Going Wild!

Minnesota might be the land of 10,000 lakes but it's also 'The State of Hockey.' It's a big deal - believe me.  Jason and I had never been to a game here until last night.  A friend of his from work gave us tickets - thanks Robin! So we headed for the Xcel Energy Center where the MN Wild were playing the NY Rangers.  Now from what I'm told the Wild aren't having a great start to their season, but they won last night 3 to 2!  I shot a little video of the crowd going wild (no pun intended lol) after they scored their second goal.

There is even an anthem for hockey here!  Everyone breaks out in song in the middle of the game and the words flash on the jumbo-tron.  I found the song and video on YouTube - check it out.

Let it snow...in Montana

Ok, I'm not wishing for snow. Really I'm not.  But a friend of mine sent me this picture today - it's my favorite skiing spot in Montana.  It's called Showdown.  It's this small ski resort about an hour or so from Great Falls with the craziest old owner you'll ever meet.  They already have several feet of snow on the trails up there! I haven't been skiing since I left Montana - basically because the biggest 'mountain' in Minnesota is the equivalent of a bunny hill lol.  Although, we've heard about one ski resort in the state (about four hours north) that has some decent skiing so Jason and I might have to check it out this year.  I'm kind of itching to ski...but I can wait a few months...let's hold off on the snow for a bit longer here.

Let's be honest...

You've all heard me say it.  Typically I say, "Let's be honest" on a daily basis.   Basically it's my way of saying something is complete crap.   I think I've said it more lately as we plan for the wedding.  Have you guys looked at some of the junk you can buy for a wedding?  Seriously look at this stuff.  These are just a few wedding favor ideas that are touted as 'must haves' for your wedding.

Those are golf ball shaped candles.

These are salt and pepper shakers in the shape of banana splits.

And of course - a sewing kit.







Now, Let's be honest - what yahoo thinks any of these are good ideas??  I mean really - salt and pepper shakers?   And what wedding would be complete without a sewing kit? Sorry folks, none of these will be at our wedding lol.

Slow ride

We wanted to do some biking this fall, in fact, our plan was to check out a new park every weekend in October but since the weather has been cold and wet that plan changed quickly.  This Saturday was the first decent day we've had, so we finally hopped on our bikes.  The hope was to see some fall colors but since its winter in Minnesota already most of the leaves already fell off the trees without ever turning color.
We biked a three mile loop around Shingle Creek.  It's a cool little trail with a canopy of trees, and of course a creek running along side the trail.
There are several bridges in the park too.  I'm telling you Minnesota is pretty serious about their parks, they pave trails, build bridges, whatever they need to do for a good looking park.
 We found a bunch of ducks hanging out near one of the bridges.  How they swim around in that chilly water, I'll never know! 
We had a good ride, all except for Jason's bike tire.  It kept going flat! 
Luckily, we brought along a tire pump but it was quite a pain lol. 

Eyes on the sky

Today, my job was to look up.  I covered two interesting stories at work today - the first was about repairing a wind turbine.  Apparently a gear slipped an eighth of an inch out of place, and it stopped the blades from turning.  To fix it, two guys had to climb to the top of the 200 foot turbine and unscrew the blades to get to the problem.  A crane had to lower the blades to the ground.

You don't realize how big the blades are until they are sitting in front of you.  They took up a huge part of the parking lot! 

The other story I covered was a black hawk helicopter landing.  It landed on the front lawn of an elementary school!  It was a pretty cool sight to see.  It was part a reward for the students who completed a school program to stay away from drugs.  (How that all ties together, I'm still a little unclear on lol.) Several TV stations came out to get the 'landing shot.'

Happy Halloween

Gracie Lou wants to wish everyone a Happy Halloween!
How cute is she?

Since Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, we know a lot of people are preparing to party.  As for us, we might go to the Halloween parade in Anoka.  It's a city not far from our house that claims to be the 'Halloween capital of the world.'  After that, we'll come back and hand out candy to all the little ones.

