Brook Ghazer

Is a big winner! I bet $2 and won $19.20. It was very dramatic - he threw his jockey when they were loading the horses into the gate and delayed the race. Then the jockey said he was ok and he still wanted to race. After that, Brook Ghazer was first out of the gate, which normally means a loss, but not in this case! I was pretty nervous. Nick knew I bet on this horse, but he thought it was to place, not to win!

The rest of the day went pretty well too. We only made 5 bets and 3 of them won. The two bets that didn't win each came in 4th, so it wasn't too far off. Gorgeous weather too, it was nice to be outside.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow

Lots of football, tomorrow. It's only a day away. Since Green Bay plays on Monday night, my "game of the day" will be Jets-Dolphins. Scary. I'm also looking forward to the Colts-Bears, but I need to watch a daytime game as well.

Also: Many thanks to Rob and Katie for a fantastic party last night! :)

Spring!

Tonight Nick and I headed over to Dave's for some grilled burgers and firepit time. We played bocce until the food was ready, then sat around and talked for a couple of hours with Dave, Jeff and Ed. It was so nice and peaceful - the dark sky, the fire popping, no mosquitos yet! A perfect Minnesota night.

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!

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???

Random Activities

Sunday night when Nick got home we decided to go out and avoid the wet carpets for a while. So we headed off to the movie theatre and saw Charlie Wilson's War. I was a little surprised that it was at the dollar theatre already - Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks? Regardless, Nick and I both enjoyed it. Since the kitchen was also a mess (all the stuff not in the sunroom was in there) we stopped at Arby's for supper afterwards.

Wednesday night, we got our pictures taken for the church directory. I think we looked pretty sharp - I can't wait to get our free 8x10. We've been debating whether to cover up the engagement photo or the wedding photo with it. Do we ditch the 2 year old picture or the 18 month old picture? We don't really need a 3rd 8x10 of ourselves displayed in the living/dining room area! Since we were already dressed up we decided to try out Pittsburgh Blue - a new steakhouse in Maple Grove. It's a fancy place though and we've never felt dressed up enough to go there before. The food was fantastic! Nick had a porterhouse and I had a New York Strip on the bone (never had that on the bone before). We shared a tear-apart bread and hashbrowns, then had a piece of Red Velvet cake for dessert. Scrumptious!

Thursday we skipped poker, so no wonderous bragging stories this week. Maybe Ed can comment and let me know who won. We stayed home and cleaned up instead. Not extremely interesting but we're happy with the progress being made. We're almost back to our pre-carpet cleaning state! Now all I want for tonight is a game of Empire Builder - shouldn't be too hard to make Nick indulge me!

Repeat!

Nick and I won another set! We went 6-3, 4-6, and lost the tiebreaker. Maybe 2008 is our year for tennis!

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!

Goodbye Tree!

Nick is outside right now taking the lights off of it. The tree stopped taking water about a week before Christmas, so it wasn't good. We wanted to keep it up through our "Christmas morning" with Nick's family on the 29th, and today was the first chance we had to drag it outside. I took the ornamanets off yesterday and it made a huge mess. Nick started to take the lights off this morning and decided it would be easier to do it outside. We got it onto the tarp to drag it outside and it sounded like a rain stick so many needles fell off!

Yesterday we got to hang out with Smeeta - she is in town for the very end of her winter break. She, Katie, Krista and I went shopping then had lunch at B Dubs while our guys (and Ed) got the ice house set up on the lake and built a new roof on it. Sounds like I won't be seeing Nick for a while!

The play-offs seem to be going well. Seattle beat Washington so we'll be playing them on Saturday. Matt Hasselbeck got it out of his system already, starting with post-game press conference with "We want the ball and we're gonna score!" before anyone could even ask for it. Pittsburgh fell to the Jags and the Tampa Bay-New York game just started, tied at zero six minutes into it. GO PACK GO!

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!

Ready for Christmas?

