Another Birthday Shoutout

Happy 30th Birthday Anne!! Her actual birthday is today but we helped her celebrate last night at the Shout House. If you go on a Tuesday of your birthday month (or week I can't remember) you get free drinks all night long. Pretty sweet deal. We had a ton of fun as always...

Me, Kris & Abbie


Abbie, Brenda, & Anne dancing.


Anne playing her famous trombone.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

I'm really not a big gambler but after last night I might become one!! (The Island is calling...) The Eids invited us to join them for an overnight at TI. We wanted to have one final night just the 4 of us before Brent leaves for Oklahoma. I thought most of my time would be spent in the hot tub or watching the guys play Black Jack until I was introduced to Pai Gow... They were doing $200 drawings every hour and if you were sitting at a table you qualified for the drawing. Within 45 minutes of me sitting there my name was drawn and I won!! I couldn't believe it. I never win anything. I happily took by $200 and told Justin to pocket it and not to spend - we had shopping to do the next day. Later on the night we went back to the Pai Gow tables and I went on a winning steak. I was up $100 by the time we finally left. This may not seem like a lot to those who gamble but to me it was tons!! Who knew gambling could be so fun? :) And at such a perfect time to hit up all those after Xmas day sales!

My winnings.

In the spirit of Christmas...

Conner must've been a good boy this year! He got his first Xmas card in the mail last week from his daycare. It even included 2 pet emergency stickers to put on our window! So nice. And last night one of the neighbor boys, Eli, came over and gave him his first Xmas present. Eli has been in love/fascinated with Conner ever since he was born. Before he could walk, he would sit and watch Conner's every move. As soon as he become mobile he tried to chase and keep up with Conner or help throw his ball. So it was no surprise last night whenever we tried to ask him a question he'd only squeal out The Puppy!! or Conner!!! And what did Conner get? Tennis balls of course for Eli to throw when the weather is nice again. I'm not sure which of them was more excited. Thanks Eli!!

Follow up: This morning we get a text that said Eli woke up and wanted to go to Conner's house to play. awww come on over, Conner will be waiting!

Conner showing off this unwrapping skills.


Merry Christmas to everyone!! Hope you have a wonderful couple of days!

Wacky Friday

One of my favorite books as a Kid was Wacky Wednesday by Dr Seuss. I can't say I've thought about that book for probably 15 years but I had a moment yesterday that brought it all back. Here's the book synopsis (from Amazon) - "A baffled youngster awakens one morning to find everything's out of place, but no one seems to notice! Beginning readers will have fun discovering all the wacky things wrong on each page while sharpening their ability to observe, as well as to read." Very fun book for kids but anyways. It wasn't a Wednesday but it was still very Wacky.

I stepped off the bus and was waiting to cross the street when I noticed a blind man out of the corner of my eye. I glanced over at him and he had the longest and tallest corn cob pipe I have EVER seen. Well first of all let me say, I didn't think a corn cob pipe actually existed besides in Frosty the Snowman. And second this thing was HUGE!!! Plus it's freezing cold out, everyone else is all bundled up and here's this blind guy just standing there waiting for the bus sucking on his pipe. I don't even know if the thing was lite, but it was definitely sitting in his mouth and he wasn't moving around at all. He almost looked like a statue. I was so close to whipping out my camera phone but thought that just might be a bit overboard and rude. Here's the closest picture I could find to the pipe. It still doesn't do the image in my mind justice or show how out of place he looked...

Belated Bday Shoutout

I haven't been very good at my birthday shoutouts. Sorry if I have missed yours! A big Happy Birthday to Natalie last Monday. We fought the snow storm and celebrated it on Tuesday night by going to Pizza Luce and Sister Hazel at the Fine Line. 4 years ago we celebrated her 30th birthday going to Sister Hazel with pretty much the same group of girls. All night long people were making comments about how different this time around was - and by different I mean lamer. :) I think we were calling it being "older and wiser". Last time we started with a huge contained of Jell-o shots, many drinks and I don't remember much food being eaten. We went late into the night despite the fact we all had to work the next day. Yeah, we were rock stars. This time there was still wine and liquor flowing but plenty of food was eaten and the group I was with left by 10:30. But we still had lots of fun even if we're not as crazy as we used to be!

