thanksgiving in illinois

went to illinois for thanksgiving this year. first we went to lee's parents house in atkinson until friday and then headed over to rockford to see our family. i needed some better pictures for our christmas card so we took some pictures out at the ledford's cabin by their personal lake. here is mom, tyler and i on their outdoor swing. luckily we had a gorgeous day!me and my bro with thier lake in the back groundtyler had to get on his knees to dance with lee's mom fran :) mom, lee sr, lee jr, and fran (in green mode)

my bro and his sweet new truck in yellow mode :) this pic could be a dodge ad i think.

lefse making

we had lefse making at my uncle wayne's house this year. it was just as fun as always with family, games, fun, etc. below is torie and tylerplayed some cards (lee, mom, ronnie in the background being the dj, and polly) the girlies that were there making kissy faces :)

here's a cool pic of some family playing wii in the living room with the red feature on my camera.

a weekend full of babies

i visited geri and mckenna this weekend. mckenna is now 15 months old, i can't believe she's so big already! she has such a personality already. she's so independent. below is a picture of her dad, mike, after he was chasing her and had caught her. she loved that game with him. and when she ran from him, she swung her arms out and about all crazily; it was so cute and funny and had geri and i cracking up!here is her stop-taking-pictures-so-i-can-play face; goofball! :) i love some of the faces she makes!! especially when she uses her eyebrows.

walter and mckenna just hangin out.

something was very funny! geri in the background.

also this weekend, my best friend from high school megan's older sister jenni had her first kid. a daughter named liliana mae. she weighed in at a petite 6 pounds 5 ounces and 19 inches long. can't wait to meet her. congrats to jenni and matt, and to aunties megan and shannon!!

halloween 08

went to throwbacks in woodbury for halloween. there was a great band playing and had so much fun! below is a group shot of all us softballers! manda the beer wench, johnny the red neck, kunde the senorita, tyler as ricky bobby, me the cheeto and meg the fat stripper.

me and my bro!! i was so glad he came out for a bit!

me and my girls! (doin the "vanessa") i love these chicas!!!!

so i decided to dye my hair all one color because i was sick of the blonde at just the bottom. so i picked a light brown dye and this is what i got. a little darker then i was expecting but it'll do. then i decided to try the whole bang thing. we'll see how that goes... :)

i'm hoping it will eventually fade to the color i actually wanted but it is fall and time for darker hair color (just ask gina) :}

grama's birthday

this weekend we went up to good ole silver bay to celebrate my grama's 91st birthday. it was so cold but a good trip. below is grama and her gowgeous cake!!my bro actually came with!! it was good to get to spend some time with him. yeah, we're the coolest!!!

a good picture of mom smiling big (in green mode on my camera) my grama's favorite color is green if you can't tell :)lee finally smiled good for a picture!!!

duck was so ecstatic to find a skate park in silver bay.

below is bailey, my bed partner. she took up the entire bottom half of the bed... ;)

the fall colors were already gone up there, but it was still pretty in duluth and around the lake. had some good food and some good games of cribbage.

al and i carved our huge pumpkins tonight. i love carving pumpkins and it was al's first time. there's nothing like pulling out the goo and seeds with your bare hands and seeing the final project all lit up! can you tell which one is mine and which one is al's? :)yes, my pumpkin has ears! (they were originally meant to be vikings horns but we had really crappy, dull knives so now they are ears)


i also had my one year anniversary with menards this week. it's crazy that i've already been there a year, does not feel like it has been that long at all! but i enjoy my co-workers and it feels good to have a solid, secure job that is not in retail or customer service!!!
that also means that i have been in eau claire for a year. crazy that i've been away from minnesota that long and it wasn't for college. although i'm ready to go back to minnesota, eau claire has been pretty good to me. i'm thankful for all the people i met here and all the wonderful friends i've met through ec. below is a picture of the infamous water street where i have spent some crazy, fun nights. also, here's picture of one of the university buildings and the river. i love the rivers around here and the trees are gorgeous this time of year. i need to get out and take some pictures of the beautiful leaves before they freeze.

can't wait for snow and to go snow boarding (except that i need to get new tires on my truck before it snows...)

what a beautiful day for a wedding

manda and johnny got married on 10-4-08 and it was the most beautiful, perfect day ever! not a cloud in the sky. we started the day at manda's parents house setting up and getting ready. the after party was also in their back yard where they had a pond, 4 bonfire pits, karaoke, etc. it was the best party i've been to in a long time and i wanna do it all again!!

this first pic is of the boys of the wedding starting the day off right :) wes, b.r., johnny and dave. with the gorgeous pond in the background here is me (the honorary personnal attendent), meg and kunde. my softball girls minus the bride manda!!! again with the selb's amazing backyard in the background
groom and bride on the boat on the st croix. can't get any better!
looking over the edge. such a beautiful ceremony and boat
the beautiful bride with the sparkling water behind her.

