Sunday, December 12, 2010

Snowmaggedon 2010!!

In case you haven't heard, or you live in Minnesota and you haven't looked out your windows in the past 36 hours, we got hit with a mega blizzard this weekend!  The tags that people created for it on twitter include snowmaggedon, snowgasm, snOMG, snowlyshit, snowpacalypse and the list goes on and on.  We went to bed Friday night knowing that the snow was coming our way, this is what it looked like at about 1:00 am Friday night/Saturday morning:



I woke up around 7:30 Saturday morning and peeked out the window...there was a little accumulation of snow, nothing major, my car probably would have got stuck if I had tried to go anywhere, but thats cause my car just plain old sucks in the snow!  So I went back to bed and woke up around 10:30, by that time we had quite a bit more snow!  Sistafriend called and said she wanted to come over with the kids and hang out with us so that we could all be stranded together.  By about 12:30 they arrived and were greeted by a massive snowdrift in our driveway, I am honestly amazed they made there way through!


Throughout the day the snow continued, and the snow drift in our driveway grew and grew and grew!  Everything was closed or canceled throughout the day, plows were being pulled off the roads, airport was closed, city buses were called back in..it was pretty crazy!!  We were joking that we were all going to be stranded, turns out the joke was on us, cause we ended up stranded!  We made a lovely meatloaf for dinner, hung out and watched Christmas movies, did lots of looking out the window and just chilled at home.  Around 9:00 pm I made the realization that we were almost out of toilet paper and there were 4 adults and 3 children at the house.  Joe and Dre decided they were going to try to defeat the snowdrift and go to the store...please note that we pay an association fee, which includes snow removal, and at this point there had not been a single plow that had come through!  This is what happened when Joe and Dre tried to leave.  They realized quickly that they were not going anywhere and spent a good 30 minutes trying to get the truck back in the driveway.


Once they got the truck back where it belonged we decided it was time for the adults to play in the snow... it was much too cold outside for the kids, so they had to stay inside!





It was just insane how much snow was out there!  Around 10 or 11 it became apparent that Michelle and Dre and the kids were going to need to spend the night, so we pulled out the pack-n-play and the air mattress, this is what I woke up to on Sunday morning...the after blizzard party:


We made a lovely breakfast Sunday morning, but realized our resources were slowly dwindling... we were almost out of toilet paper, milk, bread, eggs and pretty much everything else! And the snow plows had STILL not come through.  I think Dre and Michelle were getting sick of us, so they called up a friend to come help them out of our driveway. Their friend arrived in a massive pickup truck with tow hooks, they hooked up Dre's truck and started pulling.... unfortunately a bolt or something broke, the tow hook appeared broke and they got a great big crack in their bumper, but they were desperate to get free, so they tried again! 



And they were finally freed!


After they got out, they agreed to come back with some necessary supplies for us, as there was no way either one of our vehicles were getting through.  A little while after they left the bobcats came to plow us out, and it was the most glorious sight!! 




Snowmaggedon will not easily be forgotten, I just hope it doesn't happen again anytime soon!!




Friday, December 10, 2010

Time To Quit Neglecting My Blog




With the holidays and the new year right around the corner I decided I better give some of my time to my blog, do some updates from the last few months and be ready for a fresh year of blogging in 2011!  I am going to try to re-cap the last few months and keep this one short and sweet, but I make no promises! 

First - here is a picture from back in August at the Michalski Family Reunion.  This would be a 5 generation picture, but my grandpa somehow escaped this one.  This is my Great Grandma, Mom, Me and Kara


 Joe, Andy and I went to see Mumford and Sons on 10/29/10 at First Avenue - the show sold out in about 3.2 seconds, but I managed to get some tickets!  And The Current was kind enough to record the show and archive the audio feed on their website... here is a link Mumford and Sons Audio  and of course, a picture of the three of us at the show!



For Halloween this year Kara was a monkey, which is very fitting as we call her monkey all of the time!  Kara went trick or treating with Jayden and Jayla, and they all had a blast!  Jayla was an adorable little Hello Kitty and could not get enough candy!  We also brought the 3 of them to Boo Bash on Grand for some Halloween festivities!




Jayden turned 6 on November 5th.  It's hard to believe he is 6 already!!  Where has the time gone?  He started kindergarten this year, and is loving it!


Thanksgiving morning Emily and I ran the Turkey Day 5k, and we totally kicked it's ass!  We ran the first 2.5 miles of it, which is an all time record for me - I have never ran more than a mile straight in my entire life!!  It was about 9 degrees outside the morning of the race.  Maybe this will be a new Thanksgiving tradition!  After our race we headed over to my mom's house where we had Thanksgiving brunch, then to Joe's grandparent's house for Thanksgiving dinner.  It was a very fun, long day! 

 Kara with Grandma Julie on Thanksgiving.
 Kara has become obsessed with Eskimo kisses!
 Kara with her new Hello Kitty purse from Grandma Nancy.  She loves this purse!  Maybe there is hope that she will be a girly girl someday!
Here are some pictures from our failed attempt of making Christmas cookies at my mom's house, luckily the kids had plenty of sprinkles to eat!


