New Car

As I previously mentioned Justin got in a little fender bender in late June - with his dad's car that we were about to buy. What appeared to be just a smashed bumper turned out to be much, much more. We brought it into the shop to get it fixed. 1 month and ~$8,000 later (so glad the guy had insurance) we FINALLY have our car back. Complete with a pretty much new exterior from the hood back. Of course now all those perfect convertible days are over and we are into the sweltering heat of summer. No, I'm not bitter at all...BUT the good news is we officially own the car now and have many more fun times ahead of us!! Anyone want to go cruising?

This was taken before the accident. Looks better than new now.

The Answers

Looks like no one else wants to play along so here we go with the answers! Are you ready?
1. toothpick
2. lava
3. skis
4. lace
5. tight and no those aren't banana peels on the bottom of the paper. Think like a boy for a minute and when you think of tight what comes to mind. Yes that's what they drew...

Still so funny! Hope you enjoyed.

Pictonary

The Eids and Moehrings came over Friday night and the evening ended with a round of boys against girls Pictonary. We picked our favorites and decided that my fellow blog readers should get to play too! So who wants to play?? See if you can guess what the following pictures are - post in the comments and I will give the answers in a couple days. Good Luck!!!

1.

2.

3.

4.

5. My personal favorite.

Unfortunaly the boys won in the end. John's comment after the victory, "It's not who you play, it's how you play them and right now weeeeeee're HOT!!!" I think that says it all.

First Garden Meal

Last night Justin and I were trying to figure out what to have for dinner. We looked into our bare fridge and pulled out some lettuce for salad and chips and cheese for nachos. Yes I know, we eat a weird combination of stuff but there wasn't much to choose from. Suddenly it dawned on Justin that we can spice this whole meal up with food from the garden. I was sooooo excited so I ran out there and grabbed cilantro and a banana pepper for the nachos and a green pepper and tomato for the salad. I have never tasted a green pepper so flavorful. It was heaven. And a piece of advice: don't get a fresh banana pepper on the outside of your lips/mouth. It BURNS!! It didn't taste that hot on the nachos but I was in pain for a good 5 minutes. I can't wait for us to get more veggies! I feel so domestic. :)

Brawling Ballers

I haven't blogged too much about kickball this year and now I'm sad to say that last night was our last game for the summer season. The week before we clenched the 1st place spot in a very tight game where we came back in the bottom of the last inning after being down 4 runs. It was a great game to claim our victory. So since last night didn't matter a few of us decided to have a power hour before the game. Sure made for some fun kickball - especially with Jeff's party mix!

After the game we celebrated the season at the Fort Snelling Club. And FINALLY after 2.5 years of TNT, it has paid off. I won my first arm wrestling contest ever! Thank you to Katie for giving me that honor. ;) Maggie still kicked my butt, but I think if I hadn't been so worn out I could've taken Carlene too. (pictured below) Yeah I'm calling rematch - bring it!

It was a close one but Aaron pulled it out in the end.

Thanks for a great season team! Can't wait for SLP in the fall. We WILL claim the tee shirts this year!!!

Sandy Lake II

First I gotta give my bday shout out - Happy Birthday Cran!! Party it up Vegas Style. :)

The pictures are up!! Here are some of my favs. Unfortunately all of my blog moments didn't get pictures taken - there was no time to grab the camera as Brent was pulling up his pants. hehehe.

Pontoon Ride

The party tube

WT time! note the confetti sweater and mom's tight rolled pants in the background

Sandy Lake I

Another fun weekend has come and gone. Justin and I joined Brent, Cran and Mallory at the Crandall cabin on sat for our annual cabin weekend. We had a little bit of a rough start getting up there due to my poor memory skills. I tried really hard to be a good wife and pack up the car Friday so we could get an early start Sat. Unfortunately the combination of having too much fun Thurs night at Jeff's birthday party and a 19 mile roller blade Friday afternoon put me into extreme exhaustion/wanting to die and I was hardly conscious when packing the car. In addition to forgetting some small minor things, we get to Cari's to drop off Conner and realized that I had packed his kennel but forgot the key bars that hold the kennel together. Oops! Luckily I have MacGyver for a husband and he figured out how to bungee it together and had it stay. Problem solved and off we went!


