El Weekendo

What is up, peeps? Sorry about the delay. I know I say that every time, but I'm a busy girl! I spent the weekend before last up at the lake with my parents and sis, B-dog, and Brooky and JJ. It was the most beautiful weekend I've experienced up there in years! Sunny and 80+ both Fri and Sat and nearly no breeze. Saturday the lake was almost like glass so we had a blast cruising around on the waverunners. It was a great weekend just to relax, drink some beers (alchohol optional - ha), and chill out on the sandbar.

Look at this cutie!!

Fearless Brooklyn jumping off the back of the boat.

This past weekend I got a few things accomplished. I baked some banana muffins and a mini loaf. Delish. I absolutely love banana bread. Thanks for the recipe Mom! Here, enjoy this pic. Too bad it's not scratch-n-sniff. Haha, remember those? Oh and remember Garbage Pail kids?!?Good ol' GPKs. Especially the puking one and the kid going down the drain. Remember their names? Let me know if you do.

Went for a bike ride with my friend Sam around Bush Lake/Hyland Park on Sunday. It's a nice area about 5 miles from my house. It was a lot of fun, we rode a long time, and now my a** is extremely sore. But Justin and I are going to ride the River Bottoms this weekend. He said the best thing to do for a sore butt is ride again when it's sore. Just gotta break it in! But I have a tots McGee bike, here is a pic of it. It's wonderful having a bike mechanic for a husband, I must say.


We also watched a couple of movies this weekend. We've seen both, but we wanted to watch Fight Club in HD and we wanted to see Zodiac again. I think this is the 3rd time I've seen Fight Club and the best. Knowing the ending now, I picked up on so many little details that I didn't catch the first couple of times. That's a great show. Zodiac's good too, a little long, but I really like Jake Gyllenhaal. This weekend I think we're getting Rescue Dawn from netflix. Don't know anything about it, but I'll watch anything with Christian Bale in it. ;) He's on my list too, B.

Planning on going tubing weekend after next with Sam and possibly our hubbies too. We'll see. But it's kinda like Red Lake Falls, same concept, and about an hour away. It's on Cannon River and I'm excited about it. Tubing is always a good time! Unless you get hailed on, right Mel?

Oh, it was my 1 year anniversary of work on June 25th! I can't believe it's been a year already. Price family reunion in 3 weeks, that should be a good time too! And you know I have to mention my birthday in 22 days, woohoo! I'm old but I still like to celebrate.

Here's the hub and the pup. Don't ask. I contemplated not putting this spread eagle shot on my blog, but Justin convinced me to do it.

Here's a cute one to go with that one.

Adios, everyone! Hope everyone is well.
P.O.

My Binah

I know it's been awhile. I'd like to start by saying Happy Father's Day! to all the dads I know out there and Happy Birthday! to my sis Brenda, whose birthday was yesterday. Things have been busy like usual around here.

We celebrated our 1 year anniversary on June 9th! The year went by so fast. We enjoyed a very nice dinner at a place in Bloomington called Chez Daniel. An upscale kind of place, at least for folks like us :) We both got filet mignon and it was very good. We came home and broke out our wedding cake, we used the same utensils to cut that we used on the wedding day! I was way more into this than Justin, if you can believe that. Haha. Let's just say that the cake itself was not bad (also not great) and the frosting was inedible, very chalky. Definitely not as good as it was a year ago! But all in all we had a good mellow anniversary.

Here's a pic of the cake.

We have these bushes growing by our garage and I never knew what they were. They had these red balls on them that I figured would eventually flower, so I thought I would google it up to figure out what they were. Well, in talking with Justin about my google idea, he suggested that I don't google my original thoughts: red balls, bush because who knows what would pop up! Probably a good idea. Anyway, I asked a work friend (flower guru) what they were and she informed me that they are peonies. They are pretty but look kinda goofy cuz they're so top heavy they always hang like that. Oh well.