How well do you know your Christmas carols? I got an 80% - one dumb mistake and a couple I honestly couldn't think of. You might find yourself singing out loud trying to get the right answers! Too bad there wasn't a Mariah Carey song, I know that one backwards and forwards!

Nick Makes Beef Jerky

Using some deer meat we got from Nick's dad and a dehydrator Nick borrowed from a co-worker, Nick was able to make beef jerky with hardly any effort at all. I have to say, it's delicious!! :)

Nick and his homemade "Jerky Extruder"


Still Hydrated


Ready to eat!

The Curse is Broken!

Nick and I spent last weekend in Green Bay. We took the afternoon off on Friday and got to town around 6. We met up with Marsha and Jill and went out for a yummy perch fry at the Redwood Inn. After that, we hung out at Mom's house, playing Whoonu and messing around with a wooden nutcracker that she had.

My famous friend.

Saturday was our "running around day". After breakfast with Mom and Dave we headed over to Dad's to go out to eat at Brother's Three, one of my favorite Wisconsin restaurants. From there, we stopped over at Grandma's to visit with more family and get a few of Grandma's old Christmas tree ornaments. Then Mom and Dave made a delicious roast for supper back at their house. After that, I was tuckered out and fell asleep. But everyone else played Sequence and watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Sounds like it was fun!

Sunday was the true purpose of our trip however: our 2007 trip to Lambeau Field. I was hoping that we would finally see a victory and I was rewarded when the Packers beat the Oakland Raiders 38-7; a blow-out victory. We started off the day by bundling up - I had 4 layers on under my coveralls! Then a round-about drive to the stadium in which we completely avoided all the traffic! Inside, we surprised Sandy and Cindy, who were working at the Hemophilia Booth selling Packers merchandise.

Surprise!


Happy Workers

From there we climbed up to our seats. There was a huge line of people waiting to get into the stadium and there were only 20 minutes until game time. Guess they don't call that side the main gate for nothing!

That's a lot of people!

The game was fantastic! We were sitting with some friends of mine from work who are Raiders fans, and they really enjoyed the stadium and talking to the fans sitting around us. Another Raiders fan I know who was at the game said he didn't care much for the game but that our stadium was awesome! He wants to come back to watch another game. Here are a couple of pictures documenting our time at the game:

Flyover! We actually saw 4 jets practicing the flyover on Saturday. This is so cool - no comparison to when they show it on the JumboTron at the 'dome.


The first kickoff attempt - the ball fell off the T so they had to reset it and line up again.


Touchdown!


Victory - and we clinched the division!


Celebrating the win - do we look cold?

And that was the weekend. GO PACK GO!!

Snow Day!

We did end up getting lots of snow! Nick and I had originally not planned on going out, but ended up doing a Costco/Lowe's/Joann's run when I had a scrapbooking emergency (no more glue). It was slippery, but we arrived back unharmed - and we got all the stuff we needed to fix the drains in the bathroom. Yes, both the sink and the tub weren't draining right, but Nick got both of them fixed. It's so nice to take a shower and not be standing in three inches of soapy water when you are done!

The snow on our back deck.

In addition to the bathroom, Nick (and I!) made more progress on cleaning out the airplane room. I think we just about filled up our trash bin for the week, but we also boxed a lot of stuff up to move down into our newly-redesigned basement closet (pictures of that coming soon). Around 9 PM we got brave and decided to finally play the new game that Smeeta and Dave bought Nick for his birthday. We had gotten it out once before, but after spending a half hour putting all the little stickers on decided not to play. It was a lot of fun! It's another train game, but it's pretty complicated. It took about 4 hours to play, so we didn't finished until around 1. I ended up beating Nick by $4, so it was very, very close. We'd love to try with more players so if anyone has a lot of time to kill give us a call!

The game board - Nick is brown and I am green.

Today's plans: stay home away from the snow! Nick has already shoveled the drive, and is working on the basement while I play on here. We're listening to the Viking game but not really watching - looking forward to the Pittsburgh-Cincinnati game tonight. I'd better go help!

