Party, party, party

It must be the holiday season because it seems to be one party after another! This week our party's are with our Head Resident friends. The Caf is closed this week, so we decided to do some rotating pot lucks. Last night we gathered at the Dales' apartment. 10 adults and 9 kids under age 8. Total chaos! Tonight, people are coming here. 14 adults and 11 kids under age 8. The kids like having their run of the dorm lounges. And the adults just like having an excuse to hang out :)


The newest addition to the HR family...baby Ila

Window work day

Today Kate and I spent a lot of the day working at the cabin. Kate mostly worked on putting poly on the stuff we had stained. I installed some of the trim we have been working on.
Hammer high

Hammer low

Before

After
And the bathroom door....stained, 3 coats of poly, installed and trimmed out.

Christmas Day

We joined a big chunk of the family for dinner on Friday and spent the afternoon and evening playing with the kiddos.


I may have monopolized the time with Harvey :)
After dinner and some dominoes, G and g and Laur and Jill went home and the rest of us went downstairs for Christmas, part II.
There were lots of great gifts, including grass seed, a battery starter for Brian, and a giant map of Minnesota (which we plan to frame and hang in the cabin...inspired by our friends Jason and Amy, who have a similar map of Kansas). It was also fun to watch Natalie open gifts. She got a pair of skis from Grandma Cher, which made Brian pretty excited. She "skied" back and forth on the carpet for awhile and did pretty good.

Today, we woke up relatively early (8ish) and took off for some after-Christmas sales in Rochester. We hit Shopko South, Menards, Fleet Farm, Lowe's, Target, Shopko North, Home Depot, and WalMart and picked up a bunch of discounted Christmas decorations for next year. It sounds crazy, but it was actually quite fun!

Shopping was followed by a nap. Now we're getting ready for another good meal...ham, baked potatoes, and much more. Oh, and I forgot to mention the cookies. Alan and Cher bake tons of cookies this time of year. This year Alan told me he cut back a bit...only 16 different kinds...plus candy and fruit cake.

It's a tough life, but someone's got to live it!

All Bark...

The Great Christmas Blizzard of 2009 never really materialized, but we did get about three inches on Christmas eve. Brian and I still spent a quiet Christmas eve in St. Peter. My pork loin with pears and shallots was a success (though it took me two hours to prepare!). For dessert we had blondies that I made earlier in the day.
Brian waited patiently for dinner...
We opened gifts on Christmas eve because we wanted to be able to get moving quicker on Christmas day if the weather cleared. It was quite a haul! Brian got us the board game Settlers of Catan, which is one of my favorites!
On Friday morning, the weather was pretty nice, so we took the snowshoes out for a test run. It was my first time in snowshoes. Very fun, but different than I expected.

And, yes, I managed to fall.We cleaned up and packed up the car and made the drive over to Rochester. It took us a little over two hours and, for the most part, the roads were pretty good. There was a stretch of about 20 miles around Waseca that was bad, but we survived and made it in time for a lasagna lunch with the entire family.

White Christmas

Here's the view from our living room of last night's snow...


It has started to fall again and the weather report says we can expect 5-9 inches tonight and another 4-7 inches tomorrow.

Progress

Despite the nasty winter weather, we've managed to make more progress on the house. On Sunday we started work on the trim. Brian got to use his new table saw (the one I got on Black Friday) to work on the trim for the unfinished windows.

I think he likes it!
Here's our frozen lake...


And our new shed....

Meanwhile, I learned how to use the electric sander and how to stain. The smell is a little strong, so Brian has me wearing the mask for safety (of course!)

Last night we went back out and worked some more on finishing the trim. I've got sanding and one more coat of poly to go and then they'll be ready to go.