The group - Paula, Brenda, Nat, Kristen, Steph, Angie, Carolyn, Beth


Cran this shirt made me think of you. :)


Me & Nat

Busy Busy Busy

That about sums up my past week and the next up coming one. So many things going on and they are all so fun. Hate to do a cop out but since I forgot my camera last week Anne's blog shows all the fun we had at the Holidazzle and the hungover (for some of us) Friday that we had!

The weekend was filled with lots of holiday fun including more cookie baking! And there were no mishaps this time :) Cari and I went over to mom's on Sunday and baked the day away. I have so many cookies now and have no idea what to do with them all especially since Justin can't eat any of them! Let me know if you want a plate of cookies and I will gladly make you one!

Cari told me I was making a mess so I showed her what a real mess looks like.


Hard at work


Taking a breather

Baby Moehring Shower

So many fun events this week. I love this time of year. Last night I went to Kristen's baby shower with Cran and a bunch of current and old SWW girls. (SWW is where Justin used to work a long time ago and how I met Kristen) It was a very fun night and great to see everyone again. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Cran and I creating our baby onesie.


Our creation - So Berry Cute!!


K cubed - Kristen, Kristen, Kristie


The current and old SWW girls

Xmas is coming!!

The tree is up and decorated. The presents are (almost) all bought, wrapped, and under the Christmas tree waiting in great anticipation of the fun to come. Does it get any better?? Of course with in 30 minutes of putting the presents under the tree Zoey was chewing on the ribbons and Conner had found the only edible present and had unwrapped it. Damn kids...

Cookie Baking

Friday night Jenny, Cran, Cari, Kate & Gail all fought the snow and came down to my house to bake cookies. Jenny is a great cook but says she can't bake for the life of her so it was our mission to teach her a few lessons and send her home with a lot of cookies. Overall I think we did a pretty good job but there were of course a few mishaps...

The first wasn't really a mishap, maybe only to me. Kate wanted to go the easy way of making cut out cookies so she brought frozen cookie dough where all you had to do was take the cookie out of the package and put it on the cookie sheet. Then we used frosting out of the can and sprinkles. For those of you who know my mom and how I was brought up you'll understand why I found the whole process appalling. :)



The second I will take complete credit for. Cran and I were trying to thin the melted chocolate chips so we could drizzle it. She though adding fat would work so we tried that and it didn't thin it enough. I insisted that milk should work...oops. Once the milk was added it curdled and formed a big lump. Jenny tasted it and said it was the worst choclate she's ever had. We had to start over...





The last incident was probably the highlight of the night for me. We were trying to make peanut butter blosoms. It was at the end of the night and we were all getting tired. Jenny was helping me and I told her to add the flour. She carefully measured it out and put it in the bowl. We mixed it up and I instructed her to start rolling the dough into balls. Here's how it went (paraphrased):
Jenny: This dough won't form into balls
Me: What do you mean it won't form into balls?
[I walk over and try it, the dough melts all over my hand]
Me: Nope it sure won't make a ball.
[I taste the dough - it's super sweet and sugary]
Me: Are you sure you added flour and not powdered sugar?
[We all look around the kitchen]
Gail: [picks up the flour] I've got the flour over here and I don't think it's moved in a long time. [and the powded sugar is sitting right next to Jenny's dough]

We all uncontrolably burst out laughing and through the dough away. We decided peanut butter bloosoms weren't going to get made and Jenny states that she's never baking again - I'm sure she'll change her mind come next year. :) At least we still had plenty of other cookies!

Pie Failures

I'm not so sure I like to blog my failures but Justin insisted it was a good blog moment so here goes...

I like to consider myself the baker of the house. I can cook too but not as well as Justin and am much better when following a recipe. I always give Justin crap when he bakes because he doesn't like to measure. Inevitably something goes wrong and I end up redoing whatever he tried. Wed night the tides changed. I was all excited to bring the pumpkin pie to Thanksgiving this year. My mother in law has the best pumpkin pie recipe so I couldn't wait to show off my skills. I also decided that I should go all out and make my own crust - mistake #1. I'm still not sure exactly what went wrong. I swear I followed the instructions to a T but after the pie was baked the crust was mushy and not very crust like. It was not looking good at this point. Since I made 2 pies I thought I'd cut off a piece and see how it tasted. As soon as I cut into the pie I also noticed that it seemed like the inside of the pie was not the right consistency. I knew it was done because the knife pulled out clean but something was definitely not right. Of course now it's 10 pm, I'm tired and have 2 worthless pies. So what do i do??? See pic...