OW! A Thanksgiving Story.

Another Thanksgiving weekend is over and Nick and I are ready to embrace Christmas! We drove to Iowa on Wednesday night, arriving just in time for one of Nancy's delicious suppers with Erin-made cupcakes for dessert. We decided to skip playing a game and watch Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark instead. I thought I hadn't seen it before, but after we got to the end I realized I had. Maybe next time I'll graduate to whatever the second movie in the trilogy is!

Thanksgiving was spent with Nancy's sister, her husband, their daughter and granddaughter. We had turkey and stuffing - no suprises here! I got to watch the fantastic Packer victory (after missing the rough first quarter while eating) then napped while Erin beat Nick and the others at Scrabble. From there we headed over to Nick's grandparents, where I got to meet more family members and visit for a couple of hours. Back over to Nancy and Jeff's, where Nick won at Trains and we discovered that the rules to Sorry! actually have a subset for "adults only" play. We switched halfway through and I won the game!

Friday was our lazy day. The kids slept in while the grown-ups went to work. We went and bothered Nancy at the post office, then got lunch at Godfather's while we waited for the lady to measure Nick for a tux to get back from lunch. After Nick was taken care of, we drove home and Nick and Jeff headed out to Jeff's hunting "shed" while I won three games of Trains (two against Nancy and Erin and one against just Erin). Then we went to the "shed" as well. Jeff has built a pretty cool 3-story building out on his hunting land. We had a cookout on the second-level balcony and sat inside for a while to visit. We then swung by Nancy's sister's house because I have never seen it. She lives in a very nice log "cabin" that is huge. I loved her decorating style. We played a game of Scrabble (won by Erin at the last minute) and Balderdash (won by Nick's cousin) before heading home. Nancy and Jeff were still up and Jeff joined us for some Euchre. Nick and I lost two of three games to him and Erin. Then we got devious - Jeff quit and Erin went upstairs and Nick and I pulled all the queens out of the Euchre deck. I dominated at 3-handed: won every time and got to 15 first by a landslide (Nick had 1 and Erin had -1). I was golden! Then we played Sorry. We decided that it wasn't fair to have one side of the board open so we made a ghost player to take over that side. The three of us played using the newly found "adult" rules and the ghost played the kid rules. We agreed that the ghost would always make the best strategic move and wouldn't target any one person no matter what happened to it. The ghost won.

Saturday was our last day in Iowa. We had lunch with three of Nancy's sisters before they headed off to a baby shower and Nancy gave us early Christmas presents which were fantastic! I think Adam is getting the same thing so I don't want to say what it was, but all three of us were very happy. We had an uneventful drive back to Minneapolis and took Erin to Costco and Boston's once we arrived. Then she and Nick played Wii until they couldn't keep their eyes open any longer!

Today, today was one of my favorite days of the year: decorating the house for Christmas! Erin and I got out all the Christmas decorations and put them up, then we went to lunch at J. Cousineau's with Nick. The three of us headed over to get a tree after we were done eating.

I was standing innocently in the parking lot, looking at two trees and trying to decide if I should call Nick over to get his opinion on either one of them. All of a sudden, I was thumped on the head. My first thought was "man, that's pretty solid to be a Christmas tree!". Then Erin was rushing over and pulling a 2x4 off of me! It had a couple of nails sticking out of the end of it - luckily none of them got me. The 2x4 was about 20 feet long and had been standing up in the middle of one of the X-shaped Christmas tree holders. The holders are designed to hold four trees and this one only had two tiny ones in it. The 2x4s are used to hold up the overhead lights for when it is dark out. We threw the 2x4 on the ground and told the kids working the place what had happened. They're all just high school kids though and they were pretty freaked out. I am fine though - it only hurt for about five minutes and it happened seven hours ago so no problems. We ended up not getting either of those trees though!

