Twins Sweep!

And Nick and I were there to see it. Yes, we were lucky enough to go to two Twins games this week! We had slightly better seats this time, sitting above the Twins' dugout. Much less fanfare (and half the attendance) - the first pitch was thrown by a woman who's 101st birthday was today. No homers either, but we were treated to several errors by the Orioles, batting around the order in the 3rd and a double play. Our new pitcher, Roman Ortiz, looked pretty good too. Here's a few pitchers of Mauer on offense:

Mauer hits a double!!


Leading off third base.

Twins Win Again!

A slightly more difficult game tonight, but the Twins pulled it off. I watched it while working on my scrapbook and playing Trivial Pursuit with Nick. I won't give away the outcome, but the last answer was "Thomas Jefferson" and the score was 6 pies to 1. 6 pies had 3 pies before 1 pie made it out of the center spoke section.

Now what you are really waiting for: Pictures from last night's game!!

We were on the third base line past third base so I couldn't get a good picture of Joe Mauer catching, but he did do his pre-game warm-up stretches right in front of my section!


Brad Radke throws the ceremonial first pitch. He did pretty well for a guy who's been retired since September!


Paris Bennett sang the national anthem. She was a top-10 finalist last season on American Idol for anyone who doesn't watch much FOX.


Security tackles a man who ran out on the field during the 8th inning. He did a pretty good job running around - it took several minutes before he was tackled. This also happened right in front of us.


Totally random, but it snowed today. The poor ducks just sat out there for a while hoping it would stop and when I went to get my camera they had hidden somewhere so I couldn't get a picture of ducks in the snow. It's actually sticking too which is the scary part.

Twins Win!

Tonight Nick and I used his Valentine's Day gift: tickets to the Twins season opener! We got to the game early and got free hats and magnet schedules at the gate, then found our seats and sat down to watch the pre-game batting practice and entertainment. They had two "stars" participate in this - Brad Radke (newly retired Twins pitcher) threw the ceremonial first pitch and former American Idol Top 10 Contestant Paris Bennett (she lived in the Twin Cities briefly) sang the national anthem. Finally, it was game time.

The Twins ended up winning 7-4! Some highlights: back-to-back home runs in the second inning. Morneau was thrown a ball, then he hit the home run. Hunter knocked one out of the park on the very next pitch! We also saw a balk, a stolen base, and a crazy fan running around on the field. Took security a couple of minutes to catch him - I have a video of the tackle on my camera!

I was very excited to see that all my favorite players from last year had returned - the only difference in the starting line up was the new DH (who didn't impress me that much). Even many of the bench players are familiar to me. Hope this means we'll have an even better year than last year! Go Twins!!

Weekend Achievements

Only a couple of notable things to add. Nick worked hard all weekend and got all the wainscoting up in the bathroom - yay! You can see in the picture below that the tub is going to be huge!!! A bunch more grunt work this week to get the little wall installed and primed and the plumbing in place, then maybe we'll have the tub in next week once Dave's back and can help (if his hernia will allow it).

The Wainscoting is Up!!

I worked crazily on my scrapbook and now only have 8 more pages to finish. After that I'll be caught up through the beginning of October - not bad at all. My goal is to finish before my mom comes to visit this weekend, we'll see how that pans out. Lucky for me she's not planning on arriving until Saturday morning - one extra evening :)

Other fun stuff this weekend - Saturday night we met Paul, Ashley, Ross, Heidi and Rob at Granite City. I think Rob was a little sad to be the only "couple-less" one there, but we told the waitress he was married; I don't know if she believed us though! Afterwards, Ross and Rob came over and we continued the Wii fun. They hadn't really played much before, so we pitted them against each other in tennis and baseball, then played 4-player golf and bowling (the only two you can do with only two remotes, we really need to pick up two more).

Today was pretty quiet. Went to church and ran some errands together, then we decided to go out and see a movie. We went to a new-to-us discount theatre and saw The Pursuit of Happyness. It was very good, sad but with enough little jokes that it wasn't completely depressing. I read the Reader's Digest story on it a while back so I knew what was going to happen, but it was still worth seeing.

And that's the weekend. Nick is downstairs playing Wii Sports and I'm messing around up here. We have a big week coming up so come back again for more fun adventures!

Erin

Some of you have been asking about Erin, the mysterious commenter who likes to hang around here. Well good news! Today an undated photograph of Erin as a child has turned up. Enjoy!

Wii

Oh yes, if you haven't heard, we caved and bought a video game system - the Nintendo Wii! Right now we only have one game for it, Wii Sports, but we're having so much fun with it we don't feel the need to diversify. It has tennis, bowling, boxing, baseball, and golf games on it, so it has plenty of ways to entertain us. We play the tennis and bowling games most often - we're both pros at tennis now!

It's so much fun I even created a new label for it. If you haven't tried it out yet, give us a call or come over, it's a lot of fun! :)

Who's the Julie?

(Not to offend any person named Julie; this Julie refers to a Wii-tennis player controlled by the computer.)