The best thing about spending a weekend with a fellow blogger is whenever something eventful would happen we would turn to each other and say "Blog Moment!" haha. I know we're nerds, but it was fun. So here are my top blog moments for the weekend:


1. Brent was walking around and his shorts were falling down so we were teasing him about sagging shorts. To prove to us how big they were he attempted to pull down his shorts without unzipping. (I can't stop laughing as I am typing this) Apparently they weren't as big as he thought because in addition to pulling his shorts down, his boxers came with it and Cran and I had a clear view of his nice white ass. He scrambled to pull them back up but it was too late. The damage was done and I don't think he will ever live that down.


2. Brent was fishing on the dock and he got a medium sized sunny. He was carefully removing the hook from the fish's mouth when he squeezed the sunny a little too hard. Out squirted a huge load of poo from the fish all over Brent's shorts - yes, the same shorts from the above story. I didn't know that 1 fish could poo that much!!


3. Our main agenda for the weekend was to lay in the sun, especially on the 8 person blow up tube. It was cloudy on sat when we got there but the weather people promised a clearing of the clouds and some sun before the next round of rain. Next thing we know tornado sirens are going off and Kare 11 is telling us to take cover in our non-basement cabin. Super...Needless to say sat was a bust for outdoor activities but today's sun made up for it.


4. The weekend ended with a bang - literally. We were cleaning up and I dropped one of the lounge chairs on the top of my foot. OWE!! I now have lovely blueish purple bruise slowly forming. I have a feeling in a day or 2 it might be photo blog worthy. For now I have to figure out what shoes I can wear this week...

Unfortunately since one of the small things I forgot was my camera I borrowed Cari's for the weekend and I don't have the card reader for it. You'll have to wait for Sandy Lake II to see pics!

Brown Thumb

Help!! I think my brown thumb has struck already. I took at look at my garden today and a bunch of my red/green peppers are turning black. I tried to google it and didn't have much luck, so I'm turning to anyone who knows anything about gardening - or who knows of a good place I can find information. They should be getting plenty of water and the soil appears to be holding it. Am I over watering? Is it because the plants already had peppers on them? Are we too late in the season? Any insight - even an educated guess would help. I am clueless. Here's some pics (not great ones but you get the idea).

More Mail!!

I came home today to a letter from a holistic chiropractor who was very concerned about Justin's car accident. They wanted to make sure he was getting the proper care. Oh yeah? Where were you 2 weeks ago when his back actually hurt? hehehe. I had to laugh. I wonder what is coming tomorrow.

My niece

It was so great to finally meet little Izzy. She is such a doll. She spent most of the weekend sleeping until this morning when we finally got to see her eyes open for more than just feeding time. I took a lot of pictures as requested and here are my favorites.

When we got home I got the mail and was very amused by it. A couple weeks ago Justin got rear ended on 494. He was the front car in a 3 car accident. It smashed the bumper of his car a bit but he was unharmed. So anyways in the mail we have 3 letters address to him from law offices saying they heard about the car crash and wanted to help him pursue legal action. Really?? Where do they find this stuff? Something must've been posted last week since they all arrived on the same day. Wonder how many more we'll get...

Love or Lust??

I've always been anti Blackberries and cell phones that do email/web and everything else. I think it's because I have to constantly tell my hubby to put it away when we are at dinner, having a conversation, etc. I am way too obsessed w/email anyways so it would just be one more thing I would become addicted too. All of my thoughts changed yesterday. Crystal has been raving about this new phone she got. I read some reviews on it and have completely fallen in love. I can't stop thinking about it. I HAVE TO HAVE THIS!! It's like an iPhone but for Sprint. It can do everything - photos, music, web, email, GPS, and more. Maybe this is just lust and I'll be over it soon but I am not so sure... We'll find out if it's in my possession next week!

Heading to Cambria this weekend to meet my niece! Can't wait to see her. Lots of pics to come when we return. Have a great weekend!!

