Birthdays, Holidays 2014 & More

What's new in Huron?

Happy birthday!

It's been two months since my last post, and a few things have happened in those two months... Okay, more than a few. I won't get into all the details, but it's certainly been busy. In October, I went back to MN for Alisha's bridal shower; in November, we went back again for my mom's surprise 50th birthday party; and we'll be going again next weekend for Anthony and Alisha's wedding. In between all that, we celebrated Dan's 27th birthday and Thanksgiving, for which some of his family visited Huron. Andrew was here for Thanksgiving day, and Eric, Alissa & kids came the day after. Now, we are looking forward to 4-day weekends both Christmas and New Year's Day weekends.

Here are some pictures from the surprise party:

Surprise!

Tasty cupcakes...made by me, of course ;)

Jeremy had a blast with the kazoos

Opening gifts from the kids and grandkids

One of the gifts from us...a necklace with the grandkids' birthstones

The rest of the party guests arrived a little later

Visiting over coffee and cupcakes

Edna kindly offered to make the birthday cake

More party guests in the kitchen

And more...

All the family was there

(Unfortunately, I don't have pictures to share from the bridal shower or Thanksgiving.)

I'm sad that we're missing Isabelle's 1st birthday party today, but with the wedding next weekend and Christmas a couple weeks after that, we can't afford to travel much more than that in one month. But next year...

That's about all I've got for now, but there's sure to be more coming. It's going to be a fun - busy, but fun - month!

Dan's Germany Trip 2014 and a Girls' Weekend

Dan just got home from Germany last weekend, and it sounds like he had quite the experience. It wasn't his first time there, but it was different this time; he went 10 years ago in High School, and last month's trip was for work.

The few pictures he took are on his phone, so I only have pictures of some of the souvenirs he brought home. We almost didn't even get them because his and his boss's checked bags ended up on a different flight home, and the airport was refusing to send them from Sioux Falls to Huron, and even threatening to throw them away if we didn't go pick them up. Dan's boss ended up going back to Sioux Falls for an appointment and picked up the suitcases, but it sounds like they got an earful - deservedly so. Anyway, thankfully, that's in the past.

Unfortunately, his 'non-edible' gift for me broke in transit. It's a ceramic coffee canister that says 'Kaffee Land', which would have been the perfect addition to our kitchen decor. He did end up gluing it back together, but because it's no longer functional, I decided to put it in a display cabinet above the coffee station. The rest of the gifts he brought home were edible: candy, coffee, etc.

Wine and coffee canister

Yummy German coffee

Just a small sampling of the chocolate he brought home

A tin wall hanging, Dan's souvenir for himself

It was a very long week while he was gone, but my mom, Dawn, Sydney, and Trisha came to visit at the end of the week for a women's expo. It was fun having them here for a Girls' Weekend!

Of course, we had to celebrate Trisha's 18th birthday, which is only a week away now. We had homemade pizza and DQ ice cream for dessert.

Birthday pizza, before baking it

This weekend, Dan is working on siding the garage. I'll have to post pictures one of these days...

Our Second Anniversary

I meant to post this a few days ago, but haven't had time, so it had to wait until now...

Monday was our second anniversary. We took the day off work since we had vacation days to use up, even though we had no plans. It was actually nice to just play the day by ear.

To be honest, we just lazed about all morning. Most days that would bother me, but we kind of needed a day to rest after the past few (busy) weekends. Then we packed a picnic lunch and went to the park to enjoy the beautiful weather. The neat thing is the walking path that goes around the park and along the river. I was in the mood for walking, so we did a lot of that.

Afterward, we went to check out a local shop that was going out of business and was selling everything half off. They had a bunch of wine-themed decorations left, and we somehow ended up buying a few of them. Even half off the price, it still cost a lot! I thought we'd just call it our anniversary present to ourselves since we didn't really do anything special.

Of course, we haven't gotten around to hanging up most of them, but here's a picture of the metal wine bottle wall hangings we bought there:

I'm kind of annoyed at where they ended up on the wall, even though I'm the one who told Dan where to put the nails, so it's my own fault. Anything that's not a square or rectangle is impossible to hang properly! Anyway, I'll eventually get around to moving these a little down and to the left.

That night, we weren't really in the mood for eating out (I rarely am), so we picked up Chinese from the buffet and brought it home. Oh, and then we had South Dakota State University ice cream that we'd picked up from the grocery store, which actually turns out to be incredibly expensive, for dessert. Dan wasn't very impressed with the flavor, but I liked it. I just had another small bowl of it, actually. :)

Well, there you go - a pretty boring account of our second anniversary. I'm kind of tired and wanted to get some posts scheduled and published for my other blogs, but we'll see if I can muster the energy for that....

Summer's End

August, the month for visitors :)

Well, we're almost at the end of the summer, and I'm kind of sad. I had been waiting for this summer to arrive for so long, and it just flew by. We did do a few fun things, and we've had a bunch of visitors this month, which only made it go by even more quickly.

Karissa, Tyler, and Isabelle came a few weeks ago on their way to the Black Hills. Isabelle was as smiley as ever!

They stopped again on their way back the following weekend, and Dawn and Jake came with the kids too. We had fun taking Jeremy to play at the parks around here...