It's Friday night and the mood is right. Gonna have some fun, show you how it's done. TGIF!! (Steph, hope you appreciate that ditty). Tonight was a night in four parts. First, Nick invited Bob over to share a supper of delicious Take'n'Bake pizza with us, followed by a few games of Wii-tennis.

Next, the boys left to help Ed move and I played some more Wii on my own, achieving pro-status in Wii-tennis and getting a 91-pin strike. Yay! Soon enough, Andrea arrived to have a mini-girls' night. We looked at wedding photos and I taught her how to play Trains - she did very well and beat me the second game, something Nick has yet to achieve. After that, we went downstairs and played a few games of Wii-tennis ourselves. Andrea was pretty good; we destroyed all the computer teams we played against, especially a poor 400-level player named Julie. We moved onto Wii-baseball and played a very poor first game, going three innings without a single hit. We were halfway through our second game and it was going much better (Andrea got the bases loaded once and I had three home runs) when I got a call from Nick - he had a flat and was stranded. So, being the good people we are, Andrea and I turned off the Wii, eliminating our good game, and went to rescue him and Bob. Luckily they were only about 5 miles away so it didn't take too long.

Then it was time for the third part of the evening. Andrea and I had a Wii-baseball rematch and tied, 1-1, then we tried 4-way tennis. It was crazy but fun. We followed that up with two games of Wii-bowling. Bob impressed us all with getting 5 strikes to start the second game, then slowed down to finish at 215.

After that it was pretty late, so our company went home. Nick and I saw them out and headed upstairs, only to be distracted by the Trains game still sitting on the dining room table. So of course we had to play a game. We were both very East Coast and I managed to squeak out a victory courtesy of my longest train (34 to Nick's 33) - yes, I won by a single point.

So, happy Friday to all of you. Hope yours was as fun as mine was!!

Winners

Nick and I each won a game today - I was the first spoof winner and Nick was the big poker winner. I guess poker is more impressive, but a win is a win. Go Nick!!

Pudgy Pies!!

The brilliant spring weather is continuing and seeing as March is almost over I'm hoping that it's here to stay! Yesterday was a typical Saturday - Nick played racquetball in the morning and I slept in, then cleaned while he worked on the bathroom (yes, the bathroom work is on again!). In the evening, we went over to Rob and Katie's for a "garage" party - Rob grilled burgers and we all ate in the garage and played Trivial Pursuit (also in the garage). We went back to elementary school and "counted off" for teams - it worked pretty well because it split up all the couples since they were all originally sitting next to each other. We had 4 teams of 3; one all male, one all female, and two that were two male, one female. The male team managed to pull out the victory, but it was pretty close all around.

Today we went out for a bike ride - we rode over to Subway and the scrapbooking store, then took the extended route down around by the lake and up to Home Depot before making it home just as it started to sprinkle. After that, I took some time to work on my scrapbook while Nick worked a little more on the bathroom. When we started to get hungry Nick mentioned pulling the new fire pit (thanks Adam!) for the first time. So Nick got to work chainsawing up a tree log that's been in the yard for a while and I ran to the store to get the makings for pudgy pies (thanks Jill for the makers!)!! Yum, yum, yum. We had such a nice time sitting in the backyard and cooking our food over the open flame. It went pretty well too, except for two overcooked pudgies and a small grass fire under the pit (that burned out after about 10 seconds but it was still scary when we first saw it. Good thing there was water on hand!).

Our fire pit in the dark. It was perfect sitting outside - the right temperature to sit up next to the fire in a sweatshirt and be comfortable, plus no bugs yet! What more can you ask for?


The pudgy pies cooking away.

Next, some evidence that the bathroom has not been abandoned. Most of the work Nick's been doing on it is structural, like reinforcing the wall to hold the new wall-mounted sink from the basement side, so not too interesting for pictures. However I did take a few today just to prove that he's doing something!

Our new light fixture. Nick works on the bathroom in the evenings sometimes and not having a light in there was getting annoying since the portable one heats up the room too much, so he put this in last week.


The "wall" that will go between the tub and the wall (the tub is about 4 inches shorter than the width of the bathroom so this will fill in the gaps). Until Nick stood it up against the wall it was hard for me to visualize how much less floor space we'll have in the bathroom once the project is finished. But that's actually a good thing - it'll look more like a bathroom and less like a closet that someone randomly threw a toilet into. :)

Finally, according to SI.com, it looks like Joe Theismann finally got the boot!! That'll make MNF more enjoyable to watch. Can't wait to find out who his replacement is. Actually, I can't wait for football to start period, but I'm sure you all knew that! The draft is coming up in a month, then it's only 3 months or so until the preseason starts.

What a great weekend!

Nick and I are So Nice!

It's spring in Minnesota (at least for the next couple of days)! While taking a nice walk after work, Nick and I decided that we wanted to invite some friends over tonight. Rob, Katie, Seth, and Bob came over to visit us and play board games. We ended up playing three, of which Nick won two (Monopoly and Trains) and I won one (Scattergories). So much for being gracious hosts, but I think everyone had fun. :)

Rob's in the bathroom! Yay!