Erin was able to help us get the tree set up in its stand and the lights on before Nick brought her back to the airport. She always complains that we get here there too early, so Nick purposely only got her there about an hour before she was scheduled to leave. However, she was delayed an hour in the airport and then stuck on the tarmac for another 2.5 because Georgia was too busy to accept her plane at its scheduled time. At least it wasn't completely our fault this time! When Nick got home we put up all the ornaments, made some pasta and settled in to watch SNF - the Patriots almostlost.

Now my house smells like the pine needles and ready to go. I love Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope everyone has arrived at their holiday destinations safely and without any major problems along the way. Enjoy the turkey and the football - I'm dressed in game-day clothes (less than 1.5 hours 'til kick-off!).

Two funny things:

First, for the kid who can't make honor roll: I saw a bumper sticker on a car that said "My child had a perfect dental appointment with Drs. Blah and Blah." Good for you kid!

Second, apparently the Gap can't not put the little baggie on their clothing. I'm wearing my new turkey-eating pants today and behind the hang-tag was the little baggie that normally has a button in it for pants or thread in it for a sweater. My pants don't have a button in the front so they just gave me an empty bag. Good call there.

Have a great holiday!

When No Adventures Can Be Found

Nick and I have had a pretty low-key week. On Sunday night, the power went out in the middle of our dinner, right around 8 pm. By 8:20 it still wasn't back (and the entire street was dark so it wasn't just us) so we left to go see Bee Movie. It was cute, we got our private showing, but it would have been better to see it at the discount theatre in a month or so. But the power was back on when we got home, which is really the important thing, right?

Monday night we played a hard-fought tennis match - in an hour and a half we were unable to finish two sets. Tuesday we kept it simple, wrapping Christmas presents as we watched The Biggest Loser on TV.

Last night was probably the most exciting night of the week. We played volleyball and only won our 3rd game (but did lead in the second game 24-23 so we could have had it), then headed over to Granite City to celebrate Dave's birthday a week early (but the last night he's planning on being in Minnesota for a while). We had a very good turnout for a Wednesday night - 16 people. We had to split up between two tables, but it all worked out pretty well. It was great to finally get back there to eat again. Happy Birthday Dave!

Game Day!

It's Sunday game-day again, the cap to what has already been a fun weekend. On Friday night, Nick and I went to Red Lobster. We were planning on going to Granite City (finally!) but received a coupon in the mail for Red Lobster and wanted to use it before we forgot about it. I did plan a birthday celebrate for Dave at GC this week so there's no way of getting out of it this time :)

Saturday we did a little Costco shopping and regular grocery shopping and Nick made lasagna for the first time! It was delicious! We used italian sausage instead of ground beef and I really liked how it turned out. I was in charge of the salad and the garlic bread, also delicious. We were joined for supper by a friend of mine from work, her husband, and their year old baby. We don't really have baby toys but he had a great time crawling back and forth under the dining room table (at least until he got stuck on a chair!).

I've also made excellent progress on my scrapbook since we've gotten home from Mexico - done about 13 pages. Maybe this is the push that will finally get me almost to real time? Ok, that's doubtful, but I'm working on my birthday right now so I'm only about six months off!

Today: Vikings @ Green Bay. I'm doubly excited because we get to stay home and watch the game! I'm going to have a grilled cheese sandwich and Doritos for lunch, not bar food. :) GO PACK GO!!

Back in the USA!

Nick and I are safely back on American soil again. We had a wonderful time in Cozumel. With the exception of a few short-lived thunderstorms (they appear quickly and end quickly) the weather was gorgeous. They also have daylight savings time a week earlier than the US so starting Sunday it got dark early (around 6PM).

We spent most of the week sleeping, reading (I'm on my 4th Jane Austen), watching movies, swimming in our private pool and enjoying the local restaurants. We walked or biked everywhere so we both feel great! No scuba diving but we did go snorkeling in the ocean. That was awesome!

It was a fantastic vacation - hopefully pictures will follow soon!