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!!!