"Nice Up"

Since Jason has been playing rec volleyball I've learned some of the volleyball lingo.  My favorite saying in this sport is 'nice up' - for those not in the know it means 'good job you hit the ball up' lol.  For some reason it cracks me up every time.
Rec Volleyball leagues are a big thing here.  Minnesotans are all about staying active and healthy so its no surprise people of all ages and experience levels organize teams and play against each other once a week.
I shot a little video of Jason playing last night (he's in the maroon tshirt). Check it out - you can tell he really enjoys it.

And the Emmy goes to....

12 News took home an Emmy!  This year Channel 12 celebrated its 25th year on television and we put together a special about the history of our little station.  That newscast won the award! In total, about a dozen of us worked on the special, but they only give us one statue so before its locked up in some trophy case somewhere a few us snapped a picture with it.  You can check out 25 Years of TV online if you want...it's about 30 minutes or so.

Another happy wedding

Wedding bells aren't just ringing in Minnesota - they're blaring lol.  This Saturday a friend of ours from Channel 12 got married.  (Three of us are engaged at Channel 12 - David is the first to get married)  Somehow a group full of TV people didn't get a picture of the bride and groom, David and Erin, but we did take a picture of the Channel 12 group lol.  What a good looking bunch.

It was a great wedding, everything ran very smoothly.  And they had a really cool guest book idea.  I've never seen this done at a wedding.  They had a photo booth there, you know the ones that shoot out a little strip of photos.  People hopped in the the booth and got two strips of photos. One you keep, the other is taped into their guest book and you write a little message next to your picture.  It was a really cool idea.  These are our pictures from the photo booth....

 

What happened to a smiley face?

What the heck has happened to pumpkin carving?  Apparently carving triangle eyes and a moon shaped mouth is 'old fashioned.'  I interviewed a kid the other day who showed me a picture of what he wanted to carve this year...it looked like this.

My exact words were, "Holy Crap!  What happened to a simple smiley face?"  This fourteen year old kid looked at me and said, "That is so 90's."  Yea!  Well, excuse me for not keeping up with the coolest pumpkin carvings lol.  Come to find out, this teenager is not alone!  Have you seen some of the elaborate carvings out there??   Check these out - One is the 'witch pumpkin' the other is the 'drunk pumpkin.'

An unlikely Twins fan

Gracie Lou decided to cheer the Twins on tonight.  She sat right near Jason and watched the tv.  That's the way she sits - upright like a human. It's the strangest thing, but she has done it ever since she was little.  She just leans up against one of us and stays there.  (She'll stay there all night if we rub her chest lol.)  Unfortunately she's not bringing the Twins any luck.   

It's too early for this!

Nope, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you - that is snow.  It's October 10th and we have snow on the ground!!  According to our crazy weather guys this is the coldest start of October Minnesota has seen in more than a century. When they predicted snow yesterday I think most of us were thinking oh it will be wet and rainy and a little snow mixed in, no big deal.  Yea, that was until Jason woke me up this morning and said, "Wait until you look outside."  There is enough out there to collect on your shoes.
I was going to clear out the garden today, but its covered in snow.  I'm hoping the sun melts it all this afternoon, but the high is going to be 39 degrees, so maybe that is wishful thinking.

Driven to succeed

I never know who I'm going to meet on a daily basis.  It's one of the things I like about my job.  Today I met a single mother of four who decided to go back to school in hopes of making a better life for herself and her family.  In this economy, I've met a lot of people like this, but she is different.

She is Saysomone Phomphene.  She's originally from Laos, a country bordering Vietnam.  Her family came to the U.S. in the late 80's when she was five years old.  Despite growing up in the states her family insisted on arranging a marriage for her.  At 17 she married a man she barely knew.  It became an abusive relationship but following tradition, she stayed in the marriage and had four children.  In their culture divorce is not an option.  But somehow, some way she found the strength to leave.  She took her kids and started a new life.  Her decision created a rift between her and her father, who thought her act brought shame to the family.

