch the new all-LED ball drop. They were at 18 in the New Year's countdown - not bad. Check out Ryan Seacrest's circa 1988 headseat!


Ed won the battle for first over Nick in 7 Up - 7 Down. No one else was even close.


Dueling Scrabble was a lot of fun. Our board was quite a bit more serious - Dave, Ed and Nick never used more than 3 letters in a single turn!

Catchphrase! winners.


I think we used every glass in the house.

If you're wondering, we ended up partying until about 3 AM, then went to bed. We got up around noon and Dave cooked breakfast for everyone. Yum!

Into the Post-Season

The regular season ended today with the Packers beating Detroit 34-13. They played MUCH better this week than last. Favre was pulled with 10 minutes left in the second quarter when the score was 21-3, quite an insult. Some of the other top seeds fell this week like we did last week - both Dallas and Indy lost. Only the Patriots won after the Giants collapsed at the end of the game. Now it's watching the games next week and wondering who we'll get in the second round of the playoffs.

In other news, Nick and I have lost at Empire Builder now. After beating Erin last night, we were pretty confident, but the newly home Dave came over tonight and beat us all.

Looking forward to New Year's Eve tomorrow night - should be pretty low-key as we're spending it at home but I'll try to take a couple of pictures for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy the end of 2007!