Now I'd like you to take a look at my impatiens. Look how wonderfully they've filled out! Go back to my post on May 26th and compare to now. I think they've done pretty well!

Today was my last day covering Golden Valley! It'll be so wonderful to not have to go to 2 buildings every day. But chances are I'll be covering some other building that needs help. Oh well, you do what you gotta do.

Justin and I bbqed last night. We have a butcher shop less than a mile from our house, so it's great to be able to swing over there and get some good meat. Last night we did garlic butter pork chops, hashbrown casserole, and veggie kabobs. Delicious!! We finished off with a ridiculous dessert: brownies, with a layer of vanilla frosting, then topped with a mix of rice krispies coated in melted chocolate chips and peanut butter. It was insanity, but oh so yummy. Here is a pic of J-wad grilling it up. It was a beautiful evening.

This weekend I will be heading to the lake! I am excited to get out on the boat and the waverunners. I seldom get to go to the lake, so I must when I get the chance. They say it'll be a beautiful weekend, so I'm looking forward to it. I was able to lay out both Sat. and Sunday this past weekend, very good. I'm getting color, it's amazing! Does anyone know if we're allowed to have fires out at the lake yet? I hope so, that just makes the night.

I am sad to report that Bonnaroo has taken a turn for the worse in these last couple of years. It has evolved from a hippie jam band festival to some awkward rock-metal-pop-jam-everything else fest. The 4 years I went were awesome, and I don't see myself ever returning based on what it's like now. I mean, Metallica?! Don't get me wrong, old school Metallica is solid, but they don't belong at Bonnaroo! It has officially become an event I have no desire to attend. R.I.P. Bonnaroo! I have a lot of wonderful memories from you! And I'm sure Bri and Mel do too.

Ok, better get going. Love you all and hope to see you soon!

Oops, almost forgot!

Ooooohhhh, he's a sweet puppah!!

June already?!

Hello! I'm back after a long absence, I know. It's been busy like usual. We are getting some bad t-storms tonight, will probably last through the night. And the forecast for the next 10 days has rain every single day! I'm really tired of it, although it's good for my flowers. My impatiens are doing really well. My geraniums have wilted but new buds are starting to flower, so I think it's all just part of the process. I want to get a hanging plant for the front of our house this weekend. Flowers just make houses look so nice!!

We were supposed to have our annual Pro Step (that's the company I work for) picnic tonight at Como Zoo, but it was postponed due to the storms. We're having it sometime in the next two weeks. Should be a good time. I'll take some pics if I can and post them later.

They finally hired another speech therapist for the other facility I've been covering, Golden Valley. So I've been going there and to Richfield everyday for the past 3 months! It gets old, let me tell you. But she starts on the 16th, so only a little more than a week to cover there. Her name is Sarah :( but at least it has an 'h' so that makes me better. Haha, jk.

So I like our new window treatments, but Justin doesn't. After he put the first one up, he didn't like them, so I said don't put any more up, we'll just take the loss (non-returnable after being cut to our size windows) and get miniblinds. But he put them all up anyway. The problem is, they are room darkening cellular shades. So it's basically pitch black in our room no matter how sunny it is outside. This past weekend, it was so dark in there we slept till 11 both mornings!! I can't believe Bear let us sleep that long! He musta been liking the dark too. But then when we realized that most of the morning was over before we even woke up, we didn't really like it. So now we have to decide what to do. The miniblinds we got for the bathroom actually look really nice, nicer that our old school miniblinds. They make them much nicer now. So I guess I wouldn't mind having those all over in the house, but Justin said putting up the brackets for the miniblinds was a pain in the a**! Here are a couple of pics:

Cellular shades that we have in the office and our bedroom

Miniblinds in the bathroom (better where there's more condensation)

We were maybe going to go camping this weekend, but we're supposed to get storms again. But we have some things around the house we want to do: paint the walls around the windows in our bedroom, get more flowers, clean out the storage room, clean the floors, vacuum out my car. And I want to lay out in the sun if it doesn't rain too much!! I did last weekend and it was awesome. Feels good to get a little color so I'm not so pasty white.