And here are a few other favorite pictures from the past few months:


And I can't forget a picture of Kara putting ornaments on the Christmas tree! 
Final Thoughts:  The last few months have been crazy busy!  Joe is currently laid off, and will hopefully be returning to work in mid January or mid February.  During this time we have dropped Kara down to 2 days a week in daycare, and she spends the other three at home with Daddy.  I think they are having a lot of fun at home together!  Kara has started testing boundaries like crazy, she has the whole manipulation thing down way too well!  She is doing really great with potty training, now we just need to get rid of that dang sucky of hers!! I think she is going to have an absolute blast at Christmas this year, I can't wait for it to get here!  Oh, and Emily and I have registered to run the Polar Dash 5k on New Year's Day and the Get Lucky 7k on St. Patrick's Day weekend!

Some of Kara's recent phrases:

"I was going to do that first"(when Joe or I are doing something that she wants to be doing)
"Mommy, sometimes you're bossy"

And one last thing.. A little sneak peek of our pictures we had taken with Auntie Emily.  Currently #4 and #7 are my favorites.  Check them out!


Sunday, September 12, 2010

Home Remodel

So we have been in our house for almost 5 years now.  When we first moved in we painted everywhere, but now I am getting sick of everything and want to make some changes.  We don't really have any money for a serious home remodel, so I want to try to make some changes on a small budget.  I really want to re-do our bathroom and kitchen the most.  Our kitchen cabinets are straight out of 1987 and I kind of hate them.  I was thinking of just sanding them down and re-staining them, or painting them, but I haven't really figured that out yet.   I decided that I would start with our bathroom and work my way to the kitchen.  I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with the bathroom, so I turned to shower curtains for some inspiration... after hours and hours of looking at shower curtains online I discovered that Amy Butler has a home line which includes shower curtains!  Amy Butler is one of my absolute favorite fabric designers, so I think I need to buy an Amy Butler shower curtain.  Her line only contains 4 shower curtains, but here are two that I love:




and some awesome towels:


They sell these items at Bed, Bath and Beyond, so I need to plan a trip there to check them out in person and then make a choice on which one I want to use.  After I choose that, I am going to re-paint the bathroom to match.  I would love to just tear out our whole bathroom and start from scratch - but I know that won't happen!  Some other ideas I have for our bathroom - get rid of our towel bar and add one of these to the wall that the towel bar is currently on:



or this:



and then I also want to get a new cabinet for the wall over the toilet - we currently have 3 glass shelves - our bathroom(actually our whole house) is always dusty, and it drives me nuts!  But it's always a pain to dust all of those glass shelves, so I want to get something that is enclosed, like this:



I would also like to be able to add some hooks or something to the inside of the doors to hang my necklaces on, if thats possible. 

If I ever get started on these home projects I will be sure to post updates!  Hopefully I will make a final decision on a shower curtain soon, and then I will definitely be motivated to get this done! 

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Our Anniversary!



On Saturday, August 28th Joe and I celebrated 6 blissful years of marriage!  In celebration of our anniversary we went to The Happy Gnome for dinner, which has been a favorite of ours since the first time we went there - It is a little bit out of our poor folk price range, but it is a great place to go a couple of times a year! 



For Dinner Joe had a rib eye steak - here is the description off the menu:
Grilled Ribeye “Eye Steak”cajun fingerling potato hash, chorizo, brussels sprout slaw, house made steak sauce, fresh grated horseradish

And a picture


and I had a chicken sandwich, but not just any old chicken sandwich, it was this kind of chicken sandwich:
Roasted Chicken Sandwichsmoked gouda, artichokes, oven dried tomatoes, spinach, pesto aioli on house made focaccia


it was huge and delicious!!  

I also had this amazing beer:..the Flying Dog one listed below, it was awesome!


For dessert we had:
Blueberry Beignetsfrozen citrus custard, blueberry lime coulis

AMAZING!!

And we both had a scoop of Izzy's Salted Caramel - because you just can't say no to it!! 


It was an amazing dinner for an amazing anniversary!  

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Collages!

I got bored and started going through all of our Kara pictures and made some collages.. hope you enjoy!  If you click on any of the collages it will open larger in a new window.

Kara with Mommy and Daddy

Kara with Grandma Julie and Grandpa Kevin


Kara with Grandma Becky and Grandpa Jerry


Kara with Grandpa Wayne


Kara with Great-Great Grandma Ceil


Kara with Great-Grandpa Jim and Great-Grandma Pauline


Kara with Great-Grandma Nancy


Kara with the Adams' Family
Great-Grandma Mickey, Great-Grandpa Wayne, Aunties Molly and Mary Jo and some cousins


Kara with Auntie Chelle, Uncle Dre and Jayden and Jayla


Kara with Auntie Em and Uncle Scott