But her roller coaster of a life doesn't stop there.  When the economy went south, she lost her job at a mortgage firm.  She had four kids at home, and no income.  She couldn't make the payments on her house, and she was forced to move in with her parents who still looked down on her for the divorce.  It was then she decided she had to make a change in her life.  She decided to go to college, something she always wanted to do.

Since then, she found a job at a bank and was able to rent a small apartment.  She's raising four kids, works during the day and goes to school at night.  She told me she's going to back to school not just to find a better job but to set an example for her kids.

"I want them to know that they can be whatever they want to be," she told me.  "I can show them that."

She just started college classes this fall, but last week one of her daughters came to her and said, 'Mom I want to be a lawyer when I grow up.'

It's people like Saysamone Phomphene that inspire me.  She decided to stand up for herself when no one else would.  She's setting an example for her kids, one that wasn't set for her.  She bucked her culture and because of it her kids will know a whole different future.


   

Sports Overload!

On the corner, at the diner, and at work Minnesotans can't stop talking about sports.  That's because all of our sports teams are on fire right now.  I'm not a big sports fan, but it's been pretty exciting even for me.  And Jason, well... he's been glued to the tv lol.  As I'm writing this the Twins are playing the Yankees after a crazy tie breaking game last night to clench the division title.  The Vikings defeated their arch-rival the Packers on Monday.  That was a cool game, but I think we can all agree we've had enough Farve talk to last a lifetime.  Sports writers here are calling him 'SilverFox' - that's a nice way of saying Old Man in my opinion lol.  But what do I know?  And in hockey the Wild, who were down by three goals in the third came back to win the the home opener in overtime!  What is going on?? Whatever it is - fans are being overloaded with nail biting games in every sport.

New digs

After months of planning, demolition, and construction we used our new set for the first time today.    It looks pretty sharp but apparently no set accommodates short people lol.  Even on this fancy set - I still have to stand on a phone book to make the shot look right.  Check it out.  Click here, then click play video. 

Hitting the trails!

Once we recover from the soreness of volleyball and the 10 mile, we plan to set out on a little fall bike tour. Minnesota has so many cool parks with paved trails we thought it would be a cool way for us to see the fall colors and use our new road bikes. The idea is to pick a new park each week for the rest of October. We'll probably go on the weekends, weather pending of course. Jason and I live within biking distance of one of the biggest parks in the state, Elm Creek. We've been there quite a few times but I think we'll try to venture a little further. Stay tuned! We'll be taking the camera a long with us. We'll be sure to post the pics.

One mile at a time

I'm not going to lie, it was a tough day.  It was the Twin Cities 10 Mile race this morning.  It took me 2 hours and 16 minutes to finish.

Honestly, I didn't train as hard as I did last year but I still feel good about this years race.  It encouraged me to exercise, and that's all that matters really.  The weather was much better this year.  No rain!  It was cool, about 50 degrees and cloudy.

This picture on top is of me about 10 feet from the finish line - that's why I'm smiling.  Trust me, I was not this cheery throughout the race.

Before

After

The race started just after 7am.  Jason snapped a picture of me at the start line.  I wore an extra layer (the red jacket) to stay warm at the beginning but I tossed it to the side of the road about two miles in.  I know that sounds weird, to just toss your clothes but a lot of people do it.  Some people wear socks on their hands as gloves and then get rid of them too.  I imagine someone has a field day picking up all the clothes along the route - someone gets a whole new wardrobe lol.

The race ends at the capitol, so Jason snapped another picture there too.   Don't let the tough girl pose fool you - I was tired.

I'm quite sore as I'm writing this lol.  Jason played 2+ hours of volleyball Saturday morning so he is hurting too.  We're quite a sight really - both curled up on the couch moaning and groaning every time we move lol.  We sound like we're 80 lol.  Here's to a speedy recovery lol.

It's a comin'

It's official.  Old man winter is coming.  We've had cooler temperatures all week and then we were hit with this crazy wind storm.  According to our weather guys we had gusts of 40 mph.  Some people in neighboring cities had trees topple over, but it didn't last that long here.
(It's my first attempt at shooting video with my digital camera, and uploading it on our new mac.  We just got a new laptop.)