And this weekend, one of Dan's buddies came to visit with his girlfriend. Since they weren't going to be here until Saturday evening, we went to Menard's in the morning to pick up our vinyl siding. What should have taken less than a half hour to pick up turned into an hour and a half of waiting for the employees to figure out what they were doing and actually find everything we had ordered. After that, we still had to go into the store to pick up a few more things we needed.

We finally headed back home, and didn't get here until 3:00 - thankfully our company had gotten going a little later than planned, which gave me time to eat lunch and clean the house. By that point, I was exhausted! They left this afternoon, so now I have a little time to work on blog posts. Before long, I will need to work out and shower, then get supper started.

Thankfully we decided to take tomorrow off work for our anniversary. I am SO not ready to go back yet! We definitely need a day to rest. Then we get another three-day weekend for Labor Day. Sweet!

What's New in Huron {August 2014}

*Whew!* 

Time for a break from all the serious blog posts. I have been re-publishing a lot of my Yahoo! articles on my various blogs and a couple different websites following the shutdown of Y!CN. I've made a small dent in the hundreds of articles. It's going to take a VERY long time to get through them all!

In a way, I want to get them all back up as soon as possible so I can start earning money from them again, but on the other hand, I'm worried that Google will think I'm posting duplicate content, since my articles are still coming up in some search results (though the links just go to the Yahoo! home page).

Well, I guess I'll take my chances....

What's new here? Well, for starters, we started scraping paint from the garage last weekend in preparation for re-painting. Stupidly, we tested for lead after starting the removal process. It tested positive. So now, rather than putting a ton of work into properly scraping the paint off the wood siding, we're going to tear it down and put up vinyl siding.

So this past week, we went to Menards in Mitchell to look at our options and we placed an order for light blue siding. It's going to cost a lot more than painting, but I think it'll be worth it in the end. The only painting we will have to do is going over the trim and painting all the doors to match one another.

In other news, Karissa, Tyler, and Isabelle stayed over last night on their way to the Black Hills (no, we still haven't been there!). They will be coming back through next weekend, and we will also have Dawn and Jake and the kids over. The following weekend, one of Dan's friends from high school will be here. We haven't had visitors all summer - apparently August is the month to come to Huron! Even though nobody got to see our yard when the grass was green and the flowers were blooming :(

Well, that's about all I've got. 'Til next time....

Trip to New Orleans {June 2014}

It wasn't exactly a vacation, although it was supposed to be.

Let's start at the beginning: I got maybe an hour or two of sleep the night before we left, although I'm not sure I even slept at all. We flew out of Fargo at 5:00 a.m. so we were at the airport by 4:00. The first flight went smoothly. We had a layover in Minneapolis, so we picked up breakfast at the airport bakery and waited for our next flight. There was a problem with our first airplane, so we were moved to a new gate to get on a different plane. But we weren't able to board yet because of the weather. We finally boarded the plane an hour and a half late.

Of course, that meant we missed our flight out of Atlanta. We couldn't get on the next flight to New Orleans, so that meant we had to wait for another one. Then that flight was delayed because the captain was stuck in traffic for a couple hours. We were seated in first class for the first time ever, but didn't get seats together on that flight.

View of the Mississippi River from the hotel

Finally, almost seven hours late, we arrived in New Orleans. But, wait - it's not over yet....

After a shuttle ride to the Sheraton, we were good and ready to go to bed. But as it turned out, that wasn't happening just yet. Thanks to a power surge, they were having problems with the elevators or something, and we were sent to the Westin instead. So we finally got a room and by that time, it must have been 11:00 p.m.

The next morning, Dan had to go straight to his courses (yes, it was a business trip for him), so I was left alone to figure out breakfast and get checked out of the Westin by noon. Someone from the Sheraton picked me up and, thankfully, I was able to get checked in early - I believe check-in isn't normally until 2:00. 

Sadly, my curling iron didn't survive the trip there.

And it's still not over....

While he was in his classes, Dan received the news that his uncle had passed away unexpectedly...tragically. So from that very first day, we were busy trying to figure out how we could switch our flights and fly into Chicago instead for the funeral. We did have a few more days in New Orleans, though, so I'll share a few pictures from our time there:

View of the pool (rooftop, 8th floor) from the 28th floor

We did a LOT of walking

It was so hot and humid, we got treats from Pinkberry to help cool down

Mine was watermelon (funnily, I'm eating watermelon as I work on this post)

Entertainment at the welcome reception

People mingling at the welcome reception (Mardi Gras World)

Dan visited with a lot of people at the IFT, a food tech show

I actually really enjoyed the show..and the free food :)

We tried a lot of new kinds of food here (this is a muffaletta sandwich)

Monday afternoon, we flew out of New Orleans, but the weather was - once again - uncooperative. We sat on the airplane for quite a while before getting cleared to take off. The rain was unbelievable! Of course, we had a layover in Detroit that night - if we had chosen a different flight, it would have cost hundreds $ more. But because our first flight didn't land until so late, there was the possibility that we would be stuck in Detroit that night. We were SO thankful to find out that our flight out of Detroit had been delayed, as well, so we were able to make it to Chicago that night.

Arrangement at the funeral home (as you can see, Bobby was a Cubs fan)

We spent the rest of the week there, then drove Debbie's car to Fargo and picked up my car from the airport. I was actually kind of glad to get home a day earlier than we had planned, because it meant we had the entire weekend to get unpacked and (sort of) relax before heading back to work!

Poor Loki was VERY happy to see us again