And the usual before I go:

This is as close as I'll get to sleeping on the bed.

Ok, gonna run. You're welcome for the update. :) Give me ideas for a new poll!

Peace out, my people.

Blogular Update

WHAT IS UP, PEEPS!!! I am excited because I'm posting so soon after my last post, like I promised. You should all be excited too. Ok, to start, vote on my poll on the side if you haven't already. BTW, you are allowed to vote for multiple answers, I did.

So the floors are done and our house is back in order, yay!! Here are some pics. Keep in mind that we went with water based poly vs. oil based. The water based doesn't have any color while the oil based has an amber tone to it and it yellows over time. So in the prev. pics our floors that were already finished were pretty yellow. Also, our new floors have a satin finish vs. glossy so they're not shiny. It was an adjustment the first time I saw them cuz they're so different, but we really like them. They have so much character and the wood is so nice.

What do you guys think?

So I got my flowers planted this weekend. The flower place (Bachman's) was chaotic and I don't know the first thing about flowers, so I had to ask like 4 diff employees for help cuz none had time to answer all the questions I had. So this is what I ended up with:

Impatiens in the flower box, they will eventually fill out the whole box.

Geraniums in the backyard

And a begonia by the side door

Here you can see our lilacs have really filled in. If you look closely, you can see the geraniums on the lower left part of the pic.

We are planning on getting more flowers in the future to fill in some spots in the yard, but that was enough work for one day. I'm not used to this kind of stuff! But it's fun and I like to check on my flowers everyday to see how they're doing! They are my new little babies.

Speaking of little babies, check out this one. Oooohhh, puppah!

So on my next post I will show pics of our new window treatments. We FINALLY got something on our windows, no more white trash towels!! So the only thing left right now is to paint the walls around the window trim in our bedroom. We might do that this weekend.

We had a great long weekend, got to eat some Taco John's, so that was a plus. Haha. Hope all of you had a good weekend too. Stay in touch and keep reading!

Seacrest out.

I'm Back!

Hey folks! I'm back from Bis and it was a good time for sure. Congrats to my mom on her retirement! It was fun hanging with the fam, as usual. Great to see my nieces and nephews again! I always miss those little tikes. I got to see Mel in her beautiful wedding dress and we shopped for bridesmaid dresses. She got one picked out and we're going with 'petunia' for the color. It's kinda inbetween baby pink and hot pink.

Here is a pic of the dress style (obviously not the right color).

This isn't going to be a real long blog, but I know I needed to post. It's been a long week and I'm tired. But this weekend I believe I'm going to get some flowers to plant around the yard. If I do, I'll post pics of those and the new floors. They are really nice!

We have these beautiful trees right next to our yard so I thought I'd share them with you! There are so many trees around our area, and they are all diff colors. I love this time of year when everything greens up, it's so gorgeous. We've had so much rain that things greened up nicely.

Ok, that's all for today. I'll post again soon.

Wurd.

Oh, one more thing:

House Projects

Hi peeps!! How is everyone doing? Just an FYI on the latest poll. My fortune was the 'silly' one, and yes, the better one. So I win.

An update on the house projects. We got the walls around the new window trim painted. We did all but our bedroom windows, cuz that's a diff kind of paint so we have to do it early in the morning and let it dry and air out. It's oil based so it stinks and takes longer to dry. Here are a couple pics.

A week from today we have our floor guy coming out and he's refinishing all our wood floors. Our floors in the bedrooms aren't even sealed, so they will look so awesome when they are done. The other floors are going to get sanded and 3 coats of poly. Here are before pics. I'll get you some after pics when I get back from Bis.

Entry way

Our bedroom. See how terrible the unfinished floors look?

The office

We have to be out of here when they get done, so I'm going home (as many of you already know). Justin still doesn't really know what he's doing. But good news! Bear gets to go to Dog Day Getaway after all! That makes me feel so much better. He'll have a blast and we'll be able to check in on him on their webcams.