Brian got to work without incident today even though we got about 4 inches of snow last night. He said the main roads were actually pretty clear. They're having a potluck with the guys from the yard today at Menards so I made the Knutson cinnamon jello salad yesterday for him to take. I should have made a small bowl for myself! I'm going to dink around the house today because I have no desire to check out the roads. I have laundry and cleaning to do and am going to work on one of my spring classes. I also have a special recipe to try out for dinner. It's roast pork loin with pears and shallots. Hopefully it turns out alright!

We're still planning (hoping!) to get to Rochester this weekend, but unless the weather miraculously clears up, we probably won't make it until Saturday. Expecting to be snowed in tomorrow, I rented snowshoes for us from the college so we can take advantage of the weather. So, that's our plan...a quiet and snowy Christmas eve and Christmas day in St. Peter.

Happy Christmas eve, everyone!!

Finishing up

Kate here. It's the last week of the semester and I have one more class period left...tomorrow morning at 9. Then, three finals and a stack of papers later, I'll be free! It's been a rough semester for me...challenging in a variety of ways. Tough students, tons of grading, challenging topics, sickness, etc. Needless to say, I am very much looking forward to the end! Today I finished up two of my classes and spent most of the afternoon grading papers. Twenty down, too many to count to go! This afternoon we also took some cookies over to our neighbors at the lake. We got to meet the matriarch of the family and had a nice chat with her. It turns out their family has owned the property for almost 100 years. They haven't been particularly welcoming to us, but hopefully we broke the ice a little today with our cookie gift. Okay, enough writing for now...off to watch a new CSI episode.

Sicko

We've laid low the past few days because Brian is battling some sort of flu-like thing. He was home on the couch on Monday and Tuesday but went back to work Wednesday and Thursday. Both days, though, he's come home pretty wiped out. Here he is tonight comparing temps on our new thermometer with our old one.


Yep, you're hot!

In happier news, the laying around the house happens in front of our beautiful Christmas tree. I love sitting here with just the Christmas lights on!

Thanksgiving week in review

We've stayed quite busy this past week that's for sure. A little over a week ago I went home to hunt with the boys. We went out for opening weekend of deer hunting and got nothing. It was not a loss though, we had good stories to share and the weather was beautiful to be out in the woods.
On Saturday night I went to Plainview to hang out with friends and play music. There is a group of us playing music for Emily's wedding in January. It was great, but getting home after midnight was a little rough when the "hunting" alarm went off at 5:30.
Sunday afternoon dad showed me which trees I could pick from on the farm. We ended up taking down a 20 foot tree and kept the top. Don't worry, the tree was going to be harvested anyway.
Here's what I look like setting it up.
Kate stayed home and got grading and revisions done on her article. I spent the rest of the early week rushing around work preparing for the big after Thanksgiving Day sale. There was so much merchandise to deal with! Kate brought me Chinese food on Wednesday. Mmmm. That was a nice treat.
On Thanksgiving Kate and I went geocaching...

Put up the artificial tree at the cabin...

and had some visitors at the cabin (Jon and Mindy).Friday morning I was at Menards by 4:30am for the sale. I worked crowd control and security until 8. Once things had calmed down, I spent the rest of the day in the Christmas tree lot. Ohh that smelled so good. Kate headed out at 5:30am for a deal at Lowe's. She drove up 15 minutes before the doors opened and parked 8 stalls from the front door. She got in line with 20 or 30 people and had the store to herself. Meanwhile, at the same time at Menards, we had over 300 people in line and once the doors opened guests were waiting an hour in line to checkout. By 6:30 Kate was at Menards and she dove into the madness to get a few deals. The difference was night and day. I guess Mankato is a Menards town. Sorry Lowe's and Home Depot.
Friday night Kate and I both headed to Pine Island for the weekend at Willow Hill.
We had pizza when we got there and talked about all kinds of stuff.
Saturday was the designated Thanksgiving day for the K-family. Natalie showed me where she was going to put the food.
We did have good food, but Natalie mostly stuck to Jell-o and pineapple.
One of my favorites...
We had no luck hunting on Saturday and all day Sunday we didn't see anything.
Sunday night with literally 2 minutes left in the season a small buck walked into my area. I could see that he had antlers, but it was too dark to tell much more than that. I have not shot in 2 years and was not confident in my ability. I took two shots both of which were center mass and such that no good meat was ruined.
We had a bit of trouble with the truck getting stuck on the way out of the woods, but we made it back home safe.
Kate and I are home again in Saint Peter. The drive home was nice. Lots of Christmas lights illuminating our way home. Kate is back in the office this morning. I have the day off, so here I blog. Later today we are having an 8x10 shed delivered to the cabin. I'll help out with that and also do some other odds and ends today.
We hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving!

