Twins Home Opener: Undefeated!

Baseball season is back! Nick and I went to the home opener tonight and had a fantastic time! We left a little late and only gave ourselves an hour and forty-five minutes to get there so we missed the top of the 1st inning, but we did get to see protesters in front of the courthouse so maybe that balances things out. We walked in just in time to see Joe Mauer hit a ground ball RBI and run safely to first. Go Mauer!

The rest of the game was exciting too. The Twins were playing the Angels, which meant Torii Hunter was back in town. He tipped his hat to the crowd before his first at bat and got a standing ovation. Of course, he later got booed when he caught a fly ball to get one of our batters out. In addition to Torii being gone, there was a lot of other turnover in the roster; only three starters back from last year. Carlos Gomez, one of the new players, was very entertaining to watch and stole two bases (the Twins had four overall)! We also saw the "Walk Ghost", Pat Nescheck, Joe Nathan, and Torii's bat break and fly way out into left field.

Who are these guys?

Mauer catching behind Hunter

The "Walk Ghost"

Nick and Karin

The only thing missing from this year's game was a crazed fan running onto the field before the ninth inning, but we did see some interesting fans. The woman sitting in front of us was wearing a blue flowered shirt (note: not matching) under her autographed Rondell White jersey with a pink MOA Twins cap. She turned around and said something to us about how Nick should just carry me out by my head. I wasn't quite sure what she was talking about and it turns out that Nick wasn't either, so we just let it go.

Back in the ramp, we were sitting in the car waiting to leave (we waited 30 minutes before turning the car on and getting in line because we were at the top and the gas light had turned on when we first pulled in) and a man came in and put a baby in the car next to us (luckily there was an empty space between his car and ours), got on his phone, and started to back up. He looked angry when the car behind him wouldn't let him in. In the other car's defense, it had been sitting motionless for about 20 minutes itself and still wasn't moving, so there was no where to go. The angry man proceeded to go forward and backwards and even when the other cars started to move no one would let him in. He finally gets out and we see that he had hit the car on the other side of him, which had two adults and at least two children in it. Left a huge dent in the side and took off some of the paint. A hit and run right in front of our eyes, because he never tried to talk to the other driver.

Eventually the traffic cleared and we made it home. I hope the Twins can ride the momentum and win (or sweep) the series!!

A Post Without a Theme

1. Will winter ever end? Yesterday we had one tiny snowpile in front of our house (by the curb from the snowplow); today Nick had to shovel twice.

Bye-Bye Lawn


The skyline driving into downtown Minneapolis tonight

2. Went to Horton Hears a Who last night. It was adorable! A great kid's movie.

3. The Packers get the MNF game opening weekend! That would be an awesome game to get tickets to.

4. The new bathtub has been filled once and attached to the wall. Progress!

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!

Weekend Update

Nick and I took it pretty easy Friday night, then Nick kicked off the 2008 phase of the bathroom remodel by getting the tub put in place! It took some help from Krista and Nic, but we got it in there. Everything else should be pretty easy from here on out. The tub takes up a lot of space, but the bathroom is still extremely spacious.

The faucet is just sitting there, not attached to anything

I, meanwhile, kicked off another mini-scrapbook project which is about 75% complete. I should be able to finish it on Wednesday night while Nick plays volleyball. Then I can get back to my regular scrapbooks. Yay!

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!

Useless Information

Worth a laugh nonetheless:

I often have trouble estimating the size my plastic cultery will be.

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???

Robbed!

I got home from girl's night and something seemed to be missing. Where's all our stuff?

What a big living room you have!

Oh, here it is :)

This doesn't look right

Home Improvement

My camera hasn't been very busy recently, but we have! Nick was taking a few pictures for his Mom tonight and left the camera out so I thought I'd take a few of some of his recent home improvement projects. Luckily they are all pretty small and don't really require "before" pictures.

The drawers are fixed! If you've never used my kitchen drawers this means nothing to you, but to anyone who has ever gone into one, you know this is a reason to celebrate!

Our new kitchen table, purchased and built after we dropped Erin off at the airport on New Year's Day (but photographed 15 minutes ago).

The new projector, ready for the game!!

Projector screen - it hides behind the crossbeam when not in use.

More to come I'm sure!

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!

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!

Karin Goes to Costco

Mmmm, supper!

We followed that with a game of Empire Builder - I won easily. So far the tally is Karin 4, Nick 2, all challengers 0. But it is fun :)

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!!