Garden

Justin promised me that by the end of June I'd have a garden. I can't say I really believed him but low and behold he was close! After the first weekend in July my garden is planted!! I have to say I'm pretty excited. It's kinda a lazy man's garden - right up my alley. We put in a retaining wall that's high enough so you don't really have to bend over and added a drip line that's hooked up to the sprinkler system so I don't have to water. Nice!! We planted tomatoes, rhubarb, green, red, jalapeno, banana and other hot peppers, herbs and acorn squash. Since it was so late in the season I used all plants. The fence is still in progress but it's looking great so far.

Here's some before and after pics.

Photo Help

I was looking at my photo album recently and realized that I haven't ordered prints of my photos since last August. I thought it was probably about time that I ordered some so I went on snapfish to start going through all of them. I don't know if it was to0 overwhelming of a task or if my husband is rubbing off on me but I'm not even sure I want to order them anymore. Between my website, my blog, facebook, and the online photo albums everyone has do I even need to make prints and keep doing photo albums? I can't say I ever look at them nor does anyone else when they are over. Plus I already have a closet that is overflowing with old ones. Justin thinks we should only do special occasions like trips or I suppose when we have kids someday that will count too. :) I'm torn so I would really like to hear what everyone else does! Are all these prints really necessary? For now I'm going to finish through the end of 2007...

4th & Strawberries

Yesterday we went over to my parents for a 4th of July party. Had a good time especially eating the famous family onion and pepper rings. Probably the highlight of my day right there - maybe even my summer! The second highlight had to be while I was chatting w/Cran and Mallory walks over holding a beer stating it was her beer and she was going to drink it. And then of course my always so appropriate husband had to take it one step farther. :)

Since I have never been strawberry picking before, today seemed like a great day to try it. We found a place in Belle Plain which wasn't too far away. They said today was the first day strawberries were available for the season - perfect! They use this different technique called hydroponic so the plants are in pots and you don't have to bend over so much. Sounded even better. We already had plans to go biking w/Cari and Greg in the morning so we headed down there mid afternoon - against many warnings of how busy/crazy it was going to be. We got there and the parking lot was pretty empty, which should've been our first warning sign. We talk to a women in the shop and she tells us that it's been super busy all day long but there should still be some good berries along the back. We went to the back but it was pretty picked over and most of the strawberries were small. Not exactly what we were expecting. Who knew that a strawberry patch could run out of strawberries!!

They were still really juicy and tasty so it wasn't a total bust. Definitely not quite like the fields Justin was raving about that they had in Randolph. Maybe next weekend we'll have to check some of those out.

Conner Update

Thanks for everyone's concerns and questions about Conner! He's doing better today. We took him into the vet yesterday and they said he was running a fever. They gave him antibiotics, some pain meds and sent him on home. He was mostly his self yesterday just not quite as crazy and could hardly keep his eyes open last night. He did get spoiled yesterday afternoon and spent it with Dad at the office. Lucky dog!

Have a great 4th everyone!!!

The Million Dollar Dog

As most of you know Conner is a wonderful dog, but tends to be a little accident prone. It's not enough that we've replaced both of his back knees, treated him for eating a pack of sugarless "toxic" gum, and had countless other trips to the vet. I think we might be their favorite family. Tonight we are home and discussing what we should have for dinner when I notice Conner doing something really weird with his mouth. It looked liked he had something stuck in his gums, so Justin tries to check it out. If dogs can scream, then that's what I heard from Conner as Justin pressed on his cheek. After fussing a bit we got his mouth open and see that his top left canine tooth (that's the long one) has punctured the inside of his cheek (jowls??) and is stuck inside of it! It didn't go all the way through to the outside thank god, but it looked very painful. If you looked at him from the top, it looked like he had chew in his left cheek. We immediately call the vet and of course they are booked for the night, so we try one close by and they of course were closed. I'm near tears at this point, Conner won't stop playing with his mouth and all he really wants to do is cuddle with his mom. We're about to go to the EP emergency room when Justin takes one more look and it able to pull the tooth out of his cheek. *whew* The day is saved. We still have to take him into the vet tomorrow, make sure there's no infection and see if he needs antibiotics. At least he's not in much pain anymore. He's been recovering all night.

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I forgot a Birthday!!



Happy Birthday to Crystal tomorrow! Seriously what happened 9 months ago to make everyone born in the same week?