My list

Work out...check
Five loads of laundry...check
Take out the trash and recycling...check, check
Clean the kitchen and bathroom...check, check
Grade papers...quarter of a check (I got through 2 of 9)
Finish revisions to my article...check

I also worked in a trip to the cabin, a nap, and a dance performance. Not bad for a Saturday!

TGIF!

It's been a long week for both of us. I (Kate) have been busy at school. We are hiring a new person in our department and we had two candidates on campus this week interviewing for the position. It involved a lot of extra meetings and meals in addition to the usual business. Brian has been busy at work, but also with a bunch of stuff happening with the cabin. Brian's friend Keith came over on Sunday and helped dig out our new driveway. Brian spent much of the rest of the week using the skid loader to cover the driveway with rocks and do some landscaping. Our other big news is that the septic drain field got put in on Wednesday. We also bought a small shed, had some major break work done on Brian's car, and paid $400 for the septic permit. Needless to say, it's been an expensive week for us. We weren't actually planning on doing a lot of this stuff in the first year (the shed, septic, etc.), but the timing just worked.


Tonight Brian took off for Rochester to do a little hunting this weekend. I have a pile of grading and some research to get done, so I stayed home. I think we're both hoping for a little relaxation! :)

169 celebration

Today we went to the 169 celebration. Hwy 169 is the main street through Saint Peter. It's a MAIN street too. It's 4 lanes and BUSY. Well it has been closed all summer and finally is going to be open again. We went to the ribbon cutting ceremony and got free food and goodies. There was music and speakers including the mayor, Tim Walz, and Terry Morrow.

sorry mr. blog

I've surely had things to blog about, but I've been neglecting you mr. blog.
Here are some pictures of what's been happening.

I spent a rainy afternoon stalking and getting video of a six point buck. I have some video of me calling him in on my youtube account. Sorry mr. blog, I've spent time with another.
Since we're in the animal kingdom, here's a shot of my friends I rescued from the window well at the cabin. Mom, Dad and Tony came over to visit and we hiked the Kasota Prairie.
Here's a shot of Tony and the Big Sky shot of the day.

Happy Halloween! Now get to work!

Today Kate and I had a pancake breakfast and served orange "pumpcakes" and green pancakes and some even had chocolate chips that made them "jack-cake-o-lanterns". We fed about 45 students and were all cleaned up by noon.In the afternoon we worked on the cabin hanging a shade
Staining and poly-ing doorsAnd other odds and ends.
Kate unpacked lots of kitchen stuff and assembled a shelving rack to store things since we don't have wall mounted cupboards. Painting, shower head installation, mirror hung, shower curtain hung.....all previous progress.New refrigerator hooked up to water and electricity today and Kate cleaned most of the stove.Part of the "sidewalk" that I made from half-buried antique Purington Pavers. I found them along with lots of other junk buried on our property. What a deal! We looked up the history on Purington Pavers and it's pretty neat. These must be 50 years or more old.We also witnessed the BIGGEST flock of blackbirds migrating. And finally a few views from our place.



Tonight we REVERSE trick-or-treated around the dorm. We dressed up as hunters(sorry no pics) and knocked on doors all through Rundstrom and gave candy to who ever we saw. I only had one awkward moment when a girl answered her door wearing a towel. Why do you answer the door that way? College students!