it was such a great success of a wedding. i had a blast and am so happy for manda and johnny and so happy to have been a part of their day!!!

bacho party

had manda and johnny's bachelor/bachelorette party last night. we started at a mexican restuarant in oakdale right by where we play softball. the waiters are used to us and bought johnny a shot of tequila and also brought an apron, broom and dust pan out for him to practice with. they were great. johnny also had to wear a sombrero. we then moved to lee's liquor lounge in minneapolis to see one of manda's favorite musicians. i forget the guy's name but he played old music (40's & 50's) with a caribbean funk twist to it. the music was good. but the bar was really the great part of the night. lee's liquor lounge had bar tenders that had to have been my grandpa's age. it was so funny yet cool. they also had really really old cash registers. after lee's liquor lounge some of us went back to kunde's house for some more quality time spent with great people. it was a very fun night!

here's manda and johnny. we had a hawaiian theme so we all had lei's and manda had a lei veil. johnny also had a bow tie and chili pepper sunglasses. the below picture was using my color feature on my camera. here they are again using blue. they will be married next weekend, can't wait!!!
here's most of the girls that were out at the bar. meg, lin, me, manda, and kunde
here's the boys of the wedding party: dave, b.r., wes and johnny with his head dress on :)
here's us 4 softball girls with pink being pulled out.

blue angels

the navy blue angels were in town this weekend for a show and have been practicing overhead for a couple of days. they are so loud and so cool. their saturday show was cancelled due to weather, but today when we got home the show was just starting. some of the flights required them to fly directly over our house. it was so cool to hear them and even see some of them really close overhead. i wasn't able to get pictures of the ones that were really close due to the sheer speed of them but here are a couple of the formations. the first one is the blue angels in one of their 4 plane formations. they were a little ways away but still sooo cool. and the diamond shaped formation flew directly over us. this is a formation of fighter jets. six of them flew right around our house and back over to the chippewa valley airport. i'm so glad we got to see some of them so close up. i will definitely be attending a blue angels show someitme in the future! and i would love to pilot one or even ride in one, but not sure that will happen anytime soon....
the jets got a lot closer then these pictures show and below is a video of one that got pretty close. my camera was not able to pick up the extreme sound of them but it gives you a slight idea. it was such a cool experience to have them flying over and around for a couple days.

a visit to chaska

jodi is teaching in chaska this year and shaneo is moving up with her soon and personal training in lakeville. so shane was up in chaska this weekend along with his parents and my baby boz so since al didn't have to work on sunday we went up to visit them. went to heart breakers, a little but cute bar just down the road from jodi's house. it was a great bar with pool, darts, and many other video games in it. they also had bargo (their version of bingo) that was free and you could win drinks, shots, pizzas and money. the only person to win was al and he won a free pizza. their pizza was amazing!!! shane's parents are so great, candy and bobby L. we also got a giant, spouted pitcher of beer for pretty cheap. it was cool! eventually shane's parents took off back to new ulm and then jodi's roommate kristin and her friend katie came out and those girls were great fun too. it was a good night!!! here are the boys and their beer. these best buds got a little toasted but they are so funny together. they act like they're 5 when they are together and jodi and i can't not laugh at them.
we always have a great time with shane and jodi, and i'm a little sad that they'll both be in the cities now but hopefully we'll still get to see them a bunch!

mckenna's one

finally got up to see geri and mckenna and the dogs! it had been a while since i'd seen mckenna and she's changed and grown so much!! she's one now (as of august 2nd) and she's walking and attempting to talk and she's so independent and loud :) she's such a cutie and a goofball.

she also absolutely adores dora the explorer and will ignore everything around her when dora is on. below is a pic of her intranced by dora :)
she does some crazy things with her eyebrows, she's such a goofball
she's such a little person now. she walks around and does what she wants and just babbles and screaches in her loud pitch, it's so funny. i can't not laugh at her.

glad for the fall coming and that i'll have more free time to hang out with her and geri and the dogs. the dogs are good to but a little more left out than they're used to due to them being so big and mckenna being so small, they could knock her over. but she loves them and actually likes to be in the middle of them and pushed around a bit. she also likes to ride them :) she just laughs and laughs.

brutus and his wrinkles

i went over to my friend brittany's house last week and got to meet their bulldog brutus. he's such a brut and so cute with his wrinkles. he's a good boy but still got some puppy in him :) and he's incredibly strong for such a short, stout dog; so much so that he knocked me over playfully.
i love the brindle on him! such a handsome boy :) he's so strong that he has to have a harness instead of a collar so he doesn't choke himself. look at that face