I'm thinking about planting some flowers in a few pots we have in the backyard. I've got some ideas, so I might try those out. Someone suggested day lillies. I don't have much of a green thumb, but it's worth a shot. Owning your own house is fun! :) Our lilacs bushes are budding and creating more privacy for our backyard, not to mention prettiness! And they smell so good.

See how much more private our yard is when the bushes are budding?
Nevermind the terrible shape our lawn is in thanks to the dog.

It's our 11 month anniversary tomorrow! I can't believe how fast the time went. It feels like we just got married. We don't have anything special planned for our 1-year. Probably just a nice dinner. Yep, we're real exciting people.

This past Sunday we had some friends over and BBQed and drank some beers. We got some delish ribs from Von Hanson's (a local butcher shop). We had some potato salad, bread, and I made strawberry marble cheesecake. Everything was yummy! We also played some bolo (aka lawn golf, Norwegian golf, etc). It was good times. That's our Sunday ritual in the summers. The same group of people get together, bring some contribution to the dinner, get drunk, cook up some great grub, and play games. Throughout the summer I'll fill you in on our weekly BBQ meals. You'll be jealous.

Bear has been busy hunting the chipmunks that run rampantly through our yard and hole up in our garage. He's so cute when he hunts cuz he's so intense and cannot be distracted. He tries so hard! And no blog would be complete without a pic of The Bear!

Me is so warm in this blankets.

Can't wait to see everyone when I come home! Love you all and enjoy the pic-filled post. Only one week after my last one, not too shabby!

P.O.

This One's for B Squared

So this post is happening tonight only because of my sis, Brenda Babes. I knew I was overdue for a post, but was not planning on doing it tonight. Then I got an email from B demanding a post, so here you go. I hope you're happy ;)

Well, I have a wonderful husband. Remember my half eaten turtle from Bear's day of destruction? Well, I was so upset about that because it was a momento from our honeymoon and it was special to me. So Justin called the resort we stayed at and somehow (after much work) managed to get them to send me a new turtle! So I got it in the mail a couple days ago, and here it is!

I am one good looking turtle.

Yay!! He's a little different, but it doesn't matter. Just the fact that Justin went through all that work to get him makes him just as special to me!

So we got the trim done on the windows and then some dude came out today to paint the trim. We were originally going to do it ourselves, as I mentioned in my previous post, but we decided it would just save us so much time and effort to have someone else do it. And we knew they'd do a better job than us. So, alas, here are our new windows and trim! We just have to paint the walls cuz dude patched them for us.

So new windows, new trim, and refinished floors in 2 weeks. It'll be like a brand new house! It'll just be so nice to have all this stuff done cuz we've had towels on our windows for a month now.

We took Bear to Doggie Day Camp today because the paint guy came. Well, when they were checking him in this morn they noticed a bump on his lip. They called our vet and they thought it was probably CPV, a virus. It's like the equivalent to a wart on a person. But it's contagious to other dogs so poor Bear had to stay in the kennel all day at DDC instead of playing with all the other dogs. I was bummed out for him. But the people at PetSmart said they took him out more than just the scheduled times because they all know him so well and felt bad for him. So that was good. But I guess it takes a month or 2 to go away and we can't take him to day camp or Dog Day Getaway until it goes away. And we had plans to take him to DDG the weekend we're getting the floors done, which is only 2 weeks away. Now we might just have to board him at PetSmart without doing the day camp. I feel bad about that, but what else can we do? We're kinda hoping it goes away faster so we don't have to worry about it. Oh, and now Justin has a plethora of names for Bear now, including Paps (canine papilloma virus), Warts, etc. In honor of our pup, here are some adorable pics I took tonight.

Sleeping sitting up

Ok, have a good night everyone! You're welcome for the update. Guess whose fortune was whose? I'll give you a hint, mine's the way better one.

Peace out!