School Daze...

Ah, it's been awhile! Oops :) I should have blogged about our trip to Glacier National Park and our visit in Montana with family there. I should have blogged about the end of summer and the beginning of the school year. I should have...but I didn't! So, maybe those entries will come later! For now, I thought I'd upload a more recent picture of our "babies" and update on our everyday life.


Okay, first of all our dogs are doing well. Lola continues to frustrate us one moment and crack us up the next. She is truly the oddest dog I've ever met! So very weird...
They only thing they are unhappy with is that we are back in school which means they have reduced freedom during the day.

We are having a wonderful school year so far! The Senior class this year is a lot of fun and has really set a positive tone for the whole school. We both have pretty good schedules (well, as good as it gets I guess) and except for a few minor complaints, we have had a terrific first month.

College football season has begun again, so George believes all is right with the world. Saturdays are full of football for George and sleeping/cleaning/boredom for Jodi. Oh well...such is life and although I (Jodi) hate to admit it, I love this time of year--football and all.

Beyond that, life is normal again and 6:45 a.m. feels too early every morning :) We are enjoying occasional Fridays off creating nice three day weekends...this weekend is one of those! So, happy weekend everyone.

Family Vacation

My parents decided that our whole family should take a little vacation together this summer to celebrate Jon's separation from the Marine Corps. They decided to take us to Minneapolis for a Minnesota Twins game (we are all Twins fans except George). The Twins are now in their new stadium, Target Field. We had a wonderful weekend together and I'm so thankful for a great family! So, here's the trip in pictures:

We walked to a local Irish Pub for supper...we didn't want to deal with parking but we ended up having to deal with cabs because it began to storm, and I mean STORM while we were eating and continued to rain (we sat in the pub for quite awhile trying to wait it out). We got to see the stadium as we walked to the pub though so it was fun (and the pub became absolutely crazy after the Twins beat the White Sox 3 to 2 on Saturday night).

We spent Saturday night at Normandy Inn...and had milk and cookies at 10 p.m. Jon had a buddy from the Marine Corps. that lives near the Twin Cities that met up with us (his father came too) for supper at the pub and then came back to the motel to visit.


Sunday we got up and headed to the stadium early for the game. It was great walking around and then just hanging out before the game began!

We ate lunch at the stadium...here the rest of my family is sitting in their seats eating/getting their picture taken! We had GREAT seats...right behind the Twins Dugout close enough to see facial expressions on the field. It was awesome!

Here I am in my Twins gear...including my new Joe Mauer t-shirt (Jon couldn't resist being a bit immature and giving me "bunny ears").

Joe Mauer himself :o)

The game was wonderful with the Twins winning 7 to 6 in the 9th inning. They led at the beginning, trailed by 3 from about the 5th or 6th inning on...and then won it in the 9th...super exciting! It was the first walk-off win at Target Field so we witnessed history!

We converted George into a Twins fan...

It was a great weekend! Thanks Mom and Dad :0)

Fourth of July pics

Okay, I promised to post some pictures from our 4th of July/Welcome Home Jon party. First of all, it was a great time! We had around 40 people or so come for a cookout and fireworks. Despite the enormous amount of flies, the night was fairly perfect. The weather cooperated perfectly and we (George and I) were very happy with the way things went! We've decided we might be getting the hang of entertaining and we are enjoying having people over.

Okay, so the pictures...

"Baby James" enjoyed the fireworks...

And so did the adorable Lilly...

We had a beautiful sunset (which is normal in Lakeview, we have lovely sunsets almost every summer evening).

George hands out sparklers :)

A group of people visiting after supper (waiting for dark).

George sitting with a bunch of the guys shooting off bottle rockets!

George did an enormous amount of grilling which was fabulous. He is great on the grill, I'm a lucky girl :) All in all, it was a really great evening! We are planning to do it again.

Finished Painting!

Ah, we are finally done painting! It is the best feeling in the world :) My goal was to be done by July 4th and we finished on July 2nd. We hosted a party here on the 4th and had a great time...more about that another day. Anyway, I wanted to get the last bathroom pictures up before I start working on posting 4th of July pictures. So here it is...the green bathroom :)




The shower curtain is a bluish color...kind of hard to see in this picture because of the lighting.





Next pictures will be of our 4th of July bash and the two bedrooms that we painted upstairs!

Laundry and Cake

So, I'm ready to admit it...I HATE folding laundry. Washing and drying laundry, not so bad. Putting it away, great because I get such a feeling of accomplishment. Folding it...yuck! So my typical approach to laundry is to allow it to pile up for a couple weeks and then make one day my "laundry day" in which I do ALL of the laundry. Okay, I know this sounds like it would be easier and less dreadful if I split it up, but for me folding one basket of laundry ruins the whole day so I figure I might as well get all of the evilness over all at once. Plus, if I do only a load or two, they typically don't get folded until they have sat for so long they are all wrinkled anyway.

A couple of days ago was laundry day...here is the beginning of what it looks like in our living room on my dreaded days (note, Lola is not a great help and neither is Toby since they LOVE laundry day because they love to tip the piles over):




Okay, so even the kitchen table gets in on the action! (The hanging clothes are my favorite...) Sorry for the tilted picture!




These piles don't look so bad...but note that I had already taken a basket down and this was in the morning on laundry day!