Yep that's right. I stirred it all into one big mush. :) Here's the other pie too. It looks a lot better than it was.



Gosh I look tired. Maybe just frustrated. Anyways I did end up fixing the situation. Justin called him mom. Turns out there was a mistake in the recipe that we had. I ran to the store to buy premade crusts and more ingredients. Of course I had to run twice because I forgot the eggs the first time. 2 and a half hours later the pies were done and were wonderful. I forgot to take pictures of them but trust me they were delicious looking!

The rest of the weekend was great. Pics are up of it. Black Friday Cari and I continued our shopping tradition. Sat we went xmas tree shopping and hopefully Cran will blog it. It was so fun to have Mallory help us pick our tree out. Got all of my xmas decorations up around the house and am in total Xmas spirit!! Good thing Dec is almost here.

Oh I also posted answers to the Pictionary Blog under the comments

Best weekend of the year?

So inappropriate but it makes me laugh! Don't show that to your kids. :)

I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and hope you all get to enjoy the long weekend! Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. How can it get any better than watching football, drinking wine, eating tons of foods and napping with your closest family members? And of course a close second for my favorite holiday is Black Friday. Cari and I have a long standing tradition of doing our x-mas shopping that day. We don't go out at 4 am with the crazies but we go early enough to make some of the early bird specials. I can't wait for all of it!!

Spalon Holiday Party

We had Justin's holiday work party this past weekend. I decided since I hardly know anyone I didn't need to bring my camera, so thanks to Facebook friends I stole a couple pics. Anyways the party was a blast as always. It was held at Interlachen Country Club. Drinks, dinner, casino night and dancing. Can't really beat it! At the end of the night there's an auction to spend your winnings. Unfortunately Justin and I were at different black jacks tables but both had the some bad idea. On the last hand they said no betting limit so we both went all in...and both of our dealers got blackjack. Doh! What are the odds? So we had no money to bid on items. It was still fun to see what people got.

One of the most fun parts about his party is the outfits and hairstyles that some of the girls/guys have. After 5 years I think I am starting to get immune. I hardly did any double takes even for the guy with a spiked mohawk bleached blonde on one side, black on the other and the girl whose blonde curly hair had a 1 foot diameter. It's so great. I wish I had to guts to pull something like that off. And so entertaining to see. Should've brought my camera just for that! :)

Us at home before we left.


My fav Spalon girl, Kelly.


Justin and some of his ladies.

Pictionary Part II

We finally got to celebrate Justin's Birthday with the Eids and Moehrings on Friday. We started the night with a delicious dinner at Bonfire and then headed back to our place for games. This of course brought on a rematch of Pictionary boys vs girls. Happy to say that the girls kicked butt this time!! Since it was so much fun last time, I saved a few of my favorite pics for everyone to guess what they are. I'll post the answers in a couple days. Have fun!

Florida Bound

I've had many questions about the FIL and I'm happy to say that it's official...Rick is out of the Midwest and headed to Florida as I write. Yeah!!! Not sure who is more excited about that; him or I. ;) After staying with us for 6 weeks and being in Madison for another week, he has gotten the go ahead from all of his doctors to head south. It was just in time before 18 inches of snow was predicted to fall in Presque Isle where he lives. He ended up not having the eye surgery and has to wait to see how they stable out. He'll get them check again in January when he returns for a visit. Hopefully being around Disney and warm weather will help him continue his recovery so he's back at 100% soon. Thanks to everyone who has supported us through this whole process. You have no idea how much it's helped!

Chocolate

My family loves to do unique things around the cities, especially go to different expos at the Convention Center. On Saturday, Cari and I headed to the Twin Cities Chocolate Extravaganza. Apparently this is the 5th annual but it was my second year and Cari's first. It's chocolate heaven!! You pay to get in of course, but once you're in there are tons of different chocolate samples; dark, milk, white, truffles, martinis, turtles, sauce, and even some savory items for when you are sweeted out. This year they also had a few wine and vodka stations for your liquor fill. And of course it wouldn't be complete without the chocolate fashion show which does put touches on chocolate on each outfit. The girl in pink was my favorite. She was supposed to represent a truffle and the drizzle on her skirt was made from chocolate.



So if you are a chocolate lover like me, I'd reccomend checking out the show next year!!

Speling B

I have always been a horrible speller and have never found anyone worse than I until I started working at my current job. My manager takes the cake on this one. He is constantly getting made fun of by us as he writes stuff on the white boards. He must've had a particularly hard day when he wrote these...





Yes that's supposed to say Budget and Prospecting. Oh too funny!

Ellerie Ulfers

I got to meet my old roomie, Rachel's, baby last night. She was born in Aug about 6 weeks earlier than she was supposed to come. Above are candy bars that were given out at her baby shower - which was supposed to be held before she was born but since she came so early it was a couple weeks after. I thought it was a really cute idea. On the back they attached paper giving Ellerie's stats in candy/nutrition format. Super cute. Sorry it's hard to read. All I had to use was my camera phone. Not the best quality. It was great to finally meet Ellerie. She's really stinking cute.

Champions!!

We had our end of the year kickball party last night to celebrate our 1st place standings! Our goal all season was to win these shirts and we made it. I have to say they aren't nearly as cool as I was hoping. They don't even mention kickball anywhere on them. Oh well. At least we can claim victory! Thanks for a great season everyone. Can't wait to try out some indoor kickball. :)

Drunk Again And Looking To Score Team Pic


Shirt Logo.

Back Home!

We've returned from our trip and are trying to get back into the swing of things. The last day of New York was great. We went down to SoHo, had lunch, checked out Greenwich Village and walked all the way back up to Midtown. It was about 70 blocks just going north not including all the weaving around we did. A great way to see the city but we were tired. And for everyone who was asking, I did bring tennis shoes. We went and saw Spring Awakening. It was a great musical and even Justin liked it! Pics are posted..check them out.

On another note...I got my phone!!! We stopped at Best Buy on the way home from the airport. Obsessive? Maybe but I was too excited to wait. So far it's living up to all my expectations just trying to figure out all the features.


Time to go watch more election coverage. Justin & I got up and did our patriotic duty and voted before work this morning. Election days always get me excited!

NYC Updates

Hi all from the big apple!! We've done so much in the past 2 and a half days that I'm not sure where to even start. We walked all over town and pretty much saw all the big sites. I wish we would've brought a pedometer to see how many steps we've clocked. It would be a ton!! Our hotel is in a great location. We're just one block from Broadway and a couple blocks north of Times Square and also about 7 blocks south of Central Park. As Justin said yesterday it's perfect because you can walk to anywhere but it also sucks because you end up walking everywhere. Our feet were hurting at this point. Anyone know of a good spa?? :)

Thursday night our first purchases was a scarf for me and a hat for Justin. It's a lot colder than I had expected. Here's me in front the middle of Times Square.



Friday we went to the bottom of the island and saw the financial district. Cran - Thanks to sports mode on the camera I got some pics of Lady Liberty for Mal but she doesn't face the island, so they are from a side view. I thought she might be a kick out of this instead.



We headed up to China Town and Little Italy after that. Anne - I found the secret rooms of knockoff purses!! Thanks for the advice. I wanted to buy everything in there but was good and only got one for me and Cari. Here's me with a canoli in Little Italy.



Since Friday night was Halloween we headed to Greenwich Village to see their famous Halloween Parade. It was pretty cool. The news said over 2 million people were there watching it!

Sat we stayed in the Midtown area and saw the sites. Walked up Madison Ave and shopped at their market, walked through Central Park and came back down 5th Ave to see all the high end shops. I tried to get Justin to take me to Tiffany's but he wasn't having it. :) We ended the day by going out to a great steakhouse and then took a carriage ride around Central Park. My favorite was the Peta people protesting the carriage rides and yelling "Shame on you!!!" as we rode past them. I wanted to take a picture but Justin said that would just encourage them. Darn...

Central Park Zoo - if you notice in the background there is a cow in the Zoo. wow how exotic!! City people and their zoos...


Carriage Ride


That's the short version so far! We have one more full day here and are headed back tomorrow. See you all soon!

Happy Halloween!

Conner got his Halloween bandanna from his day care lady, Tory. So thoughtful!! He actually doesn't mind wearing it either. We gotta wish everyone an early Happy Halloween as Justin and I will be in New York City on Friday. We're heading out Thursday and returning on Monday. Not sure if there will be any time for blogging while I'm there so if not look for a long one when I return!

Help!

I'm really sick of all my music and want to download some new stuff. If anyone has any recommendations of artist/alubms they think I would like, let me know!! Email. post a comment, phone call, text...whichever you prefer. I'd take just about any genre besides Country. I have to draw the line there. :)