Okay, finally the fun part! I made a mint-chocolate cake for a benefit we went to last night. This is the "trial" cake that I made last week to make sure it would turn out okay. Let me tell you, this cake is the bomb! SOOOO GOOOOD!!! So good in fact that my brother had just one piece of the trial cake and bid on my cake at the auction until it got up to $90!!!

Brothers

Today we spent some time with my brother Jon. We drove to Winner, SD to obtain some awesome fireworks for our 4th of July party. For those that don't know, my brother Jon is a Marine and just recently returned home on his final leave time before he separates from the Marine Corps. I am awfully proud of him and SO happy to have him home again. Anyway, George and Jon never really had a chance to get to know each other before George and I got married so they've been spending some time together getting to know each other and get along quite well! So, we drove to Winner and bought fireworks.

While in Winner we also spent quite a bit of time trying to find Valspar paint so that I can hopefully finish our painting project this week...two rooms to go yet! Our local hardware store burnt down earlier this summer right in the middle of our painting so while they are rebuilding, we have to find a different place to get our paint! Anyway, all of that to say today was a really fun day. I even shot a .45 for the first time (Jon came up so he and George could target practice for awhile this evening). Having Jon and Rob (my other younger brother) around the place makes life a bit more fun! We wish my older brother Jesse and his wife Lindsay lived closer but sadly they don't :(

Anyway, thought I would post some more pictures of our house. These are the promised pictures of the living room/kitchen. The red wall is the shared wall for the two rooms. All of the others are the "bran muffin" color and are the living room walls.




Those letters were NOT easy to put up (and get them straight)! In the end I suppose it was worth it!





This collage of pictures is made up of pictures from the trip we took last summer (the one we got engaged on). There are some really great pictures and memories :) We are hoping to add one more picture to the collage so I guess technically the wall isn't done yet. This wall is actually a darker red...the light from the window kind of makes it look brighter than it really is.




Anyway, we are pretty pleased with how it turned out! And the couch covers were a MUCH needed update to the pink floral couches that lie beneath :)

Painting...

We've done a LOT of painting since moving into our new home in November. We worked first on the kitchen and living room and have now completed the upstairs bathrooms and laundry room. By the time we're done, we will have painted every room on the main floor. Anyway, here are pictures of the "orange" bathroom that is connected to the laundry room. George picked this color to go with the yellow, tan, and orange towels. It is bright and at first I wasn't sure but I'm loving it now :)

The shower curtain is off-white with different colored threads going through it (blue, red, green, orange, yellow, etc.)




I used my veto power on painting the laundry room orange. We have a color called "bran muffin" that is the common thread through the top floor. The laundry room is therefore a tan color instead of the bright orange!




I will post pictures of the other bathroom and the living room (which is finally finished with pictures up and everything) soon!

Isolated Storms...

We had a nice isolated thunderstorm this evening. At about 7:00 p.m. George went out to grill meat for supper. We were watching the clouds as we had an interesting looking storm cloud overhead. By 7:10 the storm had blown in (literally the wind began to blow REALLY hard...check out the flags) and the rain began to pour down. Within 20 minutes the storm had passed...wind, rain, rainbow, hail, and then more rain. At one point our flag pole was at about a 45 degree angle from the ground! We also had a lovely double rainbow (though it wasn't pronounced enough to catch on film). In the above picture you can kind of see how one end of the rainbow seemed to stop right in the pen across from our house...see how it "touches" the ground there!?!?! Pretty cool...God's greatness displayed :)

Look at the flags blowing in the wind!



The hail came after the first bit of rain and after the double rainbow appeared in the sky. It hailed really hard for about 5-7 minutes. This picture was taken after it stopped hailing and began to rain again.

Haying=Summer

Today was spent in the hayfield. Between my brother Jon working for a neighbor today and brother Rob going on a tubing trip, my parents were left a person short for their hay crew. This worked perfectly for me because I rather enjoy raking now and then. Being out in the hayfield gives you time to think, listen to music, and just generally smell the amazing scent of fresh cut hay! It was a pleasant day, just warm enough but not hot. Okay, so obviously I enjoyed my day in the field.

In the meantime, George was left inside caring for our dogs and doing his homework :) I'm guessing his day wasn't the most fun but I did come home to supper being grilled (yea!) and now he's out hunting rabbits.

About the picture: We don't bale in square bales like are seen in the picture. This one was taken in Idaho on our trip west last summer. George made fun of me for taking multiple pictures of hay bales but for me, summer means haying! So, I thought it appropriate to post a "hay" picture.

Trying this...

So, I love reading other people's blogs...and well, it just kind of looks like fun. So, I'm going to give this a shot and see how it goes. I have this feeling that I probably won't be great at updating because I just don't have that many interesting things going on in my life but I'm going to try it anyway. Life is currently pretty grand. We are on summer vacation from school so our days consist of just about whatever we want them to. George has been fairly consumed with work for his graduate classes so I spend my days entertaining our pugs and trying to motivate myself to do house or yard work. Today was slow. Lola recently went through surgery to ensure we do not have baby Lola's (Toby was already fixed but we don't want wandering dogs to give us funky mutt puppies). She is suppose to be "taking it easy" for a few days. When the vet told us that I just laughed because our Lola is HYPER as all get out and taking it easy for her consists of taking a short nap in the afternoon. I was right, she was right to bouncing around today so it has been a full time job today ensuring that she doesn't get too wild and pull her stitches out. Okay, I'm getting wordy...how about a picture of our dear pugs and